Chapter 9. Pain forever?
9.1. A one-dimensional pendulum
Like heavy waves, the various forms of crime control appear, disappear -- and appear again. Or maybe a picture of a pendulum in motion would be better. A pendulum with classicism and positivism at the extreme positions, later exchanged with neo-classicism and neo-positivism. None of the extreme positions are stable. They have a built-in potentiality for change. The classical and neo-classical positions take care of equality according to the gravity of the act, but not of a more broad concept of justice. Nor are these positions able to create a machinery for control of the minor types of crime or deviance. The positivistic and neo-positivistic positions give an excellent base for control, particularly of minor deviance, but also of the extreme forms such as the habitual or the dangerous criminal. Their defects become visible in periods when the need for such a type of control is not so strongly felt, or where the potential targets for this type of control gain in political strength or support.
Is there then no calm ocean, no peaceful position or middle stage where the pendulum stops moving, where harmony is established? Probably not in theory, but certainly in practice, established through blurred compromises. A bit of each. Some equality based on the gravity of the offence, some control of minor offenders based on their supposed personal needs, some indeterminate sentences based on a hypothesis of dangerousness. Crime control is not based on clear principles. Not any more than vice control or control of the international economy. It is a day-to-day matter, workable through compromises, protected by unclarities. Few social systems would survive if the participants understood each other completely, or were fully governed by the declared basic principles of their system.
One reason why compromises are so easily reached within the crime-control system might be that the extreme positions on the pendulum are not that different after all. Maybe the similarities between positivism and classicism, as well as between neo-positivism and neo-classicism are greater than their differences.
I have earlier argued that treatment ideology and general prevention (or deterrence) have basic similarities. Now I want to push the level of provocation one step further, and argue that positivism and classicism -- as they appear within the field of crime control -- also envisage some fundamental similarities. Beccaria punished with a purpose. The von Hirsch report establishes the level of pain delivery so as to be able to prevent crime. They fought for equality in pain delivery. But the delivery had a cause. Behind it all is the obvious goal of crime control. Neo-classicism is not only activated by the revival of interests in general prevention. The two are in a harmonious relationship. Just deserts would be only an empty shell if it were not seen as a regulatory mechanism for pain with a purpose.
Pendulum moves between classicism and positivism represent a true picture when the task is to describe the major practical important positions in the debate on crime control. But it is an untrue picture if the intention were to give an analysis of fundamentally different positions within the area. The pendulum I have described up to this point is in a way a one-dimensional one. There is another dimension, by and large ignored by makers of criminal policy and neglected -- or mostly frowned upon -- by sociologists as well as liberals. Let me try to bring us a bit closer to this alternative position. But it is a difficult task, so let me hasten slowly.
9.2. Experts needed
A murder has occurred. It is in a normal-sized modern town of let us say, 300,000 inhabitants. You read about it in the newspaper, and get very upset. Two evenings before you had listened to a lecture given by the supposed killer. You did not notice anything unusual about the speech, nor about the speaker. The whole affair becomes incomprehensible. The judiciary also seems to find it incomprehensible. They declare that psychiatrists will be called upon, to explain.
But let us imagine another killing. This time 200 years back in time. To ensure that some of us have some common stock of knowledge of the scene of the murder, we can this time imagine that it happened in Hilltown in New England, that decaying town made famous through the penetrating description by George Caspar Homans (1951). If we had lived in Hilltown at that time, we would probably have found it ridiculous to call in an expert of the mind to explain why the killer had killed. Ridiculous because we all knew why he killed. Maybe not in advance, and not so certainly that we would have dared to interfere to prevent the murder. But after the act, we would not have been surprised, and we would have agreed between friends that this was exactly what we all could have expected all along.
