The Contradictions of Desiring Authentic Self-Governance
At least, my own internal contradictions
I am a little preoccupied sometimes with robbery and theft — in particular, avoiding being a victim of it. Having been the target of so much petty theft and scam artistry in my young adult life (and as a kid a few times), I have grown to disproportionately loathe stealing (scam artistry counts) more than it probably deserves in relation to the energy I spend fearing and hating other types of criminal behavior, and it’s one factor in my ever-growing disinterest in living in “the city” again.1
In a time when much of social discourse is about the way we police and distribute “justice” and whether it might be time for a change, I’m of two minds: somewhat obviously, when economic conditions worsen and family units break down (or never exist in the first place), petty theft and other crime increases. It’s easy enough to see where we should be looking for solutions, instead of the current default of locking people up and then only releasing them back to their old world without tools to better themselves or equip them for entrance back into society.
I understand the reasons why some “petty” theft can happen and sympathize to an extent with the people who steal2 for reasons of poverty or lack of economic opportunity. But also, don’t fucking steal from me, and if you do, I want you to be punished, because I'm furious with you for stealing from me and it feels unjust to let you go unpunished in some way or another.
Importantly, though, I want any kind of prison-based punishment inflicted for various crimes to include something that would keep the person from doing it again. I want some kind of real solution to ensure that the punishment isn’t just for my own selfish satisfaction, but for the betterment of the individual so that they may become contributing members of society who don’t continue to destabilize the community and the social trust we share by stealing from other people and their means of making a living. A satisfactory process of accountability that includes a sincere and thorough rehabilitative effort for everyone involved, which is, well, everyone when it comes to public trust, which we want to maintain.
I think the loss of freedom is enough punishment for most pathologically violent or antisocial crime, and it solves the immediate problem: the danger the individual poses to society at present. We don't need to add torture to the list of punishments, and reform would, ideally in my view, include some really basic human rights shit like feeding the prison population properly and providing them with timely access to normal, good healthcare, among other things. The really, really bad ones that everyone agrees are rancid garbage monsters in human costumes will get their additional punishments from their fellow inmates, which I frankly find more appropriate than the justice system itself implementing various forms of torture on its citizens, incarcerated or not. I oppose capital punishment for the same reason. I’d rather see the killer or child rapist or whomever be ravaged to death by the victim’s loved ones than systematically killed by our own government.
Anyway.
Few people are genuine anti-social sociopaths or psychopaths, unable or unlikely to change, but the prison population has the majority of them. Many in the scientific community now believe psychopathy and other anti-social behaviors or disorders exist on a spectrum, though, and in many cases can be successfully managed or treated. From the APA:
About 1.2% of U.S. adult men and 0.3% to 0.7% of U.S. adult women are considered to have clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. Those numbers rise exponentially in prison, where 15% to 25% of inmates show these characteristics (Burton, B., & Saleh, F. M., Psychiatric Times, Vol. 37, No. 10, 2020). That said, psychopathy spans socioeconomic status, race, gender, and culture, and those who score high on psychopathy scales range from high-functioning executives to prison inmates to people whose psychopathic symptoms may reflect difficult life circumstances more than anything else.
So what if prison looked more like a (guarded, secured) place to at least try to get better instead of just another place to enforce a violent hierarchy of punishment and reward? I don’t know, but it just kind of feels like changing prison is the better way to reduce the number of prisoners (and recidivism) rather than simply deciding that we no longer care about such anti-social behavior that affects average people because it’s the easiest and cheapest way to lower the prison population and say we’re “doing something” about criminal justice reform to temporarily please the fearful masses.
It may seem like a tangent3, but bear with me: I am increasingly familiar with the idea of free will — rather, the theory that we don’t actually have it. And if we don’t, then what is it that we can expect from the kinds of people who repeatedly steal from members of their own communities?
What do we do about it?
I’m not exactly sure, but this story from a few months ago made me angry. Like, irrationally upset. I had to keep reminding myself that this was not my artwork, not a gallery I was involved with, not my business. The woman in the story decided what was best for her own situation as the victim of a crime, and as a “left-leaning liberal with defiant libertarian and anarchist tendencies,” that’s exactly what I want for the world, right?
