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Thread: Violence in Crime debate

  1. #1
    Platinum Member Marq's Avatar
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    Violence in Crime debate

    I found this article extremely interesting as it focuses on one of the fundamental underlying problems that we have in our society today. Violence in crime.

    Albeker analyses the violence in the crime in SA, and tries to get to a root cause for it. I believe this to be a good approach to solving anything - find the underlying reasons, sort it out and the problem will go away.

    There is, in relation to the inequality-causes-crime argument, an even more serious problem. This is that a large body of economic thinking suggests that the widening of inequality is one of the inevitable by-products of rapid economic growth in developing countries. There is no universal consensus on this, but if inequality really does tend to widen as economies expand, then we had better hope that it is not the principal reason we’re so violent because it isn’t going to get better soon.
    extract from Antony Altbeker’s new book, A Country at War with Itself taken from M&G atrticle 25 sept.

    He compares our situation with others around the world seems to come to a thought that says we are not different as we believe we are -
    One reason the apartheid-did-it explanation doesn’t completely satisfy is that South Africans are not unique in the world in having gone through long periods of disenfranchisement, oppression and collective violence.
    pretty much every nation on the planet outside North America spent some portion of the 20th century on its knees, the victim of catastrophic violence directed either by local tyrants or by foreign overlords.

    And yet only a handful has levels of violence that even approach ours.
    Thought provoking stuff - what causes the violence?
    • Our history
    • Poverty
    • Hopelessness/humiliation
    • Inequality
    • Resentment

    These are crime related, sure - but violence in the crime?

  2. #2
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    There certainly is a lot of merit in the inequality argument when it comes to crime in general. I correlate that particular aspect with expectation.

    One of the things that struck me a little while ago is that on a poverty index, we're really not that bad off in comparison to some recently far more lauded nations. Our average per capita income is far ahead of China or India for example. (And I'd have to hunt where I noticed that - but the difference was surprisingly significant). And neither of these countries are noted for a serious crime problem - certainly not to the extent that we are.

    Without expectation of more, the desire for more is not nearly as acute. People are basically happy with what they've got because there isn't an inherent expectation that they should (or are able to) have much more. Here, we have career criminals who still hold down fairly well-paying jobs too. It's not need in some instances - it's greed. Expectations.

    And having great wealth right in the face of the impoverished simply has to fuel desire.

    When it comes to the violence in our crime - well here I think we have to talk about role models.

    Who are the role models of our society? Particularly the disgruntled who have been fed a diet of insatiable expectation for some time now. Mahatma Ghandi or Jacob Zuma?

    Get me my machine gun! Without so much as a please or apology.

  3. #3
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Thursday said that South Africa being ranked the third least safe place out of 48 countries on the African continent indicates that the country is critically unsafe.

    The party's spokesperson on safety and security, Dianne Kohler-Barnard, said that the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which ranked South Africa as third most dangerous after "war zone" countries, Sudan and Burundi, indicated that what citizens of this country had been crying out for years was the truth.

    "South Africa's safety and security performance is utterly abysmal. The fact that we are just 30 points above the most dangerous country in Africa, and right now, probably the world, must act as a loud wake-up call to the minister of safety and security."

    She added that countries including Congo, Angola, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Liberia were far safer in terms of safety and security.
    full story from M&G here
    Are we really that bad? That is scary!

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