If You Hired Me to Solve All Crime, What Would I do?

A walk-through of the socio-economic realities that pushed the neoliberal American economy into a system of hyperincarceration, and how to escape it.

Let’s play a game. Say you, my reader, were the president of the United States. With a united congress at your back, you order, “Everett, I order you to solve all crime in the United States.”

“Okay Madame President,” I respond, and immediately place you into handcuffs for that Syrian bombing you ordered the other day; which one you ask? Exactly. That’s why I am placing you in handcuffs. “Wait!” you cry out, “I meant street crime!”

“Oh,” I uncuff you. “My apologies Madame President, it seems as if we have a different idea about what constitutes a crime. You see for me, what you have in your mind, whether it be the drug-addicted person, the child running with MS-13, or the drug dealer outside the methadone clinic, is not criminal. I don’t see the person who squeezes the trigger of the gun, who was deprived of the opportunities that you and I take for granted every day, as a criminal, but as a victim of forces far out of their control, and their victim as a collateral consequence that would have been up to people like you to prevent.”

“Well,” you begin as you rub your hands—those metal things hurt and felt degrading! “I would like you to define for me, what I perceive to be street crime, and, if you have such a problem with that definition, I would like you to make it go away.”

“Very well,” I begin, “I will need to first define the problem as you see it, explain to you the faults with your idea, and with an understanding of the history of how we got here, perhaps I can help you achieve your goal.”

What is Crime? 

Good question. Crime seems straightforward, but it isn’t. But if we are going to solve the problem, we need to operationalize what we mean by crime. Do we mean financial crimes from the wealthy? Petty crime from the poor? Violent crime? Depending on our definition, our response could change. 

Crime is socially constructed. The reason that crime is socially constructed is quite simple: crimes are not ranked on severity based on their actual harm, but based on subjective factors that stem from issues tied into the last few decades of American policy. This will be my starting point, then, to get everyone on the same page about what we mean by “crime,” so that we can operationalize our solutions in a way that will respond to our agreed upon conceptualization of crime. 

The United States and Europe had relatively similar rates of crime until the 1980s, but then, as Loïc Wacquant discusses in his essay Class, Race, & Hyperincarceration in Revanchist America, something changed. Wacquant’s argument is that there was a shift in the American economy from the industrial, Fordist and Keynesian system that defined the American economy up until that point. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, which must be considered alongside southern migration and migration generally (this will be important later), the American system was based on a Fordist economic system, that a stable career in a factory–people getting “the job” and not “a job”–would enable them to have stability and upward economic advancement. The products produced by factories were built to last; the idea was that people would eventually be able to buy one of the Ford cars that they had spent their career working on. This system was ultimately defined as one where upward economic mobility and a fairer distribution of resources was possible. 

The Fordist system tied in with ideas from John Keynes, a political economist speaking from the earlier 1900s, who notes that the state should be integrated into the economy and serve as a regulator, investor of public projects and investor in the well-being of the people; in this way the state would be able to provide stability for the people in terms of employment, even when times were tough. The Keynesian system was based on systems of high taxes where the poor paid little and the rich paid the brunt, and the system of welfare that was attached to this system was top-down, with the national government ensuring a social net for those who risk slipping through the cracks. For the faults of the earlier 1900s, the economy was arguably less inflamed under this system than it is now. When this economic system fell apart in the 1970s and 1980s, the social construction of crime began. 

To understand the change that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, we need to understand multiple processes that were occurring at the same time. Market saturation (everyone had their one, working television) prompted American companies to start looking for new markets abroad. Globalization and technological advances made it possible not only to access and communicate with new markets, but to offshore labor and production in places where labor laws were less stringent. What is important to note about the Fordist system is that Ford wanted to create a consumer, someone with money who could buy the products of the factory they worked in. Under this new model of cheaply produced products, even lower-paid workers could still participate. 

Under the Keynesian system people adhered to a social contract. People paid high taxes and the government offered a system of welfare that would provide for the poor, and also be there in case the higher tax payer ever went through a difficult time. The erosion of the social contract, which occurred for various reasons, in conjunction with the shifting economy, leads to the beginning of the “criminal.” 

The Multiple Variables Collide

There is not a single variable that rose up to create the problem, but rather a collision of multiple variables, and likely far more than this paper could cover. 