The difference between the experience of the two killings has to do with the amount and type of information the participants would have about each other. So many people live in a middle-sized modern town that it is impossible to know them all. In addition, life is organized in ways that only allow us to have segmented knowledge of other beings. We know fellow-workers as workers, friends as friends, family members as family members, . . . We have a narrow basis for predicting behaviour outside the exact group we meet. In Hilltown, pretty well everything was known about everyone.
The challenge to the psychiatrist is in many ways to recreate the lost Hilltown. The good psychiatrist will recreate the totality of the killer; he or she will dissolve the boundaries around the segments of the killer's existence and thereby make it possible to grasp the incomprehensible. By doing this, the psychiatrist will do the same job at the level of the individual as the sociologist attempts at the social level. We have become foreign to each other (and thereby also often to ourselves). We need experts to pull us together. The same has happened to societies. We need help to re-create the totality.
There are reasons for the developments of the various branches of experts. Good, scientific reasons. We need the experts, just as we need most of the other providers of service in modern society. We need the doctors, the nurses, the hospitals, the schools. But they also need us. This brings me to the other side of the coin. Experts need clients, and might create them in the process. This will often make us forget that we are not quite so foreign to each other as some writers make us believe. Some do still live in the countryside. And some never do leave their neighbourhood within their Megalopolis.
9.3. Subterranean patterns
Let me include a story from our valleys. It sounds like a fairy-tale, but it is true enough, observed and written down by a perceptive student (Bjørkan, 1977). Her task was to find out about the ancient but still highly active Norwegian institution of "lensmann", that is a sort of sheriff, but with numerous civil tasks in addition. He lives in the district. Very often the position was passed on from father to son. In old times, he was often a bad character, in alliance with the rich and the mighty; Therefore, in the folk-tales, he was the one to be outwitted, while the King was more kind, and stupid. Today the lensmann is more under control, more common, more popular, and dependent on his popularity to be able to function. He directs auctions, sees to it that unmarried mothers get their money from runaway fathers, -- and controls crime. And here comes Bjørkan's major point. When interviewing the lensmenn, she found they all reported that there was no crime in their districts. A few exceptions occurred. People passing by might sometimes break into a petrol-station or shop. But the people of the valley? Never.
But as already mentioned, Bjørkan was a perceptive observer, and while she was conducting the interview, several episodes occurred. The telephone rang, a lady had lost her purse; the lensmann asked his assistant to drive down to the close-by cafe, the purse was found and brought back to the lady. So was the young man who was using the purse. He happened to be the lady's son.
Another episode: A report came in on breaking and entering into a store of weapons for the home guard. The lensmann jumped into his car, drove far up into the mountains in the direction of the store, met a car high up there, stopped the car, found Ole drunk as usual, with a carload of guns to irritate his father. He brought Ole home and took the guns to a more safe depot. What a cliff-hanger story lost for the mass-media! Helicopters and anti-terrorist police might have been engaged in the crime-hunt of the century. Now it was only Ole. An old story of misery and family quarrels.
Crime is not a "thing". Crime is a concept applicable in certain social situations where it is possible and in the interests of one or several parties to apply it. We can create crime by creating systems that ask for the word. We can extinguish crime by creating the opposite types of systems.
9.4. Counter cultures
Denmark is a society for collectivities. Not only collectivities run by functionaries, but also real ones, run by ordinary people. What machines divide, man can draw together. Christiania is the largest one. It is situated in a beautiful area, close to the heart of Copenhagen, formerly used by the army, abandoned, and then occupied by slum-stormers evicted from housing close by, and later joined by others. The number of inhabitants is unknown; those living there have no great affinity with systems of registration or public statistics, but they are more than a thousand, spread out in some large stone buildings and a considerable number of small wooden ones. The material standard of living is generally extremely low. It is possible to survive there on very little money. Some inhabitants work in Copenhagen, outside the collectivity. Several receive social benefits in one form or another. Inside Christiania there are also some possibilities of making a living. Several work-shops have come into being, restaurants, a bakery, a health-centre based on "natural medicine". One of the most interesting theatres of Denmark has its home base in Christiania. In a way the whole place is like a huge, burlesque performance.