To summarize, the artist, AnaYelsi Velasco Sanchez, had her first exhibition at a gallery in DC. After the show, someone (she isn't releasing his name) broke in and stole two of her pieces, which had already been purchased. Instead of calling the police to report the theft, she made announcements on her Instagram and TikTok accounts to ask the community to help. As she said in her Instagram post:
I do not engage with law enforcement so I’m asking folks to please share this post to get as many eyes on it as possible. Thank you. 💜
Later, she came on to tell her audience that the thief had come back, presumably to steal more artwork (I mean, why not?) but was chased away by gallery staff. They saw the paintings he’d stolen from Velasco Sanchez in the back of his vehicle.
From the DCist article by Amanda Gomez (archived because they discontinued the site after I started writing this ages ago):
She shared the video in the hopes that the individual (or someone connected to him) sees it and returns her paintings, which are valued at $200 each. She also wants to have a conversation with him, in order to get an apology and understand why he stole the paintings to begin with. She was especially surprised by the brazenness of his actions.
Nonetheless, Velasco Sanchez and the Festival Center agreed to respond to the incident through restorative justice. That process focuses on centering the victim’s needs and reaching a resolution between the harmed and accused without relying on incarceration.
Emphasis mine.
I just can’t imagine that a man who is willing to steal relatively inexpensive paintings and then come back the next day to do it again would be all that interested in this wholesome process of coming to some kind of “resolution” with the random artist he didn’t give a shit about in the first place. According to Gomez, Velasco Sanchez mentioned that “when a staff member recognized him and approached him [the second time he came back], the individual became defensive.”
“I know what happens to people even, for petty crimes in the legal system,” Velasco Sanchez says. “There’s no reason for any of that to happen to a person because of some paint and some canvas.”
Velasco Sanchez, for her part, would like for the person to be barred from the center for a period of time or be under greater observation when he is in the building until trust can be rebuilt.
Emphasis mine.
I just… what is she hoping to accomplish here? I guess she just told us, but I just can’t help but think she’s being incredibly naïve to have any faith in this process with this particular individual. He so clearly not only doesn’t have any intention in participating in this process with her, and he also came back the next day to steal more (I cannot get over this), probably because he now knew no one would do anything about it. I fear this kind of response to crime will only embolden and normalize this kind of “petty" criminal behavior if it becomes more widespread beyond some random art galleries.
And as far as it being just some “paint and canvas,” I don’t know, man. If paint and canvas were how I housed and fed myself and/or my family, or how I hoped to, I’m not dismissively reducing my own hard, passionate work to its bare ingredients and acting like that doesn’t matter to me or negatively affect my life in a material way, to the benefit of the guy who took it from me. Why does that man deserve your paintings, or what money he might get for selling them, more than you deserve the money for them that you earned from the people who liked them enough to purchase them from you? I think the kind of restorative justice Velasco Sanchez is hoping for is an interesting and potentially useful way to handle certain crimes if all parties agree to it, but I can’t say I think it’s very useful in every situation, especially when we’re talking about the kind of people brazen and pathological enough to repeatedly victimize the same (admittedly publicly soft) target.
That said, I don’t think Velasco Sanchez should call the cops if she doesn’t want to. After all, it’s not like they’re likely to do anything about it (although they have surveillance footage and license plate information, which is valuable and would sure help her chances!), and even if I would never do the same thing in her situation, I appreciate people who are willing to stand up and live their principles. Velasco Sanchez has both my bewilderment and respect for that.
Sidenote: I have not kept up with her since this story broke, so I have no idea if she ever got the paintings back or if her attempt at this version of restorative justice succeeded in the way she said she hoped it would. If it did, I’ll happily eat my words.
It’s funny to think that growing up in the 90s in north Minneapolis during the height of the last big crime wave I remember, we rarely kept the door locked. We were in a relatively peaceful chunk of the “hood.” We also had a pit bull. (RIP Wrinkles.) I wasn’t afraid to walk anywhere if I had her in tow. People crossed the street to avoid me. “Ooh, that’s a pit bull, isn’t it?” then run lol.
What you do at Walmart is your own business, but if you steal from individuals or small family businesses, I think you’re an asshole and I hope you get caught by someone who will do something about it, whether that’s the cops or a more aggressive art gallery and their strong friends.
It was. It didn’t really go anywhere. Sorry. I want to talk about free will more, though, but I’ll wait until I’ve at least finished the Sam Harris book I started ages ago and still somehow haven’t finished so I don’t sound like a complete dolt on the topic.