Notes from the Panopticon

More moral hazards: a reply to threeportdrift’s comment

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. ~ John Stuart Mill (1806 –1873)

From the start I hoped that this blog would provide a forum for discussion. It is hard thinking in a vacuum and I am grateful to threeportdrift for making a number of very interesting points. (see original article and threeportdrift's comment)

What I mean by moral hazard

It seems I failed to make clear exactly what I
meant by moral hazard so I'll have another go. The moral hazard faced when failing banks are bailed out is that the fear of failure is dented and therefore other banks will behave irresponsibly in the future because they believe that they too will be rescued if they gamble and lose.

The parallel in law-making is that, if laws are made and widely ignored, or if they are poorly or unevenly enforced, then respect for the law is eroded. A society without respect for the law is in danger of losing moral cohesion. This is the hazard it faces. It is parallel to the financial moral hazard: if people see others getting away with irresponsible behaviour, they will tend to abandon their own moral compass and behave less responsibly too. It also happens when there are too many laws which citizens find silly, unfair or unacceptable, or which they do not understand. In all these cases, there is a danger that society will lose faith in the institutions which uphold justice.

That is the simple part of the argument. The harder part is deciding when it is reasonable and realistic for society to enact laws to persuade people to pull in the same moral direction, and when it is justified for parts of the population to stand up against laws that are unfair or unjust. And it is here that threeportdrift seeks to take issue with the examples I used to make my point.

Loss of moral faith

My fear is this. The huge number of laws introduced by the Labour government, and its inconsistency in enforcing its policies, are indeed giving rise to a loss of moral faith.

Threeportdrift's last point ("ordinary oiks get off time and time again with warnings even whilst their behaviour gets more and more destructive"), far from undermining my point, actually supports it. I see it like this. The "oiks" see the Kate Mosses, the Elton Johns and the Jackie Smiths of this world getting away with breaking the law and think to themselves "why should I bother?" The reason they should bother is that they don't have the financial and social resources to slip through the legal net. So they get caught – in numbers that the legal system finds difficult to cope with. And so the justice system has a problem which it handles by reducing prosecutions for minor offences. This, in turn, reinforces the idea that the law is there to be ignored. And small crimes turn to bigger ones. (more here)

But let us not forget that being let off with a warning leaves an indelible stain. It makes it hard to reintegrate into society and, in particular, to make a legal living. So an underclass is generated that does not fully integrate into society. Organised crime is the main beneficiary, with society providing them with a work force made up of young men and women with no hope and with nothing to lose. (more here)

We must also remember that the Jackie Smiths and Kate Mosses and Elton Johns provide(d) these gangs with a market for their products, just as the celebrities of the day provided the Mafia with a market for illegal booze when the US government introduced prohibition.

Picking and choosing

Drug laws, I believe, generate the largest and most easily identifiable moral hazard. But respect for the law and the government is also eroded in other ways. If people feel able to pick and choose which laws to obey (speed limits outside schools good; roadworks on the M4 in the early morning bad) is exactly the kind of moral hazard that I am concerned about. It would be much better for the government to bring in fewer laws, to think harder about their implications, and to do its best to ensure that all parts of society are have an incentive to pull together and respect the law.

Epidemic hazard

A final point. Society's contempt for the government and its institutions also shows itself outside the area of the law. When a rogue scientist (completely spuriously) claimed that the MMR vaccine (more here) was the cause of autism and some types of bowel disease in young children, the government was unable to convince the public – in particular the parents of young children – that there was no danger. The government was paying the price for failing to maintain the trust of society, the effect of perceived lies and double-talk, as well as frustration at government efforts to micro-manage people's lives. So when an opportunity arose to make a protest, the population voted with its feet. The result was a catastrophic collapse in the number of children protected against measles, mumps and rubella, and a population vulnerable to an epidemic. Lies and obfuscation also carry a moral hazard.

I believe the government should treat us as citizens, not as subjects. The task is not easy because it must reconcile different needs and expectations in its policies and law-making. But its watchword should be "less is more" (see JS Mill quotation at the top of the page). Fewer laws mean fewer risks of moral hazard. And above all, everyone – and that includes the government and its ministers – should be treated equally.

Thank you, threeportdrift , for giving me the opportunity to clarify my thinking. I hope that I have made my point better now. I am always keen to hear from readers.

Picture credits:

www.badscience.net/?p=457

http://sobnation.wordpress.com/

The tragic death of Rhys Jones ~ the devil makes work for idle hands

"I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun." ~ George W. Bush, St. Louis Missouri, October 18, 2000

The shooting to death of Rhys Jones, an eleven-year-old boy, on the streets of Liverpool has generated the usual round of hand-wringing, breast-beating, finger-pointing, and promises of action from the leaders of the main political parties. "Solving this will not be simple", they say, and then go on to talk about how they will work harder using policies that have already been proved to fail.

The solution is not simple. But there are two factors that are easy to identify which contribute to the problem:

• Government anti-drugs policy
• Youth unemployment

In the 1920s, the United States experimented with the prohibition of the sale and consumption of alcohol. It was focusing on a social evil – and alcohol remains a problem in Britain today. According to the Home Office's British Crime Survey (figures for 2006/7), 46% of offenders who committed violent crimes were perceived to be under the influence of alcohol. This overall figure breaks down as follows:

• Domestic, 39%
• By strangers, 58%
• By acquaintances, 47%

(See table below.)

However, the American way of tackling the evil of drink proved worse than the disease. Sharp operators recognized an opportunity to make money and the era of gangsters – with its bloody violence, corruption of government officials and gun crime – emerged. And despite the repeal of prohibition, the organised crime syndicates that grew out of the gangs remain and have grown stronger.