Ghettos

Migration, domestic and abroad, occurred as people traveled to northern states to secure well-paid jobs in factories. The economic shift was not overnight, and people continued to migrate to these areas as jobs started to dry up. One area where large amounts of labor grouped was in ghettos, areas where people from certain racial groups often grouped under pressure from dominant racial groups. These ghettos were places of racial homogeneity, pride, and relative economic prosperity. Community was strong, and it was in ghettos in places like Oakland where the Black Panther Party and other social movements to push back against racial oppression took place. To summarize, large, homogenous communities of well-paid workers, with economic advance possible; these communities often had high degrees of political activism. 

The Transition to the “Hyper Ghetto”

The “hyper ghetto” is the first of the “hyper” systems that Wacquant points out that shows the changes that destabilized life in pockets of the country. Hyper ghettos replaced the existing ghettos for two reasons. First, the people within ghettos had been a labor source for the industry in the communities; in a recent article of mine I discuss the area of Kensington, Philadelphia, which outlines such a historical community. As the factories moved overseas, the groups of people within ghettos became a redundant labor force, and found themselves unemployed. Second, migration to these towns continued with people seeking jobs; except as people continued to migrate, those with the ability to do so left the ghettos, trapping those who could not leave and the “late comers” behind. Homogeneity and a shared sense of community was replaced by heterogeneous communities that no longer had a shared sense of community. This transition created pockets of poverty and decreased community connectedness, which paved the way for upcoming social problems. 

Children that were born into the hyper ghettos faced the brunt of two harsh realities. First, they bore the brunt of the economic transition, categorized as having few, and mostly low-paying jobs available, and they also bore the brunt of the “vengeance” from the civil rights era. 

The Economic Transition

The industrial economy was replaced by a neoliberal economy, one that saw the dissolution of the Fordist and Keynesian system. What took its place was an economy built on a “service sector,” with service meaning two widely different things. Under the service sector, there were high paying, specialized services, and there were low paying services. This contributed to a polarization of the economy, with the specialized workers seeing further divides between them and the former blue collar worker. Neoliberalism, the opposite of the Keynesian social contract, became the new system. 

Neoliberalism is the idea that the government should take a hands-off approach to the economy: the idea is lower taxes, lower regulation, and that people should be responsible for themselves. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, in the United States and the UK were both great proponents of the neoliberal system. This system challenged the social market economy that was in the Keynesian system, aka the welfare system that was nationally supported. Neoliberalism downsized welfare, advanced the concept of “personal responsibility,” created opposition to unionized workers, and pushed workers into lower paid jobs. Individuals could reach for this system of the American dream, which was possible if only people worked hard enough; those who didn’t, this system purported, were just not working as hard. This system did not consider structural inequalities or disadvantages. 

The Criminal Element of the Transition

Neoliberalism replaced the social contract, that people paid into a system to benefit those without, with the growth of individuality. Success lost its connection to community prosperity, and became highly individualized. Successful parents send their children to private school, have private healthcare, drive nicer cars, and have the latest technology. This system was regressive in terms of viewing individuals, in that it placed blame on individuals for all of their struggles: institutional or multi-generational problems were not brought into consideration in a system where it was viewed that anyone could “make it.” Those on welfare were seen as not being able to “make it;” those on welfare were suddenly seen as abusing the system, placing a burden on those who did not benefit from the welfare system. The poor were despised for not being wealthy, the primary view of status and success in the neoliberal economy. Thus the crimes perpetrated by the poor, such as minor drug addiction, alcoholism, vagrancy, and pettier criminal elements became increasingly the thing that was criminalized. 

One widely understood example of discrepancies in criminalization is crack cocaine. The cheaper version of powdered cocaine, crack, became a focal point in early drug war strategies, as a means of injecting a robust police presence into communities. Crack cocaine can be viewed in this way: cheap, for the poor, popular in certain communities, particularly those of color; criminalized, targeted by campaigns of force and fear; a focal point for the war on the lower class found in the new hyper ghettos. Powdered cocaine on the other hand was seen as a drug consumed by the wealthier, enforcement and fear campaigns were much different, as its correlation with wealth integrated parsimoniously with the neoliberal system. This is where the social construction of crime is widely apparent: it is not the behavior (drug consumption or dealing) that is the social ill, but the underlying factors that make someone favorable or dis-favorable in this new economy. 

