Abstract
At the level of everyday thinking and the so-called ‘obvious world’ (as understood by Alfred Shütz, 1995), there are many myths that sustain the impression that some phenomena, which are human creations, have always existed in an omnipresent manner in the same form, e.g. ‘objective, universal truth’, ‘the same types of transcultural crimes’ or ‘objective court judgements’. They are depicted as if they existed and were defined independently of the decisions, values and sympathies of specific social groups and individuals, floating in some superhuman and transhistorical space, unsullied by any social, cultural or political influences. This is not true.
This book, which is a collection of articles edited by Professors Marian Filar and Jarosław Utrat-Milecki, shows that the creation and execution of criminal law, as well as its use as a basis for assessments and judgements, are conditioned by many cultural, social, moral and psychological factors.
Łukasz Ostrowski, for example, describes how the tabloids create images of suspects, accelerating a spiral of fear in society and presenting criminals in an hysterical and emotional way. Analysing crime news on the pages of Fakt (The Fact) (the Polish equivalent of the German Bild Zeitung), the author concludes that journalists use blunt and emotional words in their articles. There is no place for ‘suspects’ or ‘defendants’. There are only ‘thugs’, ‘torturers’, ‘degenerates’, ‘ruffians’, ‘beasts’ or ‘vile perverts’. Ostrowski suggests that the resulting images of suspects deprive them of humanity: they are not humans but beasts, say the editors of the tabloid press. When informing readers about the arrests of suspects, tabloid newspapers always prejudge their guilt and actually pass judgements by using phrases along the lines of ‘He is liable to X years in prison’ (X always means the maximum amount of the penalty, even if a trial ends in an acquittal).
However, Fakt depicts uniformed service workers in a completely different way. The editorial staff shows them full respect, even when they commit crimes. Ostrowski describes the case of a prison warden who stabbed a prisoner: Poles want to believe that prison conditions are luxurious and prisoners feel comfortable in them (furthermore, ‘Fakt’ regularly convinces their readers of that), so the warden who killed a prisoner should be portrayed as a great man who was driven to extremes. This is exactly how this event was described: the victim of the officer was presented as a recidivist and litigant who allegedly threatened the latter with vengeance. (p. 144)
As Ostrowski suggests, some tabloids openly create clear pictures of suspects and impose specific versions of events directly at the request of prosecutors and police services, from whom they informally receive investigation materials. Under Polish conditions, so-called ‘investigative journalists’ usually deal with such cases and often remain in close contact with repressive state institutions.
When reporting on lawsuits, the tabloids almost always demand the highest penalties and attack any court decision that, in their opinion, is too mild, unless the suspects represent the uniformed services (army, police, prison staff) – in such cases, Fakt avoids such judgments (p. 143). Encouraging a lynch mob mentality, commercial media do not hide the fact that what they care about is not the social rehabilitation of convicted citizens, but their permanent (or at least as long as possible) isolation from social life.
The atmosphere generated by the tabloids affects the attitudes of populist politicians who, fearing for their positions and not wanting to fall out of political favour, try to meet the expectations of the emotional masses. In an attempt to please the tabloids, they give public speeches about the need to tighten up the rules and create a law that will solve current problems. An example might be the issue of so-called ‘legal highs’. Tabloids in Poland demanded harsh prison sentences for their use and protested against any changes to regulations ensuring no punishment for possessing small amounts of marijuana for personal use (Wójcik, 2011). Fakt consistently condemns courts for their lenient treatment of dealers and users of ‘highs’ (Fakt, 2015). The tabloid supports any tightening of legal regulations.
There must also be scapegoats, which the tabloids can create. One minute drug dealers are to blame; the next it is all the fault of paedophiles. ‘Feral’ refugees can also be scapegoated, as apparently all they think about is breaking the law and going against existing customs; at other times, ‘road hogs’ are to blame. Regardless of what the reality is, the tabloids always create an emotional atmosphere of a spectacle and expect politicians to make quick and simple decisions, which are neither necessarily substantive nor well thought-out.
