Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is also true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on. Crimes and bad lives are the measure of a State’s failure; all crimes in the end are those of the community.
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has happened for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.
It is said, “If poverty is the mother of crime, lack of good sense is its father.” The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it. Crime generally punishes itself. In times of trouble, leniency becomes crime. The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject and all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment spring from you. I hate this “crime doesn’t pay” stuff. Crime in India is perhaps one of the biggest businesses nowadays. All criminals turn preachers under the gallows. I surfed on and saw little on crime prevention; so I thought I might kick things off with a crime prevention “game”. I have a quote directly related to the subject: “The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give fulltime attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. For centuries, the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. WhyIJ Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendour, number and excess. For our society to be better, we must revive our conscience and do Godly things. Not failure, but low aim, is crime.” Is it a crime to fight for its preventionIJ Well, if crime fighters fight crime and firefighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fightIJ They never mention that part to us; do theyIJ He, who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women have to live. Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts. last but not the least, I would like to precise all the above by the statement: Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. There then, we justify: “Prevention is better than Cure.” It’s my great pleasure being a part of the souvenir of CECP (Centre for Education of Crime Prevention), which imparts knowledge to the common people and help them find the right path to prevent crime in self and the society as well. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true, no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out. So let’s start with it….
(The writer is president of the Utkal Bharat’s women’s wing)