Coercion is therefore necessary as means of defence, but it is also necessary to consider conflicts of the law itself when coercion is used to resolve individual conceptions of unethical action when in fact there may be a broader objective goal of the law in general. Take for instance the case of Euthyphro in Plato’s dialogue of the same name. Euthyphro prosecutes his own father for manslaughter for leaving one of his workers bound in a ditch; the worker died, but the worker himself had previously killed a slave from Naxos from the family estate (hence his being restrained by the father). On the one hand, Euthyphro’s father is guilty of manslaughter, which is a punishable crime; on the other hand, the man who died was a murderer, and the father was in the process of bringing him to justice before he died, and a case of neglect caused the worker to die. Whether or not Euthyphro’s father is actually guilty of neglect is a matter of debate, but let us assume for a moment that he did neglect the guilty worker, who died as a result of undue attention by the father in bringing the worker to the relevant authorities. Why would the father care so little about the murderer that he would leave him in the knowledge that he might not survive until he returned?
If we consider criminality to be irrational, then we must consider obedience to natural law to be rational. When natural law, the natural human spirit of support, is violated and harm is performed on another, it forms part of the instinct of self-preservation for other human beings to judge the harmer on a personal level. It becomes clear to others that the perpetrator of harm has no right to do harm and is a danger to others; he has no constructive role to play in the community. Therefore, even if authorities exist for the proper trial and prosecution of criminals, the value of that human being who is accused is automatically lowered. Euthyphro’s father did the right thing in bringing the murderer to the authorities, and he clearly did not intend to kill the murderer himself — such is the value of human life. However, due to the natural lowering of the value of the criminal in the mind of the father, even subconsciously it is likely that the fathered cared less about the consequences of leaving the murderer in the ditch whilst he left to seek help.
On one hand, this does not excuse the fact that the father’s actions led to the death of the man; on the other hand, the man who died was a threat to the community, and the father’s actions were only undertaken in an attempt to find those whose duty it is to protect the community. Therefore, on a net level, all actions undertaken were considered to be for the benefit and protection of the community, and Euthyphro, in bringing is father to court so confidently, is harming the forces which only sought protect that community, by coercing his own father into his own ethical code without due attention to the full circumstances.
Similar conflicts between individual moral codes and the law have been seen in modern times as well. In July 2016 several employees of the Byron chain of hamburger companies were arrested by British officials for working in the country illegally. This sparked a row about Byron Hamburgers not properly protecting the rights of its immigrant employees, and protestors attacked several branches of the restaurant. In the minds of the protestors, it was right for them to ‘punish’ Byron Hamburgers for reporting the immigrants, who in the protestors’ minds were only working for a better life and lacked proper documentation due to the tardiness and difficulty in obtaining proper documentation from the Home Office. However, the law exists for a reason, and it exists for the purposes of protecting the wider national community. If immigrant workers do not have proper legal permission to live and work in a nation, there is no way of knowing their background, intentions or loyalties. They could be a risk, or they could simply be there for selfish ends with no interests in the values and advancement of their new nation whatsoever. This is the spirit of enforcing this kind of law and forcing individuals such as these immigrants to go through proper process. The intervention of social justice protestors is not helpful, since in exacting their own form of justice they only damage the rationale of law, and ultimately therefore their own communities.
Even if law is not perfect, and it might at times coerce individuals into morally detestable actions, the fact remains that laws may be changed or repealed. Whilst certain constitutional (and by extension spiritual) values must stand, legal process requires fine-tuning. This is why we inherit the laws and practices of our ancestors, since a great deal of this fine-tuning has been done over centuries already. The process will continue so long as human self-improvement continues, but this in itself relies upon the importance of community and natural law being respected as much as individual subjective interpretation of what appears immediately ‘moral’ or ‘just’.
Chapter III
Policing
When it comes to the policing of crime, we must consider what the value of a specific police force is, how much policing can be done by the populace at large, and what powers a police force ought to have to keep peace. In a modern world with countries of such vast populations an organised law enforcement institution is required in order to protect citizens who otherwise might be neglected by inaccessibility or the bias of a local community; however, as we shall discover, the role of the community in local policing could be much more effective than has been supposed in modern times.
