When I first arrived where we now live, I was surprised to hear the Police rescue helicopter flying around our suburb. Sometimes, it would sound like it was hovering almost over our house. At first, I thought this helicopter must be up in the air to help rescue hikers lost in the dense rainforest a kilometre away from our street or perhaps be attending to a traffic incident on the major highway, also quite close by, but I was wrong on both counts. After listening to the local news, reading posts on my local social media groups and talking to colleagues at work, it seemed this helicopter was mainly used to track stolen cars. This always seemed a costly way to catch a group of young people out for a joy ride, even though such joy rides can be quite dangerous to both the occupants of the stolen car and other road users. It also revealed a certain degree of moral panic about youth crime in the local community.
From reading the local and national media, the message was strong and clear from community members, businesses, and politicians: The government needed to do more to reduce youth crime. Usually, the message involved harsher penalties, more police and zero tolerance for youth crime. The problem is that all these measures have been tried in the past and have yet to succeed. They don’t address the root causes and drivers of crime and only further propel a young person deeper into the criminal justice system. There was no mention of personal responsibility in making cars and houses harder to break into or in one of the best tools to reduce crime: a connected community. The community is the answer to almost all our social problems or needs to be considered an essential component in addressing our social issues, including crime.
The Drivers of Crime
Crime is a complex matter with many intersecting drivers. Failing to address these drivers makes it incredibly difficult to reduce crime.
To me, there are two drivers we as a society have the power to work on but have failed to do so:
Poverty and trauma.
In most Western Democracies, we seem to believe we will always have poverty. Our welfare policies and payments guarantee that people will continue to live in poverty. Our political discourse is often one of blaming those in receipt of government payments as being responsible for their poverty. Every time there is an opportunity to raise payments to ensure no one lives in poverty, the best result we can hope for is the potential for a limited increase, but not nearly enough to bring people out of poverty. We live in wealthy societies. No one should live in poverty, but we have, as a society, decided that this is a policy setting we are happy to live with. We know poverty is a driver in crime, yet the topic is absent from most discussions about crime prevention, especially discussions at the political level. Our governments have the power to address this driver yet are reluctant to take even minor steps. It either opposes the political party’s values or poses an electoral risk.
We also know that trauma, particularly childhood trauma, is another driver of crime. There is a plethora of research pointing to a relationship between adverse childhood experiences, particularly in the first two years of life, that put people at risk of undertaking criminal actions later in life. There are some programs aimed at addressing trauma. These are often long-term projects requiring ongoing government funding over a lengthy period, and this is something governments tend not to do very well. Occasionally, trauma is mentioned concerning crime, but it does not appear to be a focus of government actions to reduce crime.
So, we are in a situation where government policies and actions need to address the drivers of crime, and their explicit policies are creating a problem where crime will not reduce and may even increase.
What are we to do?
The answer is quite simple. And that is Community. It is always the answer. We have immense power as a community to create change, but we have abdicated our responsibility for action to the government and its agencies. Let’s look at how we can take this power back.
Rebuilding Community
It is recognised that one of the most powerful tools in reducing and preventing crimes is connected communities. I mean streets, neighbourhoods and suburbs where people know and trust their neighbours. This is the often-stated village to raise the child. The theory is like this: we build trust once we know our neighbours. When we have started a conversation and a relationship with our neighbours. Like all other relationships, we begin to care about the wellbeing of the other. In this case, our neighbours. We begin to look out for them. We might put their bins away when they are away; if they’ve accidentally left a door open, we might close it for them. If someone is attempting to break into their property or steal their car, we call the police before going on social media to talk about it. We have made our street safer even by knowing the first names of 5 or 6 of our neighbours.
The problem is most of us don’t know our neighbours. Many of us haven’t even spoken to our neighbours. Often, we leave our homes in the morning and come home in the afternoon or evening. We open our garage door with our remote controls. Close the roller door behind us and go inside our houses. We switch on the TV or other electronic devices and settle in for the evening. Our children are predominantly indoors and on their devices.
We no longer have neighbours over for a meal. We rarely invite our friends into our homes. We rarely have chats with our neighbours over the fence, and our children no longer play in the street. We no longer have the local corner store or butcher shop where we could bump into our neighbours. We have lost connection with our neighbours.
Our neighbourhoods are not what they once were. In 2018, The Australian Loneliness Survey found that 70% of Australians would have no neighbours they could talk to about important matters; 40% of Australians see their neighbours less than once a month; 47% have no neighbours they could call on if they needed help.
It hasn’t always been like this; we must rebuild this connection. Even going back one or two generations, our streets and suburbs were different. People knew their neighbours invited them around for a meal or a drink. But our society has changed. We are much more mobile now than in the past. My parents lived in the same house for 50 years, and my father kept in the same line of work until he retired. I have lived in four different towns and cities in regional Australia and had several career changes. We spend longer in the workplace than we have in the past. These changes have significantly impacted our communities, and I suspect a component in our negative perception of strangers and growing fear of crime.
Rebuilding the village, the tribe, and the community is hard work. It takes time and can be daunting for some. It begins with small actions. Even saying hello is a start.
Getting to know and connecting with our neighbours is more than being friendly or neighbourly. This is a starting point, but like all relationships, it grows over time and through various experiences.
Once we have connected with our neighbours, we will find that this connected community fulfils several functions for us. In their book, The Connected Community, Cormac Russell and John Mcknight have identified a community’s seven essential functions. These are:
- Enabling health
- Ensuring security
- Stewarding ecology
- Shaping local economies
- Contributing to local food production
- Raising our children
- Co-creating care
From a casual viewing of the list, these are all components of a safe place. It is not just the absence of crime. It is a place where we can be healthy and safe, the environment is cared for, the economy is strong, food sources and availability are secure, children are cared for, and people work together to create caring environments for each other. Just as crime is caused and driven by the complex interaction of conditions, a low-crime environment is also produced by a complex interaction of conditions. The list of community functions represents these conditions in operation.
For example, our health is not only determined by medical treatment. If we are connected socially with others, we have increased potential to live longer, improve immunity, decrease rates of anxiety and depression, and improve the regulation of our emotions. The community provides a feedback loop for our social, emotional and physical wellbeing.
Further, Dr Bruce Perry talks about the healing power of community in his book written with Oprah Winfrey, What Happened to You, where he talks about the importance of community in healing our trauma. When we are connected with others, our trauma is healed in small, controllable doses. Frequently, this will be in casual conversations with others. This allows us to revisit our trauma safely. It will enable us to tolerate the discomfort and for resilience to develop. At the same time, our brain is rewiring itself to accommodate this new state we are growing into. If we are to address crime, we need some focus on the healing and prevention of trauma. Social connection in our community is one of the best tools we can use in this process and, in turn, begin to address some of the drivers of crime.
So, let’s start taking up our shared responsibility to prevent and reduce crime by rebuilding our connection with our neighbours.
Herding Together 