Journal of Police and Criminal P~cholog3", Volume 11, Number 2

CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF P E A C E M A K I N G

John Fuller, Ph.D. State University of West Georgia

Psycholog?, which once was" a primary inJluence on the development of criminaljustice policv has', in recent decades', lost much of its ability to in]brm how laws and policies are made that concern punishment and social control The reason for psychologo/s loss of injluence can be traced to the war on crime political rhetoric adopted by politician,s' and criminal justice administrators. This" paper argues that an emerging peacemaking perspective in the criminal justice .vjstem allows the discipline of psychologv to once again inform the discourse on criminal justice polio.'. Issues such as" drug abuse, gun control and capital punishment are appropriate subjects for a psychological perspective in the national debate on criminal justice policy.

INTRODUCTION

The criminal justice system in the United States is an institution in trouble. It is criticized both from the conservative right as being soft on criminals and from the liberal let~ for being racist, sexist, and corrupt. Policy makers and administrators are hard pressed to demonstrate that planned interventions have an impact on crime rates and on the sense of safety felt by citizens. Politicians use crime statistics as weapons to accuse each other of allowing criminals to rule the streets. The rhetoric conceming crime has become shrill and the relationship between what is being accomplished in addressing the causes of crime and the treatment of offenders has become lost in the debates about who is responsible.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the public policy discourse on crime by focusing on two competing viewpoints; the war on crime perspective and the peacemaking perspective. Each of these perspectives is currently being employed by various aspects of the criminal justice system and they vie for supremacy in criminal justice agencies as practitioners attempt to influence public policy. It will be argued here that the peacemaking perspective not only holds greater promise for resolving the myriad of criminal justice problems, but also that the discipline of psychology has much to contribute to the peacemaking perspective. Those who promote the war on crime perspective do so only by disregarding some basic psychological axioms.

ACADEMIC EXPLANATIONS OF CRIME AND SOCIAL CONTROL

One of the interesting insights we can obtain from the study of how governments have responded to criminal behavior is that at different points in time, certain academic discipline have been able to impose their definitions, methods, and programs into the public discourse on crime controt and punishment. Religion, economics, psychology, social work, and sociology have all at one time or another been the primary lens through which the problems of social conlrol have been viewed (Feeley and Simon, 1992; Simon and Feeley, 1995). As one discipline's explanations fail to satisfy the policy makers, other disciplines put forth paradigms that cast the issues iR a different light, substitute a new explanatory vocabulary, generate bodies of literature, and generally run their course until replaced by an even newer paradigm that promises less crime or a fairer criminal justice system.

The newest academic discipline to gain primacy is that of systems analysis and operations research. By casting the discourse in terms of inputs and outputs as if police, criminals, judges, probation officers, and victims are simply variables available for quantification and mathematical manipulation, the systems analysis approach (or the "new penology" as Simon and Feeley call it) has essentially failed to offer viable means for addressing crime even though it has dominated the contemporary discourse in academic criminology. When we look at how decisions on criminal justice policy are made in this country it is evident that reason and research are ignored in favor of political rhetoric

Journal of Potice and Criminal Psychology, Volume l l, Number 2

and self-serving hypocrisy. In discussing the knee-jerk reaction type o f passing crime laws Simon and Feeley (1995 ! 53) assert:

This spate o f three strike laws, as well as other types o f mandatory sentences, can easily be characterized as mindless "spending sprees" or "throwing money at a problem" without any likelihood of benefit. Indeed, such spending for crime control is probably as good a case as one can find for the proposition that government spending may make people worse off that if they were simply given an equal amount of money to spend on themselves. Despite all this, such counterarguments, even when advanced by "credible" spokespeople like police chiefs and prison wardens, have not even risen to the volume o f a whisper in public discourse about crime and corrections. Indeed public officials cannot easily raise such concerns without running the risk o f being labeled "soft on crime" and thus committing political suicide.

Despite the failure o f academics to influence public policy and of the war on crime perspective to effectively deal with the problems of crime, the dominant attitude for developing crime policy is to simply "throw good money after bad." We do not take that step back to examine if our policies are working but instead blindly assume that we are on the r i ~ t track and simply need to double and redouble our efforts in order to become effective. By contrasting the war on crime perspective, with the peacemaking perspective it will be possible to see how an alternative attitude about crime and justice may make our communities safer and more supportive.

The W a r On Cr ime Perspective The contemporary.' approach to address the problems of criminal behavior and social control is to declare a war on

crime (Reuter, 1992; Shapiro, 1996.) By couching public policy in the war on crime perspective, the message that is portrayed is one o f maximum effort and serious consideration by the government. Much like Lyndon Johnson's War On Poverty (which didn't eliminate the problems of the poor), the war on crime perspective is a orienting philosophy that signifies that crime is recognized as a serious social problem worthy & t h e rhetoric o f an all-out effort. We do not really wage a war on crime. It' is simply a metaphor to signal that we are taking the problem seriously. It i s , however, an inappropriate metaphor and one that causes some unanticipated and counterproductive consequences (Currie, 1989).

The war on crime is a flawed metaphor because it is nonsensical to suggest that war can be waged on ourselves. While individuals in society may engage in unlawful behavior it is not possible to accurately identify+ and isolate those people as targets for a warlike application of sanctions. Too many law-abiding citizens get caught in the wide nets that are cast by such a crude metaphor as a war on crime. Too many other societal values are affected by such a metaphor. In discussing the war on drugs Czajkoski (1990 t25) contends;

It seldom happens that the concept of a warlike approach to a national problem is explicitly expressed. Among the characteristics implied in the notion o f coping with a problem by declaring war on it are extra effort, expediency, ruthlessness, sacrifice, and subordination o f the individual. It is the last mentioned characteristic troubling to students o f justice and to the mind of a liberal, at least the old-fashioned liberal who regards the rights o f the individual as paramount.

War is a popular metaphor precisely because it envisions the crime problem to be so serious as to require drastic policy and extreme measures. After all, who is going to be willing to sacrifice and expend resources for a insignificant or trivia[ difficulties. The war metaphor is also popular because it implies the sacrifices wiil be temporary. Once the war has been won, things can presumably return to normal. When envisioning a war on crime, however, the sacrifices we are required to endure may be more long-lasting than we are willing to tolerate. Once rights are willingly given up they may be difficult to reestablish. Therefore, before embracing the war on crime metaphor, it is important to take a critical look at what a war on crime in American society actually entails.

A true war on crime would turn the country into a police state. The liberties afforded by the Bill o f Rights would need to be suspended, and the individual citizen would be exposed to the whim and caprice o f the police, prosecutors, and judges. It is politically and practically impossible to wage an actual war on crime because to do so would mean we would be fighting ourselves. War as a metaphor is most appropriate when there is an external enemy but is misleading when it is applied to social problems such as crime and drug use~ One of the reasons the

Journal qf Police and Criminal P~ychology, Volume l 1, Number 2

war on crime is such a seductive and misleading metaphor is because it implies that the problems of crime and drugs can be won, In a real war the enemy can be vanquished, territory acquired and controlled, and threats to safety eliminated. None of these is really possible with a war on crime because even as we patrol the street, convict and incarcerate offenders, and execute murderers, there will never be the ~'pe of closure for the problems of social control as there is when a real war is won.

To cast public policy in a war on crime perspective is to doom our criminal justice system and other institutions of social control to be always operating from a war mentality. The collateral damage to the social fabric of society in the form of violated civil and human rights, loss of respect for the criminal justice system, and unintended increases in violence brought on by the enhanced risk and consequences of getting cauo~ht, all argue for an alternative to the war on crime perspective (Trebach, 1990). When considering the mission and aims of the criminal justice system, maintaining order, dispensing justice, protecting persons and property, the methods and byproducts of a war on crime perspective ,arc unsuitable. There must be a better way.

The Pezcemaking Perspective Peacemaking is an emerging term in the academic criminology literature. F'or the past t0 years, papers have been

presented at the national meetings of the American SocieW of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences devoted to the theme of peacemaking. Several of these papers were collected in Harold Pepinsky and Richard Quirmey's edited volume Criminology As Peacemaking which made this alternative perspective for conceiving of the problems of the criminal justice system accessible to the academic community.

Pepinsky and Quinney identified three intellectual traditions that have contributed to key tenets of the peacemaking perspective. The concepts of universal love and nonviolence tha~ provide the underpinnings of the peacemaking perspective can be traced to the religious and humanist traditions of not only Western culture but also from universal traditions that recur in cultures all over the world. Peacemaking is not a Eurocentric perspective but rather embraces the omnipresent principles of agape love that inform numerous religious and humanist viewpoints.

The second intellectual tradition that informs the peacemaking perspective is feminist literature and practice (McDermott, t994). In challenging the dominance of patriarchal power structures, the feminist tradition confronts the structural inequalities built into society as part of unexamined gender roles. It is only in the past two generations that equal rights and opportunities have been part of the national discourse in Western democracies. In most other parts of the globe, the subservient status of women is still ingrained in the cultural patterns. While the feminist tradition challenges the social and economic effects of patriarchy throughout the range of personal and structural relationships, it has pamcular relevance for the criminal justice system in the area o f domestic violence_ The feminist axiom that "the personal is the political" alerts us to the importance of reforming the power dynamics o f the family as a necessary step in ensuring safety and security in society. Crime should not be stereotyped as a threat from strangers out on the street when for too many women and children it is much more immediate in the form of a husband, boyfriend, or father who may sincerely believe that his violent and criminal behavior is his manly duty or obligation and is healthy for society.

The third intellectual tradition identified by Pepinsky and Quinney as informing the peacemaking perspective is critical theory. Critical theory includes several viewpoints that include various forms of Marxism, postmodern theory, and conflict criminology. While these viewpoints explore different intellectual terrain they overlap in their analysis o f how power is manufactured and used in society. The analysis of power is not limited to physical power but perhaps more importantly includes a examination of how ideology becomes hegemony in a society's discourse. Furthem~ore, critical theory is concerned with social justice as a prerequisite to law and social control.

These three intellectual traditions bring together an odd assortment of individuals who are seeking an alternative and better way of addressing social control than that provided by the war on crime perspective. One important commonality shared by these traditions is the focus on individual participation in reforming societal institutions. Rather than have the government wage a war on crime where the individual is transformed into an enemy who must be vanquished, the peacemaking perspective looks to enable and empower citizens to reconstruct not only their personaI circumstances, but also their communities. It is through this peacemaking perspective that the discipline of

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psychology has the best opportunits, to bring its insights and expertise to bear on public policy related to criminal behavior.

PSYCHOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY

Psychologists have lost much of their power and ability to influence public policy in the criminal justice system. Several decades ago, during the 1950s and '60s, psychology was expected to provide answers to the problems of criminal behavior. It was optimistically assumed that criminals could be systematically changed into productive and law-abiding citizens through a process of individual rehabilitation. Courts would impose indeterminate sentences on offenders under the hypothesis that psychologists could not only change criminal attitudes and behavior but could also determine when this had been successfully accomplished and when offenders were safe to return to society.

There were two problems that caused people to lose their faith that psychology held the answers to the problems of crime. The first is that the psychological resources were never committed to the criminal justice system in enough sla-ength to accomplish the task. Token treatment without adequate follow-up services was used to judge the entire potential of psychology as a disciplinary response to crime. Jacobs (1977) details how in the Illinois prison system, rehabilitation programs were a public relations facade and that reaI treatment was not available to the majority of inmates. While many good programs were developed during this time they were localized and minor in scope and their successes had little impact on the public discourse (Cullen and Gilbert, 1982; Sbichor, 1992).

A second problem that doomed psychology and rehabilitation to the backwater of the public policy debate is the evaluation of recidivism rates in studies such as the those of Martinson's "nothing works" analysis (Lab and Whitehead, 1990; Andrews, et al., 1990). Robert Martinson and his colleagues surveyed the reported results o f a number of rehabilitation programs and concluded that most could not demonstrate measurable success in changing criminal behavior. Although there were some studies that showed that certain programs could work with certain types of offenders, it was widely reported that the overall consensus was that "nothing works" and for the most part, policy makers turned to programs that offered punishment rather than rehabilitation. Politicians and criminal justice administrators jettisoned rehabilitation as a principal vehicle in addressing crime and adopted a war on crime perspective that emphasized deterrence and punishment as practices for coercing conforming behavior. It is assumed that if the price of getting caught at crime is high enough, then individuals will decide that the benefits of taking a chance are mathematically disadvantageous. The war on crime perspective imagines that crime operates on a rational choice model much like consumer spending patterns.

Psychology has much to offer the discourse on criminal .justice policy, On one level, the psychology literature can be used to debunk the common (non)sense notions that policy makers now uncritically embrace. To assume that criminals operate on a rational choice model ignores the diversity' of motivations that drive criminal behavior. Studies that link poverty, race, gender, family structure, perceptions of opportunities, and commitment to the norms of the dominant society, are not included in the calculations that increasing penalties will decrease unlawful behavior. The contemporary dialogue also ignores other aspects of crime that are informed by a psychological perspective (Bartollas and Braswell, 1993).