In almost every country with an organised police force, such forces are constituted as public bodies, paid for by public taxation, and maintained by the funds of the state. In this regard, the police force is often presented as existing by the consent of the people in service of the people. In one sense this is correct, since the purpose of policing is law enforcement, and protection of citizens from those individuals who would seek to harm not only other individuals, but the community as a whole. Of course, the police force is often subjected to allegations of corruption and discrimination, and history has many examples of cover-ups, brutality and corruption to prove that such allegations may have basis in truth. This is undeniable, but as we discussed in Book I, just because an institution has the capacity to be corrupted does not mean that it has no inherent value. In achieving a well-ordered society and a well-ordered police force, it is necessary to be discerning in the selection of police officers. It goes without saying that those of good moral character ought to be selected, but it would serve society well to have men also well-schooled in the logic of law. It is one thing to recruit strong and burly men who can arrest and exert legitimised force on individuals, but it is quite another for them to understand the reasons why they must exert that force at the same time. Policemen and women should by nature understand the purpose of law, not to mention which laws they have a duty to enforce and what level of force is appropriate in response to each crime. Educating the police in this way also allows the constabulary to have the critical knowledge of discerning right from wrong. Should, therefore, the state order their police officers to engage in deliberately oppressive behaviour, not for the protection of their citizens but for their harm or oppression, officers of good moral character may object or refuse to carry out their orders, and thus serve their duty as protectors of the citizens of the nation. It goes without saying that the duty of the police is to enforce the law alone, and not to enforce social custom. If it is not written in law, or no harm is being done, then it is outside the power of the police to intervene.
The police, on account of the fact that they are the physical representatives of the legal arm of the state in public life, will often attract the hatred of certain groups, be they criminal or merely frustrated citizens, and thus are often subject to violent assaults during the progress of riots and other mass civil disorders. It is hard to anticipate every situation in which the police may require deployment to control crowds and disperse perpetrators of civil disobedience, but it is quite safe to assume that so long as a crowd of civilians is threatening the police then those officers are in physical danger themselves. For the same reason as we concluded that citizens should have the right to bear arms, so of course should police officers; however, when police officers are defending against riot
ers, the use of force must be carefully calculated. Of course, the preservation of life must be the primary concern of every officer, and so if the disorder is armed with the potential to cause physical harm or death on a large scale, the deployment of retaliatory squads ought to be considered. Most often, however, this is not the case and even if certain rioters are armed and dangerous, police equipped with bulletproof armour, various defences against the elements of violent protest, and tools to bring about peaceful dispersion are justified in conducting their duty without the need to resort to potentially deadly force. Ultimately the avoidance of killing should be paramount for police forces, but in the heat of armed struggle, when an individual is intending to kill another, we must place ourselves in the shoes of the officer assaulted. In that split-second moment when the threat of death looms over an officer, he must choose: ‘Do I die, or retaliate?’ Whilst it would be ideal for a non-fatal shot to be fired in order to facilitate arrest, the stress of armed struggle often renders this difficult. It should be noted however that there is a difference between armed struggle and shooting men suspected of being armed. If a suspect has surrendered, there is no justification. The best means of ensuring that the police are accountable is by attaching small point-of-view cameras to officers’ equipment. This system has been adopted by some British officers recently and would do wonders to aid courts in discerning murder from necessary use of force in cases of suspected police brutality.
***
When we examine the origins of policing we find that it arose often out of private attempts by local landowners in earlier periods to protect the communities which they held within their fiefdoms from disturbance. The system of constables and sheriffs in the English Middle Ages were governed by communitarian ‘tithings’, administrative divisions funded by private citizens with an interest in their moral obligation towards the commonwealth of their fellow kinsmen. Juries who investigated criminality in a local area, led by a constable, were often merely local individuals who believed that the safety of the local community was threatened by criminality, and the punishment of criminal individuals was settled on a private level. Eventually the practice came about of delivering criminals to a sheriff who would exact justice, rather than exacting it privately. Villagers and townsmen would often be suspicious of outsiders and travellers, with local privately employed watchmen being informed by the citizens of a community about any strange goings-on in that community. Whilst the suspicion of outsiders is a normal part of human nature designed to aid in the protection of human community, in a world where property markets are much more fluid and people of varying ethnicities move from place to place, it has become very much harder to ensure the safety of communities by watching suspicious outsiders. However, the community still has a role to play in policing. Some initiatives in England known as ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ initiatives where local inhabitants work together to report suspicious activity still exist, though these have largely proved ineffective and serve as more of a deterrent than a practical law-enforcement option. Nevertheless, there is much that could be learnt from the history of our ancestors.
Today, an overarching set of laws and regulations governing the definition of criminality is certainly necessary. Private individuals cannot be allowed to come to their own conclusions about appropriate punishment, since this would quickly degenerate into blood vendetta, resentfulness within communities and a general anarchic system of legality. However, if communities can be restored to treating their integrity as fundamental to the function of a free society, and individuals take an interest in the safety of their neighbours, private initiative to root out crime could be effective. The police should exist, but ultimately only as a place to deliver criminals caught in a community. Given the technological age in which we live, it is no longer hard for individuals to gather private evidence, though a police force may wish to assist with this. The police therefore can undertake proceedings for public prosecution and be deployed on the streets only when large-scale disorders such as riots, which cannot be handled by individuals within communities, need to be dealt with.
