In message <Pine.NEB.4.10.9904260229090.5381-100000 at panix7.panix.com>, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> writes
in reply to me
>I quite agree with you that breaking the power of crime panics is crucial
>to mobilizing people for progressive ends. But lowering the level of
>lethal violence in society seems crucial to me to bring about this end.
But lethal violence does not cause crime panics. They arise out of the mutual alienation of individuals, who, in the absence of social solidarity, are prey to distrust each other. The response to incidences of crime, and the view of how great a problem crime is, depends on the social situation of those who experience it, not the crime itself. So the belief that the murder rate in Britain is climbing is rock solid amongst a relatively insecure mass of people, despite the fact that it has been constant for fifty years.
>
>The more I think about it, I more I wonder whether our differences might
>not reflect the different situations of our respective societies. You
>live in one where the police by and large have all the guns. I live in
>one where the population has quite a lot of its own. As far as I can see
>here, the result has been a relative increase in the firepower and
>violence of the police as compared to those of Britain (hollow point
>bullets, indeed) and an increase in the power of crime panics to grip the
>public's imagination, as evidenced by our (almost) world record
>imprisonment rate, and the fact that a majority of my countrymen support
>the death penalty.
I don't think that you can blame police violence upon the people, as if it were simply a reaction to the possibility that people are armed. It depends upon the extent to which the police are unrestrained by social pressures. So following the defeat of the organised labour movement in this country, the police became much more violent in their treatment of working class people (culminating in the Hillsborough tragedy).
>
>In both our countries, I think we agree, the discourse of crime is an
>means of legitimizing both racial oppression and the oppression of the
>poor. But I have always assumed that people in my country are more gripped
>by crime panics than people in your country on this evidence of our
>supporting more draconian laws.
Britain's crime panics are pretty awesome, too - especially over child sex abuse. Just last weekend a man who was found not guilty of such a crime - after the judge threw the case out as a complete fraud - was then kicked to death in Ebbw Vale in Wales.
> I also
>assume that we're not naturally bigger scaredy cats, but rather that it
>comes from the fact that our homicide rate is 4 to 14 times that of
>Western European countries. (All other rates of crime are in the same
>ball park.) And that if we brought it down nearer towards the European
>level, people would be less afraid of their neighbors, less prone to
>believe in crime panics, and we could convince the majority to stop
>imprisoning such a large number of poor and black people.
I don't agree. My view would be that the panic is independent of its ostensible cause, but correlates instead to its underlying reason, social disintegration and alienation.
My examples would be Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis in Britain. Just 37 people _in total_ have died from any disease that might be related to BSE (the 'human form' is called Creutzfeld Jacob Disease, but as yet scientists have found no direct link between the two diseases). More people die each year turning their radio alarm clocks each year in Britain than do of CJD (20, 15). But still the BSE panic raged across the country, resulting in the destruction of hundred of thousands of head of cattle, of a value of several million pounds. The belief that they were 'at risk' was entirely unrelated to the risk itself.
>
>If I understand you correctly, you are saying that when the police have a
>monopoly on guns, as in your country, they have a greater legitimacy in
>the eyes of the populace -- there is a wider and deeper acceptance that
>they act on behalf of the community. And conversely, when, as in my
>country, the police do not have a monopoly on guns, they are held in
>greater suspicion. Is that fair reprise? I think there might be some
>missing terms in this argument, but let's grant it for the sake of
>argument. Does it follow that loosening up the gun laws in Britain would a
>good thing? Because it would generate more suspicion of the police? Do
>you think this suspicion of the police would outweigh the increased
>suspicion of one's now by definition better armed neighbors? And do you
>think the result would be more laws to curb the police, and fewer crime
>panics? Judging from my society, I think the opposite would be the case.
>But I'm interested to see how things look from the other side of the
>fence, where previously I'd thought the grass was greener in this respect.
Well, the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.
I am sure that the actually existing ideology of gun ownership is pretty unpleasant. But so too is the ideology of gun control.
The first seems to be that you need weapons because other people are very dangerous. The second runs 'we must take the weapons away because other people are very dangerous'. Both have that misanthropic element of distrust for other people, but the gun control argument has the further ideological component of investing ones trust into the powers of law and order. In that sense it is just a completion of the mutual alienation that sees other people as the enemy.
In message <Pine.NEB.4.10.9904260017510.2852-100000 at panix7.panix.com>, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> writes
> As for numbers,
>in 1996, 9,390 people were murdered by handguns in the US. (The total
>figures, including suicides and accidents are 4 times as high). During
>the same period, 30 people were murdered with handguns in Britain.
Are you sure these figures are right?
In message <Pine.NEB.4.10.9904252212510.29755-100000 at panix7.panix.com>, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> writes
In reply to my objection
>'Kids in Glasgow' do not shoot each other over football
>> games.
>
>That was exactly what I said. Or tried to say. They don't because they
>don't have guns.
But I would like to suggest that the reason that Glaswegians do not shoot each other is for a more profound reason than that they do not have guns. Thousands of Celtic and Rangers fans go to football every Saturday. There is some hostility between them. But the presupposition that they would willingly kill each other given the machinery is an unnecessarily gloomy view of human nature. -- Jim heartfield