On Crime Rise, Morality

There always is something, oftentimes, in hearts of men that compel them to avoid evil. Human beings being what we are, are consciously designed to navigate away from the face of evil even without a pastor or police officer watching us. The battle between good and evil rages in all mankind; society only crowns it all: it helps us become what we want, with the help of our authority.

Man, being naturally a moral being, would comfortably live in the world without solders, lawyers, police officers and judges. Yet, now these individuals shape our lives. They determine how we live and they reward us with plenty or nothing, in accordance with how we live our lives.

All human beings are equal; the environment is what shapes us into different kinds. Yet, the environment does not have control over one’s life. Poverty means nothing other than lack of what others have. And richness is not the basis of judging humanity; humanity is humanity even without clothes. On the other hand, humans can be there only if they have what are basic necessities.

But does the fact that someone does not have these basic necessities warrant that such an individual should use immoral means of acquiring them? Philosophy, religion, and even basic wisdom never approves of such means.

Yet crime is on the rise, and those who advocate for a return to our roots lack all conviction. It is like that situation portrayed in W.B. Yeats’s poem The Second Coming, where the falcon can no longer hear the falconer and things are falling apart as the centre if failing to hold.

Why is it that as today we hear that a 50-year-old man has ravished a 10-year-old girl, tomorrow we hear that two men were holding an engagement ceremony somewhere? Where has our sanity gone? Where have our morals instantly vanished to?

The most dangerous thing about morality is that it is never constant if at all you entertain change. There are societies that were initially very firm when it came to guarding their morals, but have lost them because of ‘adaptation to change’. Change is only necessary if it does not conflict with the basic morals of a society.

There were things which were considered alien to some societies, but have long at last been accepted as axioms of morality in the very same societies. Our hope in the law courts is fast waning: their use of intellectual determination has betrayed many a people who advocate for morality.

Imagine this: a man breaks into a house and rapes a woman; and he is finally apprehended and hauled up before a court of law. And time has come that he should ask the prosecutor questions and the conversation goes as follows:

“When I was raping the so-called woman, was she sleeping or not?” and the prosecutor answers that she was sleeping. “No,” says the defendant. “She was not sleeping.” And he goes on to ask questions which clearly entail that he indeed raped the woman; only that the prosecutor does not have sufficient information and ends up giving wrong answers.

At the end, the learned judge now has information that the defendant indeed raped the woman but acquits him because the prosecutor did not give enough evidence regarding the case. Such is the folly of intellectual wisdom. Much as intellectual wisdom may form the basis of legal arguments, on the one hand, I should think morality is supposed to be practiced more often than not by our honorable judges.

And then there is the issue of armed robberies. Someone has pressed charges against an armed robber who was caught in the process of robbing a house or an institution and because the robber hires very prominent lawyers, he wins the case where it is clear that he indeed committed the crime. Can we say laws are indeed there to protect the innocent or to give hope to criminals?

In other instances, people who never committed any offence find themselves behind bars just because they could not afford a lawyer. Yet, it may be even in instances where it clear that they never committed a crime (of course, those in the law fraternity will always claim that those who are convicted are always guilty).

Well, whatever the case, it appears our fight against crime is still a long way to go. Old measures seem to be failing; old strategies appear to have been mastered by offenders; and it appears hope reigns only among the well-off.

Factual axioms of morality appear to matter less now and intellectual determination supersedes all human wisdom. And the tasks of “officers of the watch” continue being myriad in the face of the rising rate of crime. Yet, oftentimes, there is something in hearts of judges that was supposed to impel them to understand the nature of cases; only that it may just be ignored.