It is a terrifying place; dirty, untidy, "hash" is sold openly, a lot of drunks, and an overwhelming number of strange-looking people, some obviously insane, nearly all as if taken out of a medieval painting. Lots of children, partly living with their parents in Christiania, partly run away from Denmark to the Free Town of Christiania, establishing a group called "Children's power". A great number of dogs, remarkably nice dogs, run all over the place; several horses are kept there. Once in a lonely part of the area, I met a brown bear. It did not feel right -- according to Christiania values -- when I slowly realized that the bear was chained.
The place has its ups and downs. My last experience was in the Grey Hall. Two thousand people were crammed in to initiate a fight against the use of hard drugs in Christiania and in Denmark. In the following period, very strong pressure was exerted on sellers and users. A national movement was created, and Christiania moved upwards. But it is a society with great scepticism against leadership, any leadership. Observed from a distance, it looks as if natural leaders are born, again and again, when crises emerge. Taking responsibility, they become visible both inside and outside Christiania. But thereby they break with the rule of equality, and lose their potentiality to act. The same has been observed within the feminist movement. So, Christiania cannot be ruled. But it cannot easily be killed off either. Each time an attempt is made, it mobilizes enormously, and the government hesitates.
Christiania has many friends. As Ben Kutchinsky (1981) puts it so well: liberalism is important in Denmark. And Christiania itself is an important part of Denmark. In addition to the dirt and sin and misery, it is also an expression of core values of Danish society. In the good periods - but remember there are also bad ones -- this is a place for communal living. Since so many work so little, they have more time than usual for talk, cultural activities, and mutual attendance. At the same time, however, there are clear indicators (Madsen 1979) that commercialism is important inside Christiania.
Christiania is a challenge to Denmark, but maybe the more ordinary Denmark will in the end take over from the inside.
Christiania is a sort of medieval town, based on a mixture of small private enterprises and communal sharing. At the other end of Denmark is another collectivity, one based more on hard work and socialism. Its name is the "Tvindschools", its symbol the largest windmill in Denmark, built by the participants. It has grown out of the folk-high-school movement of Denmark, a strong current of that country, mostly with Christian affiliations, a place of development and learning for youth after they have gone through the compulsory school. The teachers at Tvind put all their salaries into one hat and share. It is a very efficient technique applied by a minority within a capitalistic welfare state. The Tvindsystem has become rich, and buys more and more farms, which they convert into schools.
An essential element is that the pupils as well as the teachers work and study at the same time. They have built their own buildings, invented their own sewage system, now copied in several places, and their own electric power system. The windmill gives a surplus of electricity, sold to the electricity companies. If you do not know how to repair a broken window or carburettor, you just have to try. Of course you can do it. They buy old buses, convert them into class-rooms, and drive all over Europe and Asia to study the living conditions and to become able to report home in lectures and speeches from real life, not only from books. When abroad, they attempt to take part in ordinary peoples' life, often through some joint projects in villages or cities. In addition to the "Travelling folk-high-school" they operate a teachers' high school, and a so-called "After-school" for young people just out of the compulsory school system. Work is a core value. The discipline is very strict. Alcohol and "hash" are absolutely banned, even in vacations. Breaking these rules means eviction.
Christiania and Tvind, they are both a part of the surrounding society, but also in contrast to it. And they stand in contrast to each other. The abundance of time in Christiania, the shortage of it in Tvind; the lack of discipline in Christiania, the abundance of it in Tvind. The danger of Christiania seems to be too little intervention, tolerance to an extent that might endanger life. The danger of Tvind is a collective attitude so strong that individuals might become crushed. But still, what unites the two systems is something more important. It is basic trust in human beings. Christiania and Tvind are societies of anti-clients. Through their concrete practice, they declare that humans can accomplish what they really want to accomplish. Man is a creator, not a mere consumer.
