Resolved: the police are actually good for criminals
A few weeks ago I wrote a satire about how the producers (Michael Bay in particular) of The Purge movies are super-jazzed about the Defund the Police movement because it would give them a lot of real-life material to inform more movies in that stupid franchise. It was hilarious, because I’m a hilarious writer at the top of his hilarious game, along with being a hilarious paragon of humility. You can find that satire here. Today, I’m out to prove that the police are good for criminals, even though I’m only a former debater very close to the bottom of his game.
The Anarchy Factor
Were we to abolish the police and ask communities to police themselves, they wouldn’t because this is reality and reality won’t be ignored. Things would quickly devolve into every man being a law unto himself and that’s never worked out well. The immoral and opportunistic would immediately commence with the looting and the stealing and the pushing over of vehicles and the throwing of bricks and all of these things. Certainly, the moral and law-abiding would suffer and some of them would die. Soon as you can say “lock and load”, they’d push back with the locking and the loading and the shooting and the fortifying and the self-defensing and all of these things. And they’d push back with extreme prejudice.
See, the thing about looters, rioters, robbers, thieves, and people of this nature is that they are terribly disorganized, tend to do their work in small groups or solitarily, and are terrible shots. Sure, they have guns. Handguns, mostly (look at the statistics of violent crime in the large cities and you’ll shake your head like most conservatives do at the vitriol AR-15’s receive). Handguns are compact and easily hidden, but aren’t effective out of short range. The law-abiding tend to have rifles and tend to practice with them, the law-un-abiding being too busy stealing, robbing, fencing, and pawning to feed their habits and keep themselves alive. Without the constraint of having to answer questions to the police about justifiable homicide and firing a gun within the city limits, home and business owners would have very little mercy on those running the streets looking for trouble. And there are 70 million of them sporting 300 million guns. The everyday, run-of-the-mill smack hound looking to snatch whatever isn’t nailed down just isn’t set up to survive a breakdown of the system.
The Safety Factor
Now, that is not to say I look forward to this. I think societal breakdown in the current climate is certainly possible, but I shudder to think of it. There’s a lot of macho talk on the internet to the tune of “F*** around and find out” but this would be a horrific scenario. I own a couple guns for home defense and the occasional sport shooting, but I don’t really like them, nor do I relish the thought of killing another human being in a free-for-all apocalypse. Were I to kill or maim someone breaking into my house with the intent to rob and kill, it would haunt me forever, and I wouldn’t stand over their body in a gloating or scornful manner. I’d have pity and weep for them. But this is one reason why police are good for criminals. Getting caught and serving time as consequences for breaking natural and societal law are good things. The system feeds, houses, clothes, and preserves the lives of those who would otherwise be swallowed up when they tried to continue in their ways. Sometimes it even reforms them.
The police are the hound dogs of a court and prison system that wouldn’t be able to protect society were social workers and community leaders tasked with policing the unlawful. Like it or not, criminals who are caught and imprisoned have a shield of safety the abolishment of the police force wouldn’t afford them. Yes liberals, I know that the prisons can be horrible places to live and shouldn’t be privatized for profit. We can agree on that. But most convicts make it out alive, so there’s that. We’re talking in comparative terms of undesirable nightmarish scenarios here, not absolute terms of good and bad.
The Honor-Among-Thieves Factor
There are a lot of gangsters who are organized, do have resources, do have money, do have those in their employ ready to do what’s necessary. What side of the line will they fall on if the police no longer exist? Probably the side of those trying to protect their assets and families. They won’t stand with small-time lawbreakers when survival by any means necessary comes to the forefront of everyone’s mind. They’ll want to protect their houses, cars, and stuff like the folks who spent their lives working a lawful job. These guys are the exception to the criminal class. The average thief wouldn’t survive the month were society to go all Mad Max on a date with The Walking Dead.
The Prudence Factor
An ordered, lawful society like the one we’ve built and are in the process of ripping to shreds can’t reason, debate, or negotiate with disorder. It can only stop it with all expediency. I agree to some degree with ideas coming from the political left. Social workers are a good thing in an of itself, but they can’t replace police and necessary force. I am a former teacher and have seen tremendous good come from social workers doing their thing. But order must be maintained and restored when broken. An emotionally compromised child suffering traumas at home who cusses me out and threatens my life (this has happened) has to be removed from my classroom so I can continue teaching my apathetic audience and enjoying order. Then, they must be calmed before the social worker can speak to the student’s life and problems. Order trumps emotional connections, understanding, grace, therapeutics, problem solving, second chances, all of it. Order is specifically why those other things work and can be employed. Without police and the threat of force to restore order, those other wonderful things don’t have a chance of even coming into the mix. Too many situations would escalate to the point of no return. Prudence dictates we strive first and foremost to restore it, then get all lovey-dovey.