Those growing up in the hyper ghettos had a choice. Deal drugs, which people in their community were doing because of its financial benefits, or work in a low-paid service job with no future. Armed with defunded schools and crumbling communities, many took the former option, leading to rising rates of drug addiction in and around hyper ghettos. Now, the transitions from the two economies were by no means overnight, nor were the drug wars and crackdowns that followed. Indeed, there was a period where drug dealing in these hyper ghettos was something that, while not necessarily supported by all, was viewed as a sort of protest to the unfavorable economic conditions that many were born into. But then the first waves of crackdowns began. Whites and blacks use drugs at similar rates; but violent crime is more apparent in one community. Why? One has experienced more police crackdowns. First-wave drug dealers were not about violence, but when their systems broke down, power struggles began. Drug dealers brought violence as they fought one-another over turf; drug addiction rates rose, and there was a period between the 1963 and 1974 where homicide rates doubled. Drugs and violent crime were blamed, and it led all–those observing the crime spikes and those in the communities–to beg for a solution. As we know, the solution was a robust expansion in the penal policy, militarization of police: the era of hyperincarceration had begun. 

Hyperincarceration

A key part of Wacquant’s argument is that hyperincarceration, not mass incarceration, drove the robust penal expansion that followed. Mass incarceration implies that the imprisonment was universal across the country, which was not true. It was the poor, the poor of color specifically, who had been left behind in the economic transition to neoliberalism who bore the brunt of hyperincarceration. For poor blacks and whites, particularly those without high school degrees, prison became a way of life. For those left behind in the hyper ghettos, the minorities who faced little possibility of economic advancement, we see the effects of structural racism, the abandonment in the new economic system, and the need for a new way to manage those who are stuck out in the neoliberal marketplace. As all of these factors collide: new economic realities and the need to police those who did not easily integrate into the new economy particularly, crime as it is commonly seen today becomes easier to define.

Defining Crime

Crime, to solve the issue, must then be defined and operationalized so that it can be stopped. Our current notion of crime is that it is street level: theft, property crime, drug use and dealing, and individualized violent-crime is the issue. These crimes are perpetuated by the poor and processed in a massive institution called the criminal justice institution. Our definition of crime is guided by the neoliberal system where organized campaigns of violence, such as force inflicted by a state, systematic drug dealing such as through the widespread prescribing of opioids, theft in the form of embezzlement, or the other harms perpetuated by the economically privileged are seen as less criminal and more the nature of business. This system is managed mostly in civil court, with financial penalties and stern reprimands replacing incarceration. As a responsible criminologist I must challenge this distinction, arguing as I did in this essay that our definition of crime (and what is absent from this definition) has led to criminalization of the underprivileged, entrenching them in a system that is nearly inescapable. 

The Fault in Our Model

Our system of punishment is based on deterrence and incapacitation, a striking difference from European systems based on restoration and rehabilitation. The system of deterrence assumes rationality and calculation on behalf of the “criminal,” and places weight on the fear of punishment to deter people from committing crimes again; when this fails, incapacitation, or the notion that people will be unable to reoffend due to being confined, will manage the neoliberal con-conformists. The revolving door of the criminal justice system disproves this notion quite quickly. Incapacitation upsets family life, harms relationships, affects employment prospects, leads to criminal records which exacerbate social inequalities, and makes it even more difficult to integrate into the neoliberal system. Important data from Link and Hamilton (2017) challenges what many believe is true about substance use disorder and crime. Many believe that substance use disorders (SUDs) and crime are linked, in ways such that substance use influences crime. What they found is that it is possible that this is not true. They found that it could be that the stresses of reentry, after initial criminal justice contact, that leads to SUDs, which are not even that closely linked to criminality. Considering hyperincarceration, drug addiction is not the issue, it is the geographical, racial, and economic positioning of the person that leads to the criminalization. 

We can now construct a complete definition of crime, in our society, as it is commonly perceived. A crime is an act that runs counter to the neoliberal order of business, that is either violent or nonviolent, wherein the individual, who cannot conform to the neoliberal economy, is individually held responsible for their actions, which have hurt our society, and they must be deterred from future criminality, or at least incapacitated from future criminality. To manage non-conformists, we will need more police, more prisons, and tougher laws. Crime is different from the same actions perpetuated by organized, business or government elements, in which case it is a civil manner. There are of course exceptions to this paradigm, like the case of Alex Murdoch. Murdoch’s case, however, provides an insider look into a false system of justice. Murdoch had paid counsel, a trial, and was found guilty of a crime mala in nature–or fundamentally evil–murder. This provides proof that the justice system is working: when judged by a fair system, with lawyers, debate, evidence, and a finding of guilt over an evil act, the system appears to work in punishing “bad guys.” This is enough for the public to see and assume that the system of crime and punishment is working. Of course, Murdoch’s interaction with the justice system was an anomaly. Murdoch was a wealthy lawyer, who was able to hire his own counsel and see a trial. Ninety-five percent of criminal defendants will never appear before a jury, instead taking plea deals to avoid “trial penalties,” or more severe sentences for slowing down courts by going to trial. People will be arrested, plead guilty, and begin prison sentences in a matter of days, outside of public view. Of course many are guilty, but guilty of what?

