OPINION:TWO MATTERS of pressing concern to Irish society today are violent crime (especially the gangland type) and financial malpractice. Shootings, drug deals and muggings on suburban streets and ruinous decisions made in executive suites may seem unconnected. But they are not. They have more in common than we might think.
The callous young robber whose success depends on the persuasiveness of the threat that he poses, and the smooth-talking professional whose success depends on the extent to which he can instil confidence in potential backers, seem to inhabit entirely different worlds. But they share key characteristics. These include a readiness to “innovate”, a desire to maximise rewards with little attention paid to associated costs, an entrepreneurial spirit, frustration with rules, and an urge to make progress on their terms.
A basic premise of well-known criminology text Crime and the American Dream is that American culture places a heavy emphasis on monetary success, and a weak emphasis on most appropriate routes to it. This contributes to crime by encouraging people to pursue a goal that is highly approved of and to deal with any perceived obstacles by ignoring, bending or breaking the rules.
When the economy is allowed to dominate, the capacity of other elements of society – such as families, schools and the political system – to curb pressure towards inappropriate or criminal conduct is severely reduced. In this way, so the argument goes, a society becomes organised for crime.
Such a scenario is played out in different ways across different layers of society. For a person at the margins of respectability with an incomplete education and few community supports, the outlook is bleak. Here, the chances of achieving monetary success legitimately are slim. This renders crime attractive as a way to secure immediate rewards.
For an affluent person engaged in, let us say, trading on financial markets or speculating on property, where a good return has been made and even greater rewards seem close, identifying the most direct route to them becomes key. An “anything goes” attitude can emerge.
Although this perspective was developed to account for the situation in the United States, a country with a far worse crime problem than Ireland, the parallels are clear. Damage to Irish society wrought by crime and the financial crisis cannot be understood by looking at individual choices in isolation from the wider context in which they are made. An unquestioned orientation towards acquisition stimulates harmful activities, not all of which fall under the ambit of the criminal law.
Societies with wide disparities in wealth tend to be dysfunctional in predictable ways. They are less socially cohesive, more fearful, more violent and more punitive. People obsess about status, mistrust each other and express dissatisfaction with their position, however comfortable.
Must this state of affairs accompany progress? Must we accept it as a price to be paid for national advancement? Not necessarily; a change of direction is always possible. Part of the answer lies in a justice system that pays as much attention to the misery caused by white collar arrogance as it does to shoplifters and television licence evaders.
There are two issues worth noting. The first is that public policy choices and culturally valued goals can impact on our collective security in ways that might not seem likely, or even plausible, at first. An exaggerated emphasis on financial success, to the virtual exclusion of other markers of achievement, becomes problematic in a context where there are few restraints on the means chosen to increase wealth.
The second is that the harms caused by the unfettered pursuit of profit, even carried out within the law, can be more destructive than all the efforts of a nation’s burglars, robbers and thieves.
Ian O’Donnell is professor of Criminology at University College Dublin