A lot of news articles are coming out about duterte, the new president of the Philippines. He has called for citizens to kill criminals and drug users, said he wants to use the military to kill corrupt cops, he has had death squads when he was mayor, etc. Which got me thinking. If a society is so overrun with crime and corruption what actually works to clean it out?
Does it take a strongman and a harsh clamp down on civil rights? Or have societies done it with the rule of law?
In countries where the politicians, police, military, judiciary, etc are all engaged in corruption and crime, and criminals rule the streets what does it normally take to reinstate the rule of law and eliminate corruption? Aside from batman. How do you even start? If a soldier or cop who earns $100 a month is offered $1000 a month by drug dealers to work for them, how does the government compete with that?
Well firstly, if that approach is to work, it needs to be two step, be brutal, but also make sure your officials are highly compensated for being so authoritarian in the approach.
I read about the poverty rate in the Philippines, it’s pretty bad, and pretty understandable the level of public support Duterte has.
I don’t think any of that is going to work. Crime is actually fairly easy to fix if the government isn’t corrupt. More cops, harsher sentences, build the trust of the populace. But if you’ve got a generally screwed up country, I think the corruption would have to be dealt with first.
Rule of law is the most essential ingredient and the government has to treat it as sacrosanct before the public will.
People would not go into a dangerous 7 unsteady occupation like crime if there were other decent jobs available, and they paid enough to provide a decent living & support a family.
So unless the government changes the whole economic climate of the country, this won’t work.
And since the people who put this government into power are the rich ones at the top, who got rich & stay rich by preying on the people they keep poor, they aren’t going to allow the government to change the system.
That’s not really how it works. Crime isn’t an “occupation” unless you’re selling drugs, and being a drug dealer need not mean being a genuine threat to society. People become threats to society from lack of impulse control, the desire to feel power at another’s expense, entitlement issues, and being raised poorly(or not at all).
There is one factor that makes a society have widespread crime, and it’s not poverty. It’s the knowledge that everyone is on the take and playing by the rules is just for suckers, which seems to be the problem in the Phillippines. Notice how in Game of Thrones all the idealistic characters die. That’s how it still works in some parts of the world and perhaps even in some small enclaves in the US.
Correlation does not = causation. Crime went down around the world from the 70s until now regardless of whether the countries involved introduced harsher sentencing and more cops.
And even among the general public, people commonly refer to ‘career criminals’ and people who have chosen a ‘life of crime’.
It’s common for crime rates to closely track (inversely) to the general economic growth rates. Usually a closer match than to increased police spending, or longer prison sentences, etc.
The invention of the FBI seems to have really helped the US deal with the mafia, and to get its tendrils out of politics (in most places).
In the book, The Big Con, they explain that corruption is mostly local. You can buy off a local cop, so he’ll turn an eye when he’s been called to investigate you. You can’t buy off some person you don’t know, have no reasonable way of meeting ahead of time, and who lives nowhere close by.
That said, when the FBI was really doing their business, I think that they used pretty ruthless means to accomplish it. It’s much more easy to destabilize and paralyze an organization by infiltrating it, and mucking with the works, than it is to legally collect evidence and prosecute the wealthiest members in court. I don’t know that the FBI did this in the case of the mafia, but I have heard that they did so with groups like the Black Panthers and various Communist organizations. I have no reason to think that they weren’t screwing around with the mafia as well.
That said, this may not be the best way to deal with corruption in a small country that is far more corrupt than the US was in the 50s and 60s, and access to modern communication technologies. But, to at least some extent, tracking down the corrupt elements and purging them is certainly the key to success. You don’t have to kill people, you just have to kick them to the street and make it financially non-viable to be corrupt.
I agree that the FBI was a factor, but it is not the only one, besides the fascinating connections with lead, one big thing that reduced the corruption and crime in the 30’s was the end of alcohol prohibition. The power the gangsters were accumulating by making money in illegal trade was also corrupting local governments, and IMHO it points to a lot of the problems that we see in developing nations with the current war on drugs.
Why The War on Drugs Is a Huge Failure
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Enforcement is good, but I do think it will continue to fail until the money does not flow to criminal groups that makes them stronger and with resources to corrupt governments. I think turning the speakeasy seller of the past into the legal liquor store seller of today was an important factor, and so it should be with the current drug war that corrupts even the USA, it should end.
As for the Philippines it is clear to me that the President there has decided to double down with what has not worked in past prohibitions. It is more likely that more government corruption and drug use is coming. Specially from higher classes that will then increase the corruption as they will, as usual, figure ways to avoid punishment while increasing the power of the more organized criminals.
First, you need an independent court system that cannot easily be bribed, threatened or influenced. This leads to rule of law, where justice can be obtained without favor or violence.
Second, you need equitable laws that protect personal and property rights. People must not fear for their safety or retaliation for their rightful activities. They must be able to profit from their labor and investments, and not fear confiscation by criminals or the state.
Third, you need an educated population. That allows the people to take advantage of their rights.
Fourth, the state must be responsive to the people. The best way to do this is democracy, but as long as the government meets their needs, the country will improve.
They don’t correlate at all, actually. The economy has gone up and down, but crime has gone steadily down since 1993, after going steadily up since the 1960s.
Now chances are, crime has more to do with the number of young people present than anything else. Declining birth rates and legal abortion probably killed crime more than anything else. Lead has also been cited as a factor. But just because you can’t help the biggest factors doesn’t mean you don’t do the right things on the less important factors. There was never a good reason for people with several violent felonies to be walking free. And there are studies showing that more beat cops deters crime, at least where the beat cops are:
One of the major problems during the crime-ridden decades was that there were places cops wouldn’t patrol. That’s an invitation to lawlessness. NYC was a pioneer in that regard, being one of the first cities to take back the crime-filled neighborhoods.
Yeah but can you get those things via the civil system and still respect human rights, or does it take a strongman and a clamp down on human rights and civil rights?
True, but wealthy nations like ours are not the same as dirt poor narco states. If a nation is dirt poor there is going to be more crime and more corruption. In the west where you can live a pretty nice lifestyle on a legal income, there is less incentive to steal or accept bribes.
Plus in the west I don’t think every check and balance failed. You have multiple checks and balances in a nation. Executive branch, legislative, judicial, media, various branches of the military, police, community groups, labor unions, religious organizations, etc. When most have become corrupt then where do the checks and balances come from? If in a poor nation like the Philippines all levels of the government as well as the military and police are corrupt, how do you change things? The new president says he is going to use the military to declare war on corrupt cops. I’m not sure how that will turn out.
In the US if the local police are corrupt and working with criminals you have internal affairs, local government, state government, state police, FBI, federal government, the judiciary, the media, etc. that act as checks and balances. Those checks may also be corrupt in a narco state. So other than declaring martial law, what works to end corruption and crime?
They aren’t corrupt because they are poor, they are poor because they are corrupt. WHat resources do Japan and Singapore have? The only “resource” that matters: respect for rule of law.