THE PROVISION of public good, such as police, courts or jail, is the obligation of any government for the preservation of order, peace and safety of its people but at the same time it is an unproductive, economic burden on the exchequer of the government and it becomes alarming when the budget for controlling crimes goes up.
Crime can be minimized, if not totally eliminated. The increasing budget allocated for crime control is a substantial economic loss to the society as the amount allotted to it could be diverted for better purposes. The increasing budget for crime control is a clear indicator that other social controls are not working properly. As the subject is very broad and requires thorough study, the discussion will be confined only to police, jails and courts.
Our presumption in this article is that greater the budget allocated for removing illiteracy, poverty, developing professional, vocational and business education, industry, agriculture, means of employment, health, hygiene, housing, medical facilities, and fulfilment of physiological and security needs, the lesser the crime rate, and hence the lesser the budget required for crime control.
The increasing expenses for controlling crime though extremely necessary, are unproductive, and may be reduced with the reduction in crime rate. The number of judicial, police and jail staff and criminal cases could simultaneously be minimized if there were less number of offences. Substitute means for control of crime could reduce the expenses for crime control if rules of conduct in different institutions in the society were fully enforced. The crime rate could also be reduced if restoration of social order, improvement of economy through increased industrial capacity and optimization of resources under control were foremost priorities of the government.
Investment made in developing human asset and creating means of full employment in any society is more likely to reduce the crime rate and save the economy from losses.
The expenses involved in maintaining the infrastructure, logistics, staff, equipment lodging and boarding relating to the maintenance of police, jail and courts staff in providing safety from criminals come from the taxes paid by the people. When a big chunk of money is diverted from the national budget required for the welfare of the society, the society is deprived of the benefits.
The increasing cost of controlling crime is a great economic loss to our society because the money involved could be used for production of valuable goods. A great amount of money could be utilized for useful economic projects, if the past governments had shown political consistency in their behaviour and continuity of efforts towards achieving the national goals.
When the past governments distanced themselves from the fulfilment of the national mission to achieve their own local self-interests or the interests of bureaucrats, ministers and the interest of the feudal lords who commanded more power or the interests of the capitalists at the cost of society’s health, some portions of the society were deprived even of their basic rights. Consequently, deviant behaviour increased; chaos, corruption and anarchy in government machinery prevailed to an intolerable limit. Masses suffered, crime multiplied and social problems mounted up, and as a result of this, we pay a huge price in the form of increased budget for control of crime and more and more policing.
No one is a born criminal; all criminals are the product of circumstances which could be social, physiological, economic or others. Excepting the deliberate or accidental nature of crimes, most crimes are the result of perceptual errors, misunderstanding, wrong human judgments, conflicts, arguments, dishonesty, intrigues, wickedness and self-interests. Many ordinary cases of conflicts often turn into serious cases of crime, and litigation follows in the absence of timely mediation.In order to reduce the number of crimes, we should follow and control the patterns of crime with the help of crime statistics and we should give targets for stringently controlling and reducing the number and types of crimes in each population area.
The society is responsible for proper education, socialization, employment, rehabilitation and for the internatalization of citizens. Illiteracy, unemployment, poverty and poor health lead to crimes and the budget for controlling the crimes is multiplied. If we would have allocated more money on developing our educational institutions and creating more means of employment, for reducing poverty and providing healthy environment, the rate of crime would have been far less than it is today.
Most of us have enough to eat, roofs to sleep under but we seem to totally forget starving children and the jobless, and the homeless who also live in almost all areas of cities. Poor people die younger and also remain uneducated. People commit crime because of ignorance, ill health, less money or excess of money. People who are poor and live in slums, consume much less than prosperous suburbanites do. The opulence enjoyed by some wealthy people in our society contrasts even more starkly with the lives of the impoverished. Do prosperous people have a duty to share with the less fortunate if zakat seems inadequate should the government on behalf of the people it represents redistribute income or wealth or people should commit crime to take their share?
The human resource is the biggest and strongest asset of any society and keeping them illiterate, unskilled, undeveloped, untrained and unemployed will plunge a country into lawlessness, chaos, social disorderliness, loss of productivity, too many government loans and international debts. The result will be economic recession, and during economic recession organizations are not financially viable and sustainable. They terminate the services of the employees because they do not have enough business and when a government does not also pay social security or unemployment allowance, termination from jobs may cause frustration and may lead to crime and may indirectly cause economic loss to the society.
Some how our government priorities have been ill-conceived. We need to allocate more budget for social and economic reforms. We should pay more attention to the productive capacity and quality of the industrial plant, know-how of the human resources, skill of engineers, inventive genius of experts and managerial organization. We have decided to carry out police reforms because we failed to pay enough attention in the past on the economic, educational, and other social reforms of society.
There is great need for putting the social order in its place for predictable behaviour; there can be no social order so long as we depend upon police officers to protect us,and keep most of the time motorists stay on the left side of the road. The orderliness of any society rests upon a network of rules according to which each person accepts certain duties towards others and claims certain rights from others. Under an orderly society the safest person will not be unsafe and the unsafe person will be safe. Unfortunately the reciprocal rights and duties could not be kept in force in our society and in the absence of enough social control our society could not secure its member’s conformity to its expectations.
In order to reduce the rate of crime and save economic loss to the state there is a great need for ensuring full employment, stable price level, secure and growing standard of living and equity through redistribution of income. The government must allocate the resources in such a way that they can produce most valuable goods and the government must ensure that every drop of potential benefit is squeezed from the resources under its control.
In order to test the validity of our arguments we have to ask ourselves certain questions: What percentage of total population is there in our jails? What class of people are mostly there in the jails and for how long? Are they put in the jails with the intention to keep them completely physically fit for the society, or unfit to contribute to the economy and unfit to earn their livelihood when they leave the jail? (condemned criminals and other exceptions are not included in discussion here). If this population was not in the jails and was contributing in the economy how much more could be our gross domestic product than it is now? If the increasing strength of staff in police, jail and courts including the lawyers were all transforming resources into valuable products how could they all together further increase our GDP and improve our economy? And if the budget allocated for maintaining the police, courts and jails excepting what is necessary was diverted for the human resource development, business education and welfare of the masses how fewer cases of crimes would have been there each year? These are some of the potential questions which require a strong leadership to transform them into actual solutions.