The community can be used, if individuals have a sense of responsibility to their own community, as a tool to maintain order and prosperity within human social groups. The state, and the law enforcement arm of the state, should function as a last resort, and as a means for the detention and prosecution of criminals who are a threat to society. There needn’t be such large-scale state intervention in societies where virtue is placed at the heart of human community. So long, however, as individualism rules over communitarianism, then it will always be seen as the role of the state to impose moral control over the people of the nation. The answer to moral policing is not to abolish the police, or to diversify it, or to reduce its powers, but to change its role. Individual communities must see their own value and place in society, and in so doing, policing can be made much more effective. So long as legal proceedings are in place to ensure that communities do deliver criminals to proper authorities and vigilante justice is not prevalent, the onus of protection will ultimately lie in the free will, and desire for safety and commonwealth, of the people themselves.
Chapter IV
The Categorisation of Crime
When considering how society should punish criminals who have been apprehended and convicted, crime itself must be categorised. One thing that cannot be avoided when ranking crime based on the harm principle is the question of what harm entails in itself. We have considered physical harm, harm and threat of harm to the national community to carry a necessity to be restricted, but ultimately the question of harm comes down the question of cultural identity. Different nations across the world will have different conceptions of what constitutes harm. The Western world, for instance, has no problem with women showing their faces, but in several Eastern Islamic countries, women are either forced by law or encouraged by social custom to wear a full-face veil, since wearing anything other than this ‘modest’ clothing is seen as a potential harm to the community by encouraging male members of the community to lust after the wives of others. It goes without saying, in keeping with the rest of this book, our consideration of crime will be within the context of Western cultural identities and the traditions of Indo-European history.
When categorising the severity of crime, it is necessary to discern the degree of harm caused by a criminal act, whether it is harmful to a set of individuals, to a whole community, whether that community is local or national, or whether the crime is by inherently a violation of nature itself, in which case the punishment ought to be most severe. We must remember that punishment and rehabilitation of criminals is possible only because of the fundamental nature of the majority of human beings. When we consider the etymological origins of the word crime itself, we discover that the Greek word krima and Latin crimen, to which the English crime is cognate, have varying meanings. The Greek crime often referred to an intellectual error, a passing judgement which violated the integrity of the community, whilst the Latin crime originally translated as ‘cry for help’ — a moral sin that causes distress in others.42 In the maintenance of a community, crime is a sin which harms that community.
Let us begin our considerations with victimless crime. It is often hard to judge punishment for victimless crimes, and traditionally victimless crimes have only been criminalised due to morally absolute definitions of criminality often derived from religious teaching. For instance, the criminalisation of homosexual acts common across Europe until the 20th century, and still practiced in many Islamic countries, was derived from traditional communities’ conception of damage to the self and sexual reproduction, rather than for producing physical victims of sexual crime. Immoral acts which society possibly could do without but in a broader context do not cause harm should not be encouraged or normalised, but perhaps ought not to be illegal. In John Stuart Mill’s seminal work On Liberty, he considers prostitution to fall within this vein. A free society should not outlaw prostitution, but there is a case to be
made for its restriction. When we confront other cases of sexual immorality such as adultery, the distinction between criminal and socially unacceptable action becomes even harder to distinguish, given that adultery does have its victim — the cheated partner — but the West does not punish adultery with death as the East does. The main argument against punishing adulterers with jail is that it becomes hard to exact punishment on a guilty party — the cheated partner is hurt and the contract of marriage betrayed, but who is to be punished? Both adulterers? If only one is married, then only the married adulterer? Who seduced whom, who is guilty of what act? As such, concerning matters like adultery, the practice can be discouraged to preserve the sanctity and importance of the married unit by treating it as an immediate annulment of marriage, since the adulterers have proven themselves unable of maintaining their marital oaths. If a couple affected by adultery wishes to give their relationship ‘a second chance’, marriage vows should have to be performed again to reinforce the value of the bond of marriage between individuals. Crimes like adultery have victims, and should be treated as crime, but are not serious enough to warrant harsher punishment than the removal of certain privileges afforded by marriage. Harmful drug possession may fall within this category as well, since drug use can urge individuals towards crime, and it causes long-term damage to the mind of the individual, though it is hard to predict the effects of illegal narcotics. Often the best response to addicts is that of a mental rehabilitation centre rather than a criminal one, though society has an interest in allowing its citizens the full freedom of mind, and therefore ought to restrict drugs which have been proven to cause large amounts of mental damage even with moderate to small usage (unlike, say, alcohol).
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