The criminal justice system in the United States is built for men like Rupert Murdoch. It works when people have criminal intent, or mens rea–a guilty mind–and commit an actus reus, or “guilty act.” In the system of punishment that characterizes the neoliberal system we live in, the guilty act is often satisfied, but the criminal intent is a different story–one rarely told. We have gotten the criminal mind wrong. Guilty acts, from the pettiest of crimes to violent gang warfare, rarely conform to the standard of a guilty mind in theory, but our system accepts the arguments in practice. Why is the person on the street dealing drugs? Why did the gang member stab the other gang member? Why did the person steal from a car? The list is endless. A guilty mind, if traced to its roots, is a rare phenomenon indeed. Did the child who grew up fatherless, with a drug-addicted mother, in a school system where gangs taught more than teachers and police who viewed them as inherently suspect, form an independent criminal thought to stab the person from the rival gang, as instructed to do so by the only true family he as ever known? Did the person who was first prescribed opioids by a doctor, who now must steal to support a street drug habit, form an independent criminal thought to smash a car window? Is the street drug dealer passing out drugs because he had the same opportunities as the kids from the neighborhood next door with a quadruple school budget and a family with six-figure income, or because there was perhaps a discrepancy out of his control? In short, criminal intent is naive because it assumes a level of criminality that is appropriate for crimes committed by the top of the neoliberal order, but not those who are struggling at the bottom. Nobody blames a 7-year-old for their actions, but when the derivative of that 7-year-old, the parentless fifteen year old is first caught selling drugs, well he must be a criminal worthy of being tried as an adult. In this system, the very nature of crime is misunderstood: this is a fundamental flaw in the deterrence system. 

The Solution: Harm Reduction, De-Inflammation, Paradigmatic Shift

The solution to solving crime, based on our conceptualized definition, is three-pronged. We will broaden and expand upon the definition of harm reduction, we will de-inflame our economic system, and we will shift away from the deterrence model of criminal justice. 

Harm Reduction

Harm reduction is a valuable method for managing criminal justice issues, but it is grossly underused. It is a blanket term that has been applied to SUDs in the past. Many think of harm-reduction strategies as providing clean needles for people addicted to heroin, in order to mitigate the harms associated with drug addiction. Harm reduction is about a lot more than individualized policies, it is a fundamental shift in the neoliberal mindset many of us are entrenched in. 

A successful harm-reduction approach could completely replace the current criminal justice system. Harm reduction, in this case, would be a backtrack toward a Keynesian system of government. Welfare policies are currently localized, with the federal and state governments paying into small, fragmented services that are, while important, frequently complicated to navigate, underfunded, and disorganized. This would rebuild the lost social contract: people are paying into stronger systems of welfare, but also in healthcare, unemployment and pension systems. Their money would be better managed which could lead to less taxation overall, since currently state,local, and federal governments are all trying to levy taxes for different purposes. The primary goal, however, would be that people would fall into a far more tightly woven net. 

Harm reduction would look at issues of substance abuse, and even the commission of violent crime differently. It would look at schools and ask why are some students being suspended for violence or minor infractions? It would ask why children are being jailed for missing school? It would ask why children who have difficult home-lives are struggling? It would answer these questions with interventions when necessary, using the hundreds of thousands of dollars it currently uses to jail every inmate to invest in the future of each of those struggling children. There is no guilty mind in a child, only a society guilty of leaving that child behind. 

Harm reduction will treat criminality as a symptom of a deeper social issue. It will look at crime rates and, instead of deploying police, ask what causes privileged neighborhoods to have lower rates of street crime than the wealthier neighborhoods with better funded schools, activities, a deeper sense of community, better police-community relations, a decrease in the punitive response to juveniles, empathetic government, better jobs. Most importantly, however, harm reduction strategies will push past the neoliberal idea of individualistic blame and say that when a person succumbs to addiction, is pushed into a gang, falls into poverty, we, the society at large, have failed. 

