Criminologists, politicians, researchers, the general public, the media – society is currently suffe

Criminologists, politicians, researchers, the general public, the media – society is currently suffering from one of its most disastrous times. Misunderstood, misapplied and mishandled, the Law has become a burden, a boundary, even a killer for many people who suffer under its ruling. However, as the ends to all means, the law is unstoppable and even research cannot convince its structures that policies for the legal industry in our society are deviating from the original role of the law as a public service to society meant to protect us against the evils of greed, population control, violence, and so on. While most criminologists are skeptical of the effectiveness of these policies (i.e., deterrence, incarceration, the drug war, etc.), a handful continues to advocate for these methods of crime control, stating the law as the ultimate authority over the population, even when it is not accomplishing its purposes. This essay will discuss what I think needs to be done to achieve and maintain law and order in Canadian society. I will address the relationship between what we know, theoretically and empirically about crime, justice, and social exclusion.

An interesting thought by Young (1999) should start this paper off in order to make sense of what I am thinking as a writer and student. Our legal system is one that is not only cannibalistic but also bulimic. It eats human beings alive under the preface that the law has been broken and the punishment can only be absorbing them into neutralized statuses where their will is erased and replaced with complete devotion to legal guidelines. The legal system is also bulimic in that it spits out individuals from society into isolation chambers assuring rehabilitation, but instead throwing them back into society (after punishment) individuals who are tired of torturous living, suffering from mental disorders and a lack of access to real therapeutic aid in society.

It is safe to conclude that Young (1999) is not among those criminologists who believe that the law should just be ‘tweaked’ in order to make a difference. Instead, Young (1999) stands against the current system of exclusion to those who disobey the law and believes that the social exclusion of prisoners is only creating further division in society. As a result, crime has increased, people are more divided, our culture is changing, space is running out in jails, jails are becoming private and capital-oriented, and more. The result of tighter rules and the exclusion of people has not been a positive one. Thus, the call of action is for more inclusion of those with criminal history in order to rehabilitate them into society while working within society on how to better their behavior without any real help. The idea is to stop excluding people and dividing the population based on legal precedents and start using humanistic strategies for dealing with people who are unable to follow man-made laws, but must impulsively act with their free will.

There is, then, a sense of disorder that is not pleasing to most criminologists, that is not understandable by most politicians and that it’s spreading on a global scale. Policies are not working, these life-long sentences in isolation chambers and then released to the public idea is not working. Crime rates are on the increase; people are not stopping their criminal behavior even after coming out of the prison system. In fact, they are receiving further training on how to be better criminals. Society, however, has become some stigmatized by the word ‘criminal’ that it is becoming difficult to understand these individuals as human beings. The legal system has portrayed them in such an awful manner, that society believes in them as the worse of our kind, even when their crimes are petty and non-violent. Traffic tickets can have a person sent to prison for a few years, if that is the case, the person is of no less value to any other person who also receives tickets, but did not encounter a jail sentence. Nevertheless, simply the act of going to prison decreases the value of person to a point where the cause is irrelevant and the stigma is very much real. Society does not discriminate when it comes to prisoners, criminals are simply unwanted individuals by other human beings and it is all based on the rupture of a legal entity, a non-human, self-driven stipulation. Humans, then, are definitely being divided by this exclusion to society.

What do I think must be done to achieve and maintain law and order in Canadian society? I think that to achieve and maintain law and order a sense of humanity must be included in the package. I would suggest changing the entire concept to mental health, law and order before we even move forward to trying to isolate people, torture them and even demand a death sentence upon them. Mental health is primordial to any type of population control. If that is the overall goal, then why not attempt to have everyone be mentally healthy, accomplish their mental balances through free therapy and a continued focus on their mental stability. Maybe, if mental health is taken care of, then the law can actually work towards protecting society from those that are incapable of surpassing their aggressive ways even with the help of intensive psychological treatments. That should be the first step towards any type of rehabilitation. Order can only come from the law when the law is in fact working to protect the people, the public will not stand for manipulation long enough for any political regime to last. The public is very much aware of their capabilities as a collective entity against a government, a non-human entity. Therefore, to maintain the law in order, mental health must be priority. The mental health idea, however, can be interpreted differently and applied in opposition to what I am attempting to achieve.

In other words, if mental health were to become a priority for all individuals, an assessment tool for those with criminal tendencies or just behavioral-modification problems, then there is the possibility of those in authority taking advantage and being led by greed to manipulate people in their own manner of thinking. Much like the law, they would be doing a disservice and hence, we cannot trust the system to even help society become mentally stable again. Mental health needs to be a priority, but it is almost impossible at this time, as we can infer by the lack of access to truthful politicians and government representatives.

What is the relationship between what we know theoretically and empirically about crime, justice and social exclusion? Today, it is clear in literature and in numbers, as we have studied all throughout the course, that there is a sense of social exclusivity that is diving society. For one, there is the inmate population that not only is isolated for years on end, and never rehabilitated, but also is stigmatized and discriminated against (i.e., US criminal record and employment link) once they are vomited back into society, as Young (1999) would say. This bulimic system that runs our lives is leaving members of society in a more than frail mental state. People are becoming victims of their own stigmas, belittling human values and replacing them with legal rules. Crime has become a way of distinguishing people, categorizing them and displacing them out of the realms of society.

