Why men kill

A writer has to be intelligent, aggressive, and conscientious. These are all traits strongly influenced by genes. My middle-class background, coupled with childhood experiences I cannot even remember, shaped my choice of profession.

But what if I had been born in an environment where I was poor, physically abused, and deprived of educational opportunities? Then the same traits that made me a writer could instead have inclined me toward a life of crime. My aggression would have been channelled into physical action instead of mental combat; my sense of fair play would have justified robbing and killing those more privileged than myself; and my intelligence would have made me a more callous criminal.

In other words, it is often contingency which creates a criminal. This is what we need to understand about those youthful killers from Laventille, Morvant, Cocorite and elsewhere. Our tendency is to view them as savage beasts — not really human like ourselves. Or we see them as embodiments of evil — not good people like ourselves. Or we judge them as individuals who have chosen crime over hard work as a means to get money — not industrious people like ourselves

But these views have no explanatory value. If human beings are committing these atrocities — killing other men over three dollars, burning kidnap victims with cigarettes, planting bombs on public streets — then it is in human nature to commit such acts. If these acts are impelled by ‘evil’ — in the sense of a force that exists apart from human nature — then it appears that this evil mostly possesses one socio-economic group. If these persons are just lazy, then they prefer to live continually under the threat of death than to get a job.

These explanations — inhumanity, evil, and laziness — also have little moral value. A moral sense requires that we have empathy for others. By viewing bandits and killers as intrinsically different from ourselves, we are absolving ourselves of social responsibility for the conditions which produce them. It is true that some of us bear more responsibility than others — but I am sure that Patrick Manning, Keith Rowley, Ken Valley, Overand Padmore, Joan Yuille-Williams, Colm Imbert, and Camille Robinson-Regis don’t see it that way.

But to really understand why these young men become killers, we have to understand what drives human beings. Put too simply, humans have two basic instincts: survival and reproduction. The environment we grow up in, coupled with our innate preferences, decides what strategies we will employ in order to fulfil these drives. If we are lucky, we can attain the skills to meet our basic needs of food, shelter and clothing, and the status needed to acquire a mate.

If we are not lucky, however, we are thrown back on our more primal resources. In a tribal society, the same young men we call killers might instead be our most respected warriors. But, contrary to the ethos spouted by Earl Lovelace and Leroy Clarke, a modern society does not require warriorhood. In his book The Moral Animal, journalist Robert Wright says, "Many people in the inner city face limited opportunities for ‘legitimate’ cooperation with the wider world. And the males, risk-prone by gender to begin with, don’t have the lifelong expectancies that so many people take for granted."

So, if a young man lacks any of the skills needed to make his way in the lawful society, then he will try to make his way in unlawful society. In that situation, the only resources he can use to attain status are his physical strength and his aggression. This is why one bandit waited outside the Frederick Street gaol to kill a man. To us, it may have seemed stupid to carry out such an act in front of witnesses and near security personnel. And it was stupid, since the perpetrator was held. But, had he succeeded, he would have greatly increased his standing amongst his peers. "Human beings are designed to assess their social environment, and, having figured out what impresses people, do it; or, having found what people disfavour, avoid it," says Wright. "They’re pretty open-minded about what ‘it’ is. The main thing is that they be able to succeed at it; people everywhere want to feel pride, not shame; to inspire respect, not disdain."

Bear in mind that, just as we view this killer as separate from our world, so too does he view us as alien to his. More than that, he will attach blame to the society that has not provided for his needs and wants. So the condemnation we heap on criminals does not bother the bandit — his concern is the praise his friends heap on him for being, to use the Jamaican term, a ‘badman’. And, in that sub-culture, badmen have a better chance of getting women than honest labourers. Status means a better roll of the reproductive dice. That is why Abu Bakr’s four wives are part of his authority over the criminal class.

But, if survival is also one of these basic drives, why do these young men take risks which can be fatal? Psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson have suggested that criminals’ tendency to discount the future may be "an adaptive response to predictive information about one’s prospects for longevity." That is, young underprivileged men act as if they don’t have much time to spread their genes because, statistically speaking, they don’t. Consider that fully two-thirds of the 114 males who attempted to overthrow the government in 1990 failed to live to 40 years. So it is actually rational for low-status men to act as if there is no tomorrow — because, for them, there probably isn’t.

Providing that tomorrow — through education, health care, economic incentives, social networks, nicer neighbourhoods — is therefore the first step in reducing crime.

E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com

Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh