Deterring Crime in Modern Society

Every civilization throughout history has sought to keep peace among its citizens. Many of these civilizations have concluded that in order to keep people from committing crimes, you must keep people from wanting to commit crimes. Most of these have turned to determent, the act of using fear of punishment to dissuade potential criminals. Ancient Babylonia, for example, provided harsh punishments for all manner of crimes, in order that its people, fearing being caught and punished, would decide against crime. Modern-day Singapore, too, administers harsh punishments for crimes committed there. However, there is some question as to whether such punishment deters criminals. America’s death penalty doesn’t seem to deter crime, but Singapore’s record of harsh punishment and low crime contradicts this idea. The Singaporean system may be America’s best strategy to deter crime.

It hasn’t been proven that the death penalty, supposedly the harshest of all punishments, deters crime. The United States allows capital punishment for first-degree murderers. Some states, however, have decided not to allow the death penalty within their borders. States that make use of the death penalty seem actually to have higher murder rates than states that do not. Additionally, the homicide rate of a given state does not seem to change following an execution. Confronted with this evidence, one cannot help but conclude that capital punishment, as administered in America today, is not a major deterrent to homicide.

However, upon examining Singapore’s record, one must also wonder why not. Singapore administers seemingly brutal punishments for the most minor of infractions. A well-known example is the public flogging of a young American national visiting the nation in the 1990s. Upon being convicted of vandalism, he was sentenced to three very painful public thrashings with a bamboo whip. As the people of the United States learned of this event from the media, a public debate ensued. Many believed that the punishment did not fit the crime. The Singaporean legal system maintained that such punishments are necessary to keep crime in check, pointing to their extraordinarily low crime rates as evidence.

My conclusion is that America administers its penalties in a different way. Executions take place at midnight, when no one is awake to take notice. They happen behind locked doors, where no one can see them happen. The entire process is so clandestine that it seems almost as if the government is ashamed of what it is doing and is trying to keep people from finding out. I believe that for some reason, this leads potential criminals to think either that they won’t be caught or that a harsh punishment could not possibly be administered. Not being a criminal myself, I know little of this thought process, but it seems that somehow, murderers do not fear the death penalty of today as punishment for their crimes.

Harsh and public administration of justice is what we need to deter criminals. If we wish to deter criminals, we must model our criminal justice system after Singapore. We must shift from the now-ubiquitous punishment of incarceration to forms of public ridicule reminiscent of older days. For instance, a person convicted of assault would be branded, tattooed, whatever, as such. Wherever he went, people would recoil in disgust, knowing he’d attacked someone brutally. Businesses would think twice before hiring him. Restaurants would refuse to serve him. He would live an isolated, humiliated existence, which would eat away at him. No one desires such a punishment, and if it were commonplace, more than a few would think twice before committing a crime. When the government finds it necessary to administer capital punishment, it must be both public and visibly painful. No tiny crime should go unpunished, from littering to public urination. All infractions should be punished harshly. If we let the little things slide, people will start to get away with more and more, and eventually, the crime will be uncontrollable.

There will, of course, always be people who cannot be dissuaded from criminal activity, no matter how brutal and public the punishment. For example, people who steal because of economic necessity cannot be deterred, nor can the criminally insane and serial killers. These people, as well as terrorists and spies, will go ahead and commit their crimes because, in their view, they have no alternative. Also included in the exceptions column are heat-of-passion killers. However, overall, I believe the above suggestions for determent are the best way to bring crime rates down into a more manageable realm.

My words here should not be construed as a statement of my opinion about how punishments should be administered. As I believe that the death penalty of today is inhumane, I would certainly not condone any of the above alternatives. Presented here is only my hypothesis on the best way to deter criminals from crime. Rather than determent by means of fear, I favor widespread social reform, targeting the factors that contribute to crime. Chief amongst these factors is poverty. As a society, we must lift impoverished people up, even if it means giving up some of our luxuries for the sake of society. We must crack down on drug abuse and teach all our children about tolerance and peaceful ways of solving their problems. It may take a few extra generations, but eventually our society will be much healthier than if we followed my suggestions in the above paragraphs.