So, does the law need tweaking or a simple replacement strategy? Much can be said on this issue and almost all of it is just completely impossible. Why? It is impossible in the eyes of this one writer, as an individual, to try to change the world. That being said, the economic system plays a huge role in the way laws are governed nowadays and for this reason, the market can overpower a lot of human attempts at turning it off. The market, as aggressive and self-driven as it is, and as much as we enable it, continues to perpetuate over our human rights and to solidify an idea of division based on class, income - the objectification of our souls is what I call it. But, nevertheless, it is the same thing as being robots to a government, with the exception that in the market there are no authorities, only capital rules.

The criminal system serves the law and the market. Hence, the reason why there are private prisons and jails and why individuals are being ‘kidnapped’ by police officers and the criminal justice system itself. Individuals in jail are serving a monetary good to some and a failure to others, but the money side wins. Whoever has the supply (people) can sell it at its own will, and if there is a market for it, it will continue to sell. Human beings are being sold to the legal system and their own government is selling them. Therefore, while some criminologists believe there should be a tweak to our system, I say there should be a complete replacement strategy put in place in order to change the core values of this system and stop the machine that is the market from continuing to savagely create robots out of us all. Social exclusion is serving us no good, division is creating slaves and slaves are entering society once again with more knowledge and power than ever. The only element that could change this is mental health (therapeutic) prioritization and the re-writing of our legal system without the intrusion of the corporate world at all.

Social Exclusion as Fundamental to the Human Condition?

Giroux (2008) would argue that social exclusion is currently changing the way we think of ourselves as people standing against a global corporate regime. Commercialization is excluding the social worlds and, hence, it cannot be argued that it has been a pre-condition in humans nor a natural order of things. No, civilization has ever made it so that people are commercialized, maybe enslaved by other humans (horrible), but never by the desire to attain an object. People are excluded by income and class; causing some terrible changes in the way we see one another. Giroux (2008) argues that no longer are social contracts valid, the public does not stand a chance against the corporate state. Thus, this essay will argue that if people were to believe social exclusion as a normal order for human beings, then they would have to use a theory that does not include commercialization in order for that to be correct. In this essay, I will analyze some of those possible reasons behind believing this and conclude based on the analysis.

Giroux (2008) called it the new Gilded Age in that the market is what is driving and governing society. Concepts of control are interpreted and distributed by the media, changing our culture and the social life structures already in place. Things such as health care is in the middle of propaganda campaigns, old age is a business, kids are business potential players either as buyers or sellers, either way trained to be consumer marketing guerrillas. Giroux (2008) also argues that this is being driven by the dreams of those in power that are profiting and will not stand for the sidetracking of what we call neoliberalism, or in Canada neo-conservatism. The corporate state is a global mechanism working its way towards many world religions, traditions, cultures, replacing them one a time. The memory of what we call a social contract, where people have the right to speak up and have their demands met by the legal structure, is no longer a reality. We are no longer, in this new age of capitalism, heard as people only as consumers.

However, there are still those that believe that social exclusion in this manner - where the rich stay on their side and the poor on theirs or where those with criminal records are discriminated and those with diplomas exalted – is normal for our kind. They may say that society has always been driven by the exclusion process, bringing up that the underclass has always existed, but this would be a commercial state, therefore, not valid to argue that it has been a historical precedent in the lives of human beings as civilizations. They may also argue that those with mental disorders were excluded and continue to be excluded from society; however, this would have to do with the fact that mental health is not a priority over consumer ones. Therefore, if social exclusion of those with mental health illnesses were used as way to substantiate the argument that this is a normal condition of the human being, they would be wrong because mental health problems did not begin excluding those with the illnesses until the 19th century. Before that, people dealt with them with a more humanistic approach. Furthermore, the mental problems we are undergoing today are far different from those in a time where consumption was not a regime.

Furthermore, these same people would probably argue that people have always gone to jail for their crimes, or at least excluded from society. This, again, does not make a necessary condition for human beings because it only started happening after the emergence of things in exchange for survival tools such as food and shelter (i.e., the gold age, biblical times, etc.). Consumption is in relation here, therefore, if that were taken out of the picture, maybe then exclusion would not have to happen. Furthermore, exclusion, if it has been practiced for so long, and regardless of its link to a market, then why is it still not achieving a goal? It has not decreased crime rates, crime incidences, criminal tendencies, and has certainly not rehabilitated anyone. How does it justify its pro-longed stance in our lives?

It is only justified because the market requires it to control the population and make sure profit is sustained and increased. That is the only reason why the legal system, in my opinion, jails people. In fact, if we consider all the crimes from murders to robbery to rape, an element of need, be it hunger, drug use, etc., is always part of the story. The demand is in the need. By investigating the need, we find consumption related issues of lack. Therefore, if that need were substantiated, the legal structure in society would have no work to do. White-collar crimes are the majority of court cases, especially small claims court. Murders are often the effect of a robbery, a gang-related episode, a robbery gone wrong and so on. People don’t just kill people, but if there is a need that is bigger than them, they may. Most often, this need is in the form of money.

Therefore, in sum, I would say that if the element of consumption were eliminated completely and people began to value each other again based on their traits, personalities and similarities, then the act of social exclusion would serve its purposes because it would be used for exclusively negative reasons (i.e., people that cannot be in peace with others). There are methods to use our skills to better each other and the fact that the market is intruding into our human relationships is making everything go from worse to worse as we see the next generation growing up in this world of objectification and discrimination against those with lesser means, less acquisitions, and less assets.