Recently, the media have been full of reports about legislator's suspicions that the Ministry of Interior's announcement of zero growth in crime rates is based on false data. The apparent aim of this alleged deception is to cheat the people of Taiwan by presenting the false appearance of peace and prosperity and singing the praises of the government.
Leaving aside ideological disputes, legislators and media meet the occurrence of each new major criminal case with a show of "concern," asking that police authorities, the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Yuan propose more effective policies to solve the problems.
Although the focus of the attacks by legislators and the media is not misplaced, one issue is constantly overlooked -- the prevention of rising crime rates is a matter of cooperative relationships between forces at many different levels.
"Forces at many different levels" means that the prevention of rising crime rates cannot be accomplished by one single institution or policy. "Cooperative relationships" means that prevention will remain efficient even if a certain institution or policy can't cooperate or be coordinated with another institution or policy that is successful at preventing a rising crime rate.
I'll give a simple example. During the 16 years from 1987 to 2002, the crime rate in Taiwan rose from 924 per 100,000 to 2,246 per 100,000, an increase of almost 2.4 times. These are worrying figures, but can the crime rate be reduced merely by relying on various measures by the police administration and the interior ministry?
Let's look at some other statistical data for the same period. Unemployment rose from 1.9 percent to 5.17 percent; the crude divorce rate from 1.18 percent to 2.73 percent; the income inequality ratio increased from 4.69 to 6.39; economic growth fell from 12.74 percent to 3.54 percent; the youth population between the ages of 12 and 17 fell from 11.1 percent to 8.76 percent; the clearance rate increased slightly from 57.1 percent to 59.2 percent. These are the "possible causes of the criminal problem" that everyone has been wondering about for so long.
If we integrate these six indicators for analytic purposes in order to prove the relationship between these possible causes, we get the following results. Unemployment, the income inequality index and economic growth in the previous year do not have any significant effect on rising crime rates in the following year.
By comparison, an increase in the divorce rate by one percentage point the previous year will lead to an increase in the crime rate by 2,389 per 100,000 the following year; an increase in the youth population by one percentage point will lead to an increase in the crime rate by 854 per 100,000 in the following year; an increase in the clearance rate by one percentage point will lead to a decrease in the crime rate by 25 per 100,000 the following year.
The reality revealed by statistical analysis is that if we want to accomplish the "mighty undertaking" of lowering the crime rate, it is in the end mainly a domestic matter.
In other words, 20 years of economic growth might buy wealth for the nation and the efforts of the police to improve the quality of their services might make the country a safer place, but broken homes and lost youth may spoil this hard-earned wealth and safety 10 times, a hundred times, over.
From another perspective, the desolation and dangerousness of a city or a society may be the result of not having looked at these domestic matters through the eyes of a mother.
Policies with a strong "macho" flavor, such as three strike legislation, the death penalty, lashing, chemical castration, increased maximum prison sentences, one sentence for each crime, or revealing the faces of suspects in public, will not stop families from breaking apart or youth from going astray.
If government policies cannot fixate on crime from a mother's perspective, behind each violent arrest, repeated punishment, or threat to deter offenders, there will be more fallen souls, bringing ever more desolation to this city.
The dark cloud of social disorder is growing in the skies over Taiwan. Taking a closer look, we see that it isn't one homogenous cloud, but rather that it is multi-layered.
This thunderhead has been floating around Taiwanese skies for 16 years. It doesn't bring timely rain, and it covers the sun. Taiwanese society is in a state of constant change. If we want to achieve a zero-growth crime rate, we have to realize that slack in any one layer in the structure will diminish the results of the efforts of another structural layer.
Wherever the gloom of social disorder appears, it must be dispelled. Simply continuing to develop more severe sentencing and stricter laws, placing all responsibility on a single institution or allowing a single institution to take on all responsibility will only lead to an imbalance, pushing all social forces to one extreme and making it impossible to dispel the dark clouds of social disorder gathering over our society.
Chou Susyan is professor and chair of the Graduate School of Criminology at National Taipei University
Translated by Perry Svensson
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