Anarchist FAQ on Crime, the Police and Prisons
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Anarchists have long held views about crime, the police and prisons that just aren't allowed in the discourse of capitalist society.
[edit] A - What is crime?
[edit] A.1 Why, according to anarchist theory, does crime happen?
[edit] Why capitalism, the state, and the criminal underworld are seen as basically different things and have the community on their side
Organized crime may be defined as systematically unlawful activity for profit on at least a city-wide scale. The state and the corporate criminal organization are far beyond the small-scale predations of the underworld.
A criminal organization depends in part on support from the society in which it exists. Criminal organizations half successfully use “ideological hegemony”, also known as “common sense”, to maintain support from the community, which is exactly the same type of support that the criminal underworld receives from the ordinary people under its jurisdiction. This sort of blindness treats any dissent as not serious, but instead just something silly to say or just something to get people excited. This cruel blindness also treats the organized crime as nonexistent or justifiable. The public claim of nonexistence is essential to crime, as “crime”, recognized as such, can sometimes be forcefully opposed, but an unrecognized crime is often a solved but unopposed crime. A common justification is the bone crushing violence that factions use on each other, protecting its members and “its” population. Another common justification is that the protection money goes to charity.
Organized crime is often seen as protecting the community. In organized crime, each organization labels itself as a business, and its rivals as criminals. It is true that private soldiers that work in the same private army formally and publicly have jobs in the same corresponding business. And it is true that its rivals, and itself, are made of basically the same kind of criminals. When organized crime becomes a serious enough problem that it “exists”, it becomes entrenched in the community and infiltrates its institutions. That position means that there are consequences to racketeers if the chaos becomes too changeable or flexible. In other words, powerful and ambitious racketeers wish to stay at least where they are. In order to do that, they must not “shake up the system”, “rock the boat”, or otherwise upset the status quo. They must also make rivals out of anyone else that upsets the status quo. It is this attempt by each organization to get the community to identify with its wars, and the common enemy that is needed to do so, that organized crime is seen as a positive and even self correcting force. It is also the status quo, and the racketeers that protect it, that is seen as protecting the community from the extreme violence that racketeers use when establishing a new status quo.
Racketeers apply their criminal diversity to dealing with their rivals, including maintaining the status quo. They can threaten to harm or embarrass the persons responsible, get them caught for something they did or did not do, threaten in those ways the family, customers or associates of the responsible persons, or make the persons responsible pay money or do other favors in order to avoid these punishments.
Only a few of these things can be done in public. Government courts can impose sometimes vast debts. They can also arbitrarily kidnap someone and sell the person into slavery or use them for medical experiments. These activities, like many activities in the criminal underworld, must have a “cover”, or false public explanation. These lies are needed only for the slavery and experiments. These fairy tales include: that a person is being isolated from society for the community’s benefit (which does not last), they are being given a time-out so that they don’t have to go through the dangers and temptations of the outside world so that they can be made into good boys again (the prisoners are slaves, raped frequently, are forced into a total institution which includes a brutal prisoner hierarchy, can be easily be beaten and/or killed by other prisoners, have better access to drugs than on the “outside”, and have nothing to do but lift weights, they are taught race-based ideology, and often are recruited into race-based gangs), that they are being made an example to scare the entire community (which is true), and that their health is improved (they are poisoned and sometimes electrocuted to a tired, sheepish, coma-like condition, and the entire treatment is based on shall we say, “alternative medicine”, not science).
“Domestic” governmental wars, like the “War on Drugs”, are enforced more against drug customers and addiction patients in poor minority communities under the jurisdiction of the criminal underworld. While it is the customers that are punished, the only real effort is directly against the supply of drugs, which is useless. “Foreign” wars usually ruin the area on which they are fought and destroy entire cities, killing most of the community there. Clearly the criminal underworld is much more caring and humane towards its enemies.
There is a particular way that this “charity” arises from government programs, or the false charities and banks of mainstream organized crime. Governments and underworld factions will sometimes not attack just the members of the rival organization. They will attack customers that go to the business that the rival organization runs. Where the criminal underworld runs businesses in construction, tourism, nightclubs, casinos, hotels, bodyguard services, massage parlors, labor unions, trash, and so on, government runs operations in this “charitable” way of war in schools, infrastructure, mail delivery, security, arbitration, and so on. If someone uses the services of the organization making this type of attack, the business will of course charge for the service. If someone uses the services of a rival, they will still have to pay the money. Since there is no difference in this charge, then the service is somehow seen as “free”, the resources used to provide the service is somehow seen as appearing out of thin air, thanks to the government, and the proof that the service is not free – the protection money – is seen as going to a good cause anyway.
The blindness that gets the community on the criminal’s side is made into “common sense” by default. The parents, schools, the media, and the contractual no-expression zone of the workplace substitute rigorously filtered information made of sometimes true details in the place of any facts that would contradict this “common sense”. These institutions are loyal to those that represent the local criminal order. The media are businesses owned and funded by the corresponding racketeers. They choose what to cover, what sources to cover it with, what they repeat from those sources, how they frame issues, and everything else very carefully.
Organized crime and its legitimate businesses depend on each other, so it is useful for it to keep society's powerful people — especially people in the judiciary, police forces, and legislature — together. They do this through payroll, journalism, and the rule of law, also known as bribery, blackmail, and intimidation. Thus a racket is integrated into lawful society, shielded by law officers and politicians — and legal counsel. It is an entire society where the determination of each member to give themselves and their families material gain by any means possible is what shapes everything, even ideas of “good” and “bad” and one’s vision for the world.
[edit] A.3 How does the state create crime through laws?
[edit] A.4 How does capitalism cause crime?
[edit] B - Why do people hold inaccurate and hysterical views about crime?
[edit] B.1 Capitalism and crime hysteria
[edit] B.2 Popular culture and crime hysteria
[edit] B.3 Crime hysteria as a tool of social control
[edit] B.4 Cross-cultural aspects of crime rates
[edit] C - Why do anarchists oppose prisons?
[edit] D - Why do anarchists oppose the police?
[edit] E - Why do anarchists favor the abolition of the criminal justice system?
[edit] F - Why do anarchists favor prison abolition
[edit] G - What are some alternative methods of conflict resolution?
[edit] H - Why would crime not be a problem in an anarchist society?
[edit] Z - Bibliography
[edit] Anarchist Books and Articles
- An Anarchist FAQ: What about crime?
- "Breaking the Law: Anti-authoritarian Visions of Crime and Justice by Randall Amster" Review by Randall Amster, New Formulation. Volume Two, Number Two, Winter-Spring 2004.
- Baker, Catherine (1994-5). "Against Prisons". Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed '41 (vol.14, no.3) 41-44.
- Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America (2004) Kristian Williams. Soft Skull Press.
[edit] Related Books and Materials
- Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our Everyday Lives (2001) Dennis Sullivan & Larry Tifft. Monsey, NY: Willow Tree Press.
- The Struggle to be Human: Crime, Criminology, and Anarchism (1980) Larry Tifft & Dennis Sullivan, Orkney, UK: Cienfuegos Press.
[edit] Upcoming Events
- January 13, 2007 - Symposium On Anarchist/Non Authoritarian Solutions to Crime and anti-social behaviour. London Anarchist Forum. Sat 13th Jan 2007 from 3pm at Freedom Press Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High St, E1. Anyone interested is invited to present a "paper" (5 mins) for discussion. If you are unable to attend you could still send a paper to be read and discussed. Contact Ed
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