It is extraordinary that the world's governments have, collectively, failed to learn this lesson. Instead, they have picked a fight against illegal drugs that they can never win. And in so doing, they have provided organised crime with a new area to exploit.

In contrast with alcohol, only 17% of violent offenders were under the influence of drugs in 2006/7:

• Domestic, 15%;
• By strangers, just 12%
• By acquaintances, 21%.

Only in the case of muggings did drugs have a higher percentage than alcohol (by just two percentage points).

However, making drugs illegal has had exactly the same effect (this time on a world-wide scale) as alcohol prohibition in the US in the 1920s – corruption, bloody violence, gangs, knives and guns.

The Home Office identifies three levels of gangs:

• Peer groups
• Street gangs
• Criminal networks

A study (by Professor Pitts of Bedfordshire University) of gang membership in South London found that the development of the drugs market has led to the need for an expanding workforce. The street gang provides the shop floor of the international drugs business; gang members protect the territory and provide a distribution network.

Low level peer group gangs are sucked into this culture. Pitts found that 40% of younger gang members were reluctant. They had no criminal record but felt unable to leave the gangs for fear of reprisals on themselves or their families. The knife and gun attacks that have made the headlines recently are, in part, a reflection of this.

It is not hard to see that these are preconditions for an escalation in violence. The lower level gangs are used by hard-line criminal networks to distribute their drug merchandise. Real money is at stake and it needs to be protected. What could be easier than for the big boys to provide their new lieutenants with weapons. Guns bolster their recruits' morale and sense of importance. And a genie is let out of the box.

I said there were two easily-identified factors leading to the upsurge in violence on the street. Let's now examine the second one. It would be harder – not impossible, but harder – for criminals to draw street gangs and their members into their networks, and harder for street gangs to conscript new members, if the pool of potential recruits was smaller. But that pool is large and growing. See chart below.

Between the year 2000 and 2007, the unemployment rate among 16 and 17 year-old boys has grown from 21% to 31%, an increase of 45%. The unemployment rate for 18-24 men is lower at 14%, but this is still two and a half times the rate for all age groups, and has grown by 15% during the period. By contrast, unemployment among all age groups is 5.7%, down by 5% over the period. So we have a large and growing group of boys and young men with nothing to do. And as we all know, "the devil makes work for idle hands".

The irony is that, over this same period, the percentage of boys achieving 5 or more GCSE passes at grades A*-C has risen from 46% to 57%, a rise of 24%. This improvement has come at some cost. Government expenditure on education between 2000/1 and 2005/6 rose from 4.9% of GDP to 5.6% (from £47bn to £68.5 bn, a rise of 46%).

It is a pity that all this money spent by government, and the efforts on the part of teachers and pupils, did not help more boys to find jobs. Instead, it seems that nobody wants them. With nothing better to do and with little to hope for, it is not surprising that their youthful energy is channelled into anti-social behaviour. Such alienation from society easily escalates into a gang culture. Gangs provide respect and a sense of belonging for these young men which is denied to them by society.

Now add to this problem the opportunities offered by illegal drugs. Criminal networks find it easy to turn the boys and young men that nobody wants into hoodlums (to use an old-fashioned, but graphic and appropriate word from the days of prohibition) and to arm them with weapons.

So finding the solution to the rise in gun and knife crime, as well as more general anti-social behaviour, requires effort in two areas:

• Finding a less damaging way to control narcotic drug supply and consumption, and
• Finding a better way to provide boys leaving school with (1) qualifications that employers find useful and (2) attitudes that prepare them better for the world of work.

Picture credits:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/21/ngcse121.xml

http://brain.brent.gov.uk/brain/braincf.nsf/images/nad2_logo/$file/nad2_logo_content.jpg

Lady Chatterley’s Connection

"Marijuana is taken by .....musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type... ~ Harry J. Anslinger, Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1948

When I heard Jacqui Smith and a catalogue of other ministers putting their hands up to having smoked cannabis in their youth, saying they were wrong and that the war on drugs must continue, a shiver ran up my spine. Forty seven years ago, the barrister Mervyn Griffith-Jones made his case for the prosecution of Lady Chatterley's Lover. "Is this a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" he asked. This question shocked the public and effectively ended the "one law for THEM and another for US" society, a society which denied respect and independence both to women and to the great unwashed.

Is that attitude now returning? Those ministers – some of whom had the benefits of an education system which allowed children of ability but no money to gain access to opportunity – are drawing the ladder up behind them. And now they are saying, "I experimented with drugs and survived, but let's close the door on the youth of today".

What will it take to prove that the current drug strategy is as much a failure as Prohibition was in the US in the 1920s? It has created the same raison d'être for organized crime. It is also filling the prisons, contributing to social exclusion, and placing a strain on the NHS.

What will it take to tear up this failed policy and look at new ways to control the use of drugs? And what will it take to persuade those ministers that their own experience is relevant. Cannabis did them no harm (if they had been caught, it would have wrecked their careers and we would not have the benefit of their abilities in the higher echelons of government – oops, I did not mean to go there, but what the hell, it's on the way to being true and these ministers might turn out OK).

A large number of media celebrities – welcomed into Downing Street by Tony Blair and hobnobbing with the royals – get away with being part of the drug culture and still manage to live rich and fulfilled lives. It's a cliché, I know, but treating people like children, telling them what they can and can't do, makes them behave like children. Treating them like adults, on the other hand, will give them self respect and a desire to behave in a more mature way.

So ministers, ask yourselves, "What is it about me and Elton John and Kate Moss that is different from every other man and woman who strays into drug taking?" Think again, please. Try to find a better way.

Picture credit:

http://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/Catalogues/Works/tabid/57/frmView/Record/itemID/31993/Default.aspx