This spring, thirty persons held a meeting on the West Coast of Norway. They gathered to discuss ethical and philosophical questions, as well as very practical ones, such as how to organize their daily life and get the necessary work done. They kept on for three days. Except for a few invited speakers, they were all, according to our official system of classification, mentally defective.
Were they?
This is an uninteresting question. They had their meeting. Their discussions were interesting. After the meeting, they all went home to four different villages where they have their permanent life. They all work. They all take part in decision-making. They are all engaged in various cultural activities. There is a totality in the existence which gives it qualities beyond the usual.
They are supposed to be dumb. I was thinking of that the other day during an evening meal in one of the villages. We were probably ten people around the table. Two or three had no "official handicap", others had several. Vidar asked if we wanted more tea, and served us all, quietly, no mess, not a drop was spilt. In addition to being designated mentally deficient, Vidar is blind. But the point of the story is not that the blind, classified as mentally deficient, Vidar, served tea. The point is the behaviour of the remaining persons around the table. It was a matter of course that Vidar should serve us tea. It was an atmosphere of confidence. I think I observed a slightly watchful glance on the face of one who had taken particular responsibility in setting the table; but no interference, no comments afterwards. This was no result of planning. I asked an old aquaintance the next day. No strategy, it had never been discussed in the household.
The only threat I can envisage against the circle of people around that table, is that there might be too many helpers around. Not professionals, they are banned from this community, at least in their capacity as professionals. But do-gooders. It is a very realistic threat. Young people are enormously attracted to this community. They queue up to take part. Too many would easily mean that they would take the teapot away from Vidar and maybe even push him out of his major job in the household: drying the dishes. He does it, once a day, in addition to his other job outside the household. To protect Vidar and others, dishwashers are not allowed into the system. Also to protect him, some of the young people who would otherwise be tempted to give too much help are forced to take their meals in a ghetto where there are none of the formerly declared mentally deficients, no insane, no blind, no crippled. In other words the situation has been turned exactly upside down. The youngsters have become the handicapped, those to protect the others against. And the young people know it. They strive to get access, to get close to a totality, to get teachers of all sorts, that is, from the whole variety of mankind, in vital questions. This is not only a counter-culture as Teodore Roszak (1969) would have called it. It is a counter-society, more radical than any I know of, more so than Tvind and Christiania, more than any political movement. In the midst of our well-regulated, immensely affluent societies of providers of service, even here there are counter-forces, societies of anti-clients, places where it is not obvious who are the providers and who are the receivers.
Vidaråsen is the name of the collectivity Vidar lives in. (The similarity in names is probably a coincidence.) Officially, Vidaråsen is an institution for mentally handicapped persons. It receives money from the State. As in Tvind, all salaries are put in a hat and shared. Collectivities of this type were first created in Scotland by the German refugee Karl König. His inspirer was Rudolf Steiner. Internationally, they are known as Camphill villages. They show interesting similarities to the French type of villages called "Larche", created by Jean Vanier (Clarke, 1974). The ground seems particularly fertile for such villages in Norway. There are four of them, with plans for two more to come. Just now, they are striving to get the authorities to redefine them from being institutions for handicapped people into being communes for such people who for one reason or another find life in large, compartmentalized units unsuitable. Vidaråsen could not function without subsidies from the State. It is a reaction against domineering features of the welfare state. At the same time it is a form of life dependent on that state, yet possessing potentialities for the renewal of the welfare state.
Of course they are believers, as we all are. In Vidaråsen and Camphill they have the same idea with regard to souls as are found in so many belief-systems. They think that the soul, when a body dies, passes to another body. This is a hypothesis with great consequences for social life. It makes people very attentive. External signs such as blurred talk, eruptive bodily moves, or permanently running noses do not become all that important as indicators of who you are. Inside might live a dignified soul. When we look hard, they are proved right.