Drug Abuse There is a robust relationship between drug use and crime. The direction of that relationship, however, is

contested (Buckley, 1996; Bullington, [995). Whether illegal drug use leads to crime or cdminals are likely to be dra,~aa to drug use is a matter yet to be successfully resolved. The answer is probably a mixed bag. There are many types of criminal activity and many patterns of drug use/abuse and an informed discourse about the relationship would require an appreciation of this diversity. Criminal justice policy, as it is formulated, does not differentiate among the complex of crime and drug variables (Bertram et al. 1996).

Drug addiction serves as a good example of how contemporary criminal justice policy disregards psychology. By considering drugs as a criminal justice problem rather than a public health problem, policy makers not only fail to stem the recruitment of new drug users, but through lack of treatment facilities doom those addicted to drugs to experience the most deleterious effects of drug dependence (Alexander, 1990). The peacemaking perspective argues

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, Volume 11, Number 2

that the allocation of resources from drug treatment to drug interdiction ensures that there will always be a serious drug problem. By waging war on the drug trade, it is ensured that the drug market will thrive and that those dependent on drugs will suffer, The peacemaking perspective envisions less money spent on police activities and more money spent on developing treatment resources,

Gun Control There is an old saying in the theater that if a gun is introduced in the first act it will go off by the third act. The

predictability of gun violence is more than a screenwriter's formula. The peacemaking perspective views guns as a major contributing factor in the level oflethat violence experienced in society. There is a growing body of literature (Kleck, 199t; Kleck and Gertz, 1995; Wol~ang, 1995) that argues that the availability of guns actually prevents violence. Defensive gun use is used as an argument for resisting guns control. It is the old, "If guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns" argument. There are two conceptual flaws in the defensive gun- use position. The first is it assumes that gun use can be divided into offensive and defensive categories. By the time the motivations tbr the gun use get recorded the interpretations of who precipitated and escalated the situation gets intermixed. It is extremely difficult to measure how the presence of guns either caused or avoided violence. There is, however, a strong relationship be~'een the presence of guns and the level of lethality.

The second problem with the defensive gun-use argument is the relationship between gun availability, and lethal accidents. The problems of firearms include accidents and suicides in addition to interpersonal violence. The public relations campaign pursued by the National Rifle Association maintains a strong position against most forms of gun control and has been successful in preventing public policy from facing this problem in a realistic and constructive way. The psychological impact on victims of firearm violence and the perceptions of fear of crime on the street are areas where voices from the psychology community can need to be heard.

Capital Punishment The psychology community has also been excluded from the current debates on the death penalty. The

philosophical justifications for capital punishment have been couched primarily in ideologies based on punishment and deterrence (Dorin, 1988; Paternoster, 1987: Reitan, 1993)~ Capital punishment based on deterrence supposes that homicide is something the offender carefully considers and that the decision can be influenced by consistently imposing the most extreme penalty. Again, this assumption of a rational choice model neglects the complex and often confused thinking that goes on in the mind of the offender (Hickey, 1997). Arguing fi'om a peacemaking perspective capital punishmen~ can be said to be counterproductive from a behavior modeling point of view. What is the message sent to potential offenders about the sanctity of human life when the state in the most premeditated way possible, kills someone?

The psychological damage done to inmates who spend years on death row is another area where psychologists can make a contribution to the criminal justice policy debate. In his provocative and disturbing book Deathwork, Robert Johnson contends the protracted death row protocol constitutes a form of psychological torture (Cochran, et at., 1994).

CONCLUSION

The war on crime and peacemaking perspectives of criminal justice policy offers contrasting positions on how the criminal justice system can best respond to problems of criminal behavior and social control. As various academic disciplines have sought to influence social policy, their methods, theories, and paradi~ns have had differing impacts on the nature of the criminal justice debate and on the work of criminal justice agencies~ The field of psychology at one time was a major influence on the criminal justice system but in recent decades has lost leverage and status, especially with the emphasis on a war on crime. It is the thesis of this paper that through the emerging peacemaking perspective that psychology can once again enter the national discourse on criminal justice policy. Much of what passes for conventional wisdom in law-making bodies is political rhetoric which has been discounted in the academic literature. Criminal and police psychologists are in a excellent position to influence criminal justice policy because of their intimate knowledge of criminal behavior.

J o u r n a l o f Po l ice a n d Cr imina l PsycholoKr V o l u m e 1 l , N u m b e r 2

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