The Better Angels of Our Nature

EVEN THOUGH Stephen Pinker lays out a compelling case for how violence has decreased worldwide over time, it is still a difficult concept for most people to comprehend.

In The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Pinker presents a parade of statistics backing up his claim, and the numbers certainly contribute to his convincing argument.

There are many important points to consider in Pinker’s observations about crime and violence.

I’ll outline them below, but you really should read this book because it provides a more realistic look at crime and violence than the one we garner from the media.

The very nature of Internet and television news that endlessly loops stories about crime and terrorism for days at a time means that we perceive crime to be more prevalent than it really is.

The media heightens awareness and propels one incident into a whole new realm of existence where criminals and terrorists seem to lurk around every corner. That’s not making light of crime, it’s just understanding how to put crime and violence in perspective.

Crime and violence are certainly not figments of our imaginations.

They exist. So what does Pinkerton say we need to do to put a dent in crime? Here’s a list of considerations: 1. All citizens must feel part of a place: Without this feeling of having a vested interest in a place, marginal people — the disenfranchised and the disgruntled — will not buy into the legal system that is supposed to protect them.

They will circumvent the system; find their own means of survival; set up their own vigilante system of protection run by gangs; take chances that the rest of society that feels protected will not take and lash out against the system that they perceive to be unjust.

2. All citizens must perceive a sense of legitimacy in government and law enforcement: “Only a sample of criminal behaviour can ever be detected and punished, and the sampling should be fair enough that citizens perceive the entire regime to be legitimate,” Pinker writes.

The perception of a legitimate government includes the feeling that elected government officials have every stakeholder’s well-being at heart. People who perceive themselves to be on the periphery of society lose faith in government and that loss of faith makes them question the legitimacy of the government that is supposed to represent them.

3. All citizens must feel a sense of fairness and consistency: No democracy has the resources to swoop down on an area and wipe out crime completely. But it can put a dent in crime that makes people feel it’s not worth attempting a crime. This can only be achieved through fairness and consistency. Government — especially the police — can never be perceived as favouring any socio- economic class or race.

4. All citizens must feel they can’t get away with crime: The system must be set up in such a way that everyone — all stakeholders — feel that there is a constant chance of being caught if they break the law. The problem is most places have set up a system in which crime detection and punishment appear to be so “capricious”, as Pinker puts it, that too many people know the loopholes or feel they can create loopholes.

The Better Angels of Our Nature is indeed a long book — 844 pages — but most of the book can be boiled down to a few key themes: trust, consistency, legitimacy and fairness. The message is clear: Crime and violence cannot be eliminated, but it can be controlled.

N e x t week: What Pinker says about terrorism