Furthermore, hysteria and cultural pressure evoked by the tabloids can affect not only politicians, but also judges. Professor Tomasz Kaczmarek shows the relationship between the psychosocial characteristics of judges and their judgements. Basing his research on analysis of all sentences in terms of psychosocial conditions, Kaczmarek defends the thesis that judges with low self-esteem and a sense of underestimation tend to pass harsher sentences. According to the author, more severe judgements go hand in hand with high levels of cultural and social conformism in judges, their submission to social pressure, high degrees of dissatisfaction with their profession and a neurotic personality. In this sense: the higher the vulnerability of judges to pressure groups, the more they are convinced of the need to implement justice in a way that reflects the views of the majority or restrictive authoritarian rule, with the imposable penalties being more severe in turn. On the other hand, judges who are more or less independent and open-minded will pass milder sentences. (p. 207)
Kerrie Schaefer describes another way of dealing with crime: punishment can be replaced by a reduction in the crime rate by inviting the residents of ‘unsafe areas’ to actively join in ‘participatory art practices’. The author presents two case studies: the Scottish Theatre Modo and the Australian Big hART. The latter describes itself as the leading Australian team combining art with social innovation in order to improve the position of marginalized communities through artistic processes. The central idea of the group is the assumption that ‘it is harder to hurt someone if you know their story’. For example, between 2002 and 2006, Big hART implemented a project called ‘Northcott Narratives’ on the John Northcott public housing estate in Surry Hills, an inner city suburb of Sydney. In the 1990s, the estate gained a bad reputation as a breeding ground for crime and violence. When Big hART began its work there at the beginning of the 21st century, the media depicted Northcott as a ‘settlement of death’ surrounded by ‘skyscrapers of suicide’. The artistic project was to transform this godforsaken estate of ‘poverty and crime’ into a community of aware and cooperative citizens. As Kerrie Schaefer writes: Using the art of storytelling through various media, the project presented alternative narratives, allowing the residents to show the estate as they knew it and imagine new possibilities for their place on earth. When preparing for ‘Northcott Narratives’, public housing tenants got involved in filmmaking, photography, writing, spinning memories and music projects. (p. 182)
Their stories formed the basis of the creation of a performance called ‘Stickybricks’, which was the culmination of five years of collective activity – blocks and their residents respectively became the natural scenography and actors for the show. The performance itself was a tribute to the estate, its history and its inhabitants. Although the author of the article defends the potential of ‘participatory art practices’ for the activation of local communities and civil society organizations, as well as encouraging cooperation with official institutions, she can see the limitations of such actions. Without the involvement of the media in civic campaigns and without real political change, it is difficult to limit the process of the social production of crime.
Maria Rogacka-Rzewnicka also draws attention to the fact that measures against crime are determined by political decisions, and describes the cultural transformation of the criminal process. In her opinion, criminal law was not originally developed as a separate area of law; when it was finally distinguished as such, it was extended to include ever new areas of social life. At some point, criminal law became a useful tool in the implementation of various policy objectives. On the one hand, it was excessively used for the regulation of public life; on the other hand, there was a temptation to use it in an ideological and instrumental way, which was clearly visible in different authoritarian and totalitarian systems. As the author states, ‘in individual terms, the extraordinary potential of criminal law leads to confusion in terms of the significance of legal obligations and prohibitions, as well as evokes a sense of social oppression due to the excess of criminal law’ (p. 296). In the author’s opinion, these problems can be solved in the process of decriminalization and depenalization of different areas of public life. This requires political will, however, as well as a culture based on mutual trust between the actors of public life, a model of social cooperation and the ethos of civic engagement, all of which prevent crime more effectively than state repression and the threat of criminal law.
This book introduces an element of cultural relativism in the perception of crime and the creation of criminal law. As a result, criminal acts are seen as certain products of social relations and cultural evaluations, rather than autonomous and isolated cases. If such a perspective is accepted, negative phenomena in society must be prevented, not only based on administrative coercion, but primarily on a sociocultural analysis, which will show both their causes and consequences and will also provide entire communities with possible ways of handling threats to public safety.