De-Inflammation

The service sector economy is a highly inflamed economy. Those at the top have more wealth and power than any “autocratic” oligarch. Below them is a crust of elite labor in the form of lawyers, doctors, tech workers, bankers. Below them is a new blue collar class consisting of public (police, fire, maintenance) and private contractors to cater to the elites who need the service of a fixed toilet or running water. Those at the bottom of the service sector, meaning most people, will enjoy little economic advancement in their lives: for them, the American Dream is unachievable. 

American business will be responsible for changing this trajectory. Industry needs to return. Stable jobs need to return. Cheap, overseas manufacturing, cheap technology, and the offshoring of virtually all production must cease. Businesses must no longer be able to circumvent having well-paid workers in the United States. The Fordist economy, despite the faults of elites like Henry Ford, was utilitarian in that it created a great level of stability for the most people in American history. In the climate of racial and social progress, it could be extended to ensure that nobody is left behind. 

Criminal Justice Paradigm Shift

Perhaps as the first two stages are implemented, this process would naturally occur. Deterrence does not work. Our criminal justice model as a whole does not work. It is built for outlier cases, but is an abject failure in most cases. The neoliberal system pushed people into the criminal justice system, and a de-inflamed, Keynesian system would pull people back out. Without the “them” mentality that labeled the poor as inferior, “we” could reach into our struggling communities and make sure that there is only one people, the citizens and aspiring citizens of the United States, who do not possess criminal intent, but may, based on their individual circumstances, be pushed into habits currently defined as criminal, which at worst can lead to violence. To curb the violence, addiction, and street crime, we will need a paradigm shift away from criminal justice entirely. The rehabilitation model that will replace the deterrence model will need to go a step further than European models. For example, many European prisons emphasize rehabilitation. The issue here, however, is this is still from within the realm of prison. The best strategies for rehabilitation will not be directed at individuals for remember, crime is not something that is universally punished but something that is punished based on spatial, racial, and economic concerns. The rehabilitation model will need to transcend the criminal justice system entirely, where the rehabilitation is applied to schools, medical systems, policing, and to the economy. If we can break out of the idea that it is the “criminal” that needs to be rehabilitated, and realize that it is the societal institutions that need the most help, well, our working definition of crime will slide into dark pages of early 2000s history. 

Conclusion

“So,” you begin, having dozed off no less than three times during my argument, “your solution to this definition of crime is to do absolutely nothing to try and prevent violent crime or drug crime?”

“Not exactly,” I respond. “My goal is to prevent it from occurring in the first place, which is the foundation of good criminal justice policy. We, in this field, are like the doctors. You don’t want to come see us, and you should take steps to avoid having to see us as much as possible. There can be nice doctors, there can be compassionate doctors, but we are still here for when there are problems. The goal needs to be to avoid having to come see us in the first place, by correcting harmful habits.”

“So, what you’re saying is when somebody is the victim of a crime, the real victim is the offender?”

“No. Not quite. When somebody is the victim of a violent act, or of a crime in general, that is not their fault and they deserve protection from future harm. However, not a single murder victim in history has ever been saved by the subsequent punishment of their offender. Given that most people who commit crimes are not habitual offenders, the single crimes that most people commit could have been prevented and it is our fault as the prominent voices in society for allowing such faulty economic and penal policies to perpetuate for so long. If we focus on this model, those who are habitually harmful, your idiosyncratic serial killers, for example, we can conduct surgical, effective responses to those specific instances without worrying about a system that is too bogged down to pursue those who pose a real, repetitive danger to society.”

“I am still rubbing my wrists from those handcuffs. What do we do about the elites who commit crimes of higher immorality?”

“Well,” I conclude, “some may say the focus of our criminal justice policy should be to punish them. Me, I think we need to leave this whole punishment ideology in the past. There is a collective reason to want to de-inflame our society, end the systems of state-sponsored violence, and end systems turned the American people against one-another, ripping apart any symbolic adherence to idea of shared American values. I think that elites will realize that the exploitive models that led to short-term profits will not be the best system going forward, and one that allows us all to strive for improvements across the political spectrum, with less wealth and power concentrated at the tippy-top, will ultimately lead to a system where no one will need to live with the nightmares that come from the criminal justice system.”