And so it goes for criminals. What is a classroom but a microcosm of an ordered society? Young citizens learn to do their job without flying off the handle, and are taught to refrain from hurting or stealing from others due to the consequences—maybe even because of the moral good—attached to such actions. Criminals are children in adult bodies who never learned this, or don’t care. When a criminal moves outside the lines of an ordered society, they can be punished, forgiven, made to pay a debt, whatever. But they can never be more than a criminal if someone doesn’t come into their lives and minister to them, teaching them to be better than their situation and past actions. A police-less society won’t be so forgiving, kind, patient, and eager to teach. Nor do we—no matter the leftist narrative—live in a police state where they can run amok and execute as they see fit. There’s accountability all around for everyone who wants to be part and benefit from this great society. The police are the first tool in the reformative process when someone steps out of bounds. In an authoritarian state, they are the first and the last. Remove them from the equation, this great society won’t be so great, and efforts to reform will become all but an afterthought; being gratuitous to a people just trying to survive.
The Protection of Criminals Factor
Say this around a bunch of right wingers and you’ll probably get a lot of scoffs and indignant responses. But it’s true, at least for an ordered society (have I used that phrase a lot today?). We start the legal process with the assumption of innocence and the right to a speedy trial, along with protection from cruel and unusual punishments. We strive to be a just society, not a vengeful one. That’s why we are often left wondering whether the punishment fits the crime. Well, our set of laws doesn’t believe in punishment, it believes in consequences. Consequences are agreed upon and prescribed as a loss of freedom for a predetermined amount of time, and sometimes a financial debt. It seems unfair to the victim, but it’s actually good. We serve consequences without cruelty so we don’t devolve as a people.
Were our justice system out for revenge (its name would have to be changed, first of all) there would be no end to the perverse ways we could—and would—devise to get back at the transgressor. Even our death penalty is formulated with that goal in mind. We have conjured as painless a manner one can die and jettisoned the methods of hanging, electrocution, beheading, and firing squad. A just society must strive towards the most civilized way to undergo loss of freedom and life because we’d default to our base, animalistic, and savage natures otherwise. We reduced executions from a public spectacle to one where only the concerned parties are present because we have become all that much more just.
It hurts to treat the transgressor with grace and dignity. It stings. It really does, but it’s necessary. It’s not at all hyperbole when right wingers suggest that the USA has created the most prosperous and just society to ever exist. It is either true or very close to the truth. In order to be just, we must absorb the sting of humane treatment of the criminal class and quash the urge to take our anger out on them. Were the police removed from the order-sustaining and restoration equation, things would get more than ugly as many of those who constrain themselves because they understand the need for order wouldn’t see the point of constraint anymore.
I know that “justice” as a concept has and always will be hotly debated and tends to be unevenly applied from state-to-state. That’s a good thing. We may debate freely without a potentate, monarch, autocrat or centralized oligarchy deciding without our input. We may also make mistakes and correct ourselves down the road. Once again; a good thing. I also know that eye-for-an-eye is part of the Judeo-Christian faith’s history and is part of some Muslim societies. I would loathe the idea, first of all, of being the one to take the transgressor’s eye, even were I handsomely remunerated. And the Christian faith fulfilled the Mosaic Law of opposite and equal punishment in the age of grace. Grace is not applied without consequences, but it is applied without malice or vengeance in mind. Love and restoration are the goals when consequences are applied with grace. Grace also is a burden. Think of a time when your child disobeyed and their eyes filled with tears because they believed a spanking was imminent. Did you go through with the spanking, or decide to give grace because they knew they had done wrong? Also, when you spanked, did you wait for the tears to dry, embrace them, and restore the relationship? Was this a burden, knowing when to spank/when not to? How much more so should a just society travail in helping one of its own that has gone so far astray.
Think of our Creator, whose burden is similar but beyond immeasurable, applying grace so often when we deserve chastisement. Just because the pet sins of the law-abiding tend not to be harmful to others doesn’t mean they are less. They are just different. The Creator sees them the same. Think of that next time you want a criminal harshly dealt with.
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Image taken from:
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/08/14/local-leaders-weigh-in-on-national-debate-over-defunding-police-departments/