Quicksilver

Crime Manufacturing

Warning: Analogy Ensues...

When US manufacturing was taking a beating in the '80s over product quality, there was a sweeping movement to learn how to do quality assurance. What scrambling companies started were programs to "Find it. Fix it. Forget it."

If a car picked up a scratch on the assembly line, then they'd patch it at the end before shipment. If 6,000 cars picked up a scratch on the assembly line, they'd patch and ship. They would even create a new department to handle these boo boos.

Finally people recognized the need to find a "Root Cause" for such things. Any repetitive error was likely to be a problem in the process or procedure. Patching was not addressing that problem. It was only covering it up. It was wasting time and resources. If they found the Root Cause, then they could prevent the scratches and eliminate the patching too.

So...

Putting tens of thousands in jail for armed robbery is not addressing the problem. Forcing a curfew to try to reduce night crime, is not addressing the problem. Bashing people for using one word instead of another in reference to a fellow human is not addressing the problem. Spray painting a person wearing a dead animal is not addressing the problem.

We have to find the Root Cause(s). Everything else is patching and we've been bleeding to death beneath the bandages until now we're starting to see our own folly.

If people were all taught to recognize their own value and the value of all others, including every creature on this planet and the planet itself, well, that would seem an appropriate way to address the root cause.

We have to shift away from focusing on the negativity of the crime and creating punishments (adding more negativity). We have to look at what will pour positive influence into the system. Almost all people will accept rewards. Not all people are so concerned about potential punishment, especially with ego telling them that it will never happen.

We have proven that we cannot force positive behavior with negative reinforcement. Duh.

What we expect, we get. If we -know- that people will be stealing and we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to do to stop them, catch them, and punish them, then we solidify the expectation that people will continue to steal.

If we find out why people steal and eliminate that motive, then we eliminate all the gyrations we go through to stop them, catch them and punish them. I guarantee there are fewer reasons to steal than ways to do it. Which set do you think we're more likely to grasp and conquer?

Seems to me that we not only gain a safer and more peaceful world, but simpler and easier too.

This ain't Pollyanna stuff here. It's common sense.

Could we possibly spend more to feed, house, clothe and supply a common thief and his family... than we spend on surveillance, security, law enforcement, lawyers, judges, prisons, etc, even for one criminal?

I can't imagine how.

06.13.2001

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