The Chorus - Crime and the Media

 Invariably in the wake of outrages such as the murder of Donna Cleary, the voices of amateur sociologists are to be heard even above the grief of those left devastated.

Eschewing the obvious explanation that the perpetrators of such obscenities are irredeemably evil, these voices speak of “alienation” and “context”, explaining that such things happen because the perpetrators come from a class in society disenfranchised by virtue of its economic and social marginalisation. This is the “context” in which we must see things. Drugs, they elaborate, are an expression of this marginalisation: the perpetrators would not have consumed the drugs that drove them to murder and mayhem had society not treated them with indifference and disrespect.   

I would like to propose another hypothesis: that the pervasiveness in societal discourse of the above analysis is itself contributing to increasing criminality and adding to the murder tally.    

It is interesting that those advancing the “alienation” theory tend to be the same people who until recently greeted the publication of annual crime figures with specious analyses suggesting that there was no problem of criminality at all. Looked at year-on-year, the figures tended to support their assertions that the public had been bombarded with an exaggerated view of rising crime. But when you surveyed the graph of criminality climbing inexorably since the 1960s, it became clear that the public's growing sense of things was well-founded.    

There is no evidence that social deprivation has increased in that same period. On the contrary, most sections of Irish society have become incomparably wealthier. It is true that an imbecilic social policy which pursued unchecked urbanisation as a path to “modernity” and “progress” has created appalling social ghettoes in many cities and towns, and that, as a consequence of short-sighted social welfare policies, these have become festering cesspits of idleness, ignorance, brutishness and self-destruction. But it is also noteworthy that, in tandem with the growth of these jungles, there has evolved a stream of public thought that seeks to play down the imperative of personal responsibility in deciding that all wrongdoing emanating from these ghettoes is excusable on the basis of “alienation”. Unsurprisingly, these rationalisations tend to trip most readily from the lips of those who, 20 or 30 years ago, attacked as “backward” the idea that Ireland might seek to preserve its fundamentally rural character, advancing the ideology of urbanisation as the answer to every social ill.   
The “alienation” analysis first began to manifest itself in the early 1980s, when it was espoused by a handful of left-wing politicians and sociologists. Back then, when social deprivation was far more widespread than it is now, this analysis was given short shrift. And, coincidentally or otherwise, crime levels in every conceivable category were at a fraction of their present levels. Today, although these amateur sociologists like to present themselves as a beleaguered minority, in reality virtually all media apart from the tabloid press are dominated by the “social context” view of criminality. Following the usual initial bout of public horror at each new outrage, the voices of enlightenment reassert themselves to speak of “deprivation” and “alienation”, thus destroying any chance of a concerted initiative against murder and mayhem.

There is something to be said for the “social context” analysis of crime – provided it is advanced purely as a cautionary note concerning the implications of social policy. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of our criminal classes tend to emanate from the social welfare jungles we have deposited on the edges of our cities and towns. But to observe this as evidence of social policy mistakes is quite a different thing to advancing it in exculpation of criminal and murderous behaviour.    

I do not suggest that the criminals themselves are necessarily influenced by what they read in the quality press. Undoubtedly, most of them, if they read anything at all, are likely to be readers of tabloids, where they will find themselves accurately described as “lowlifes” and “scumbags”. There is, however, evidence that self-justification on the basis of “social deprivation” is becoming increasingly fashionable among criminals when apprehended. (The late Martin Cahill was wont to philosophise at length about his role as a sort of latter-day Robin Hood.) But far more worrying is the tendency for such notions to be trotted out by judges sitting in cases where these issues are highly relevant. In the recent past, for example, an eminent judge, sentencing in a manslaughter case, made much of his negative impressions on a visit to the area where the convicted individual had grown up, making it clear that he was handing down a reduced sentence on this account. Compassion is all very well. But if we think in terms of cause-and-effect, we can with certainty predict that such “compassion” will lead to more criminality and more dead bodies.     

Given that equality is impossible this side of Paradise, and that a certain degree of alienation will therefore always be present in a society in which some citizens will have more of the things that seem to matter, it is clear that the only hope of reducing these alleged effects of alienation is to remove from the public discourse the idea that social deprivation can in any sense be used as justification for wrongdoing. What we urgently require, therefore, is the reassertion in our public discourse of values of personal responsibility, and the fencing-off of issues to do with crime and justice from discussions of more general social policy. As well as having implications for gun law, policing and sentencing, such an initiative would require urgently to address the content of public discourse. One option might be to require those who advance the “alienation” analysis of criminality to take responsibility for the effects of their opinions in the real world, in much the same way as fireside supporters of Provoism were in the past required to take moral responsibility for the putative consequences of their nationalism in the lives of victims of republican violence.