The criminal

Sunil R P Sethi
Civil society is passing through a difficult phase with sudden eruption of crimes in large scales in the society which has destroyed the fiber of peaceful co-existence and is threatening the very survival of civil society. Lawlessness is the order of the day, whoever and whatever may be pointed out as reason for same in order to shift and fix responsibilities. Larger question today is not as to who is responsible for the mess but as to by what way this mess can be cleared.
Our country is facing far more serious threat from within than from the enemies sitting across borders. The crime scene in the country is providing the fodder to the outer enemies to make efforts to destabilize country by exploiting the criminals and the people who are law breakers. The threat to integrity of country as also to peaceful survival of civil society is increasing with each passing day, the threat of organized criminals, the threat of corruption, the threats of naxalism, the threat of communalism, the threat of terrorism, the threat of nepotism, favoritism, gender bias etc.
With crime graph going up sharply each passing day, the faith of public in the system is coming down sharply. Confidence of society is at its lowest ebbs on crime control, crime prevention and justice delivery system. Whatever little faith society had in the system has suffered with serious allegations not even sparing the people who were once seen as crusader against injustice or the people who had occupied the highest chairs in the temple of justice. Can orderly society be even imagined with allegation being levelled with certain proofs prima facie against Godmen, Top Politicians, Judges, Media Tycoons, Top Business houses etc. The general perception that system has failed to answer the call of society is eroding the effectiveness of system itself. Failure of crime control and prevention machinery is seen as all-round failure, failure of state, failure of public, failure of victims, failure of courts, Failure of agencies whose duty it is to prevent and control crime. For society to exist meaningfully it is imperative to instill confidence in the masses that criminal can be brought to justice effectively and with reasonable dispatch.
Before appreciating the ways by which the crime can be controlled or prevented it will be important to understand the concept of crime itself. To understand crime we have to trace the mentality and psychology of criminal to know the persons who take to the crime-What is their thought process-What is their mentality and What are the breeding grounds for them. The large scale reporting of the crime and wide accessibility of the media to the public ,we have all become connected  and with the reporting of even small stories of crime, we have suddenly opened the gate for enormous impact of crime on society.
A person who takes the crime may have reasons or justification peculiar to him, some justifications may be good, some bad and some repulsive but it can be broadly divided into two depending upon its impact on society. Firstly for class of crimes where reasons   are personal to the criminalsand secondly to the class of criminals where the reasons are general to the society. A person may take to the crime for whatever reason but invariably the crime is committed only in the presence of hatred,anger,greed, malice and such other negative qualities. The crime is committed when there is absence of love, care, devotion, dedication, honesty etc. A person may think himself to be justified in peculiar circumstances to commit crime but invariably it is only negativity which gives birth to the crime or the tendencies to commit crime.
To control crime therefore is possible only if we control the breeding grounds for the criminals. The efforts to prevent crime is only if we can take effective measures to control negativity from society. The major impact area in crime prevention is to dissuade thepotential criminal in taking to the crime. This can be achieved by a large scale effort to educate the society in order to control the negativity in the society-In this the media may have major role to play in addition to governmental and non-governmental agencies who can be involved to instill moral values in the society. The timely and effective dispensation of justice will go long way in controlling the crime as it will act as deterrent to the potential criminals and will also control the feeling of alienation from the persons who are victims of crime.The reason of failure of system is because we have failed as society to control and prevent crime. Our society is full of contradictionswhere nobody wishes to take responsibilities but everybody expects the other to do their duties to make the society run effectively. As a society we are on AUTOMODE and we have allowed the society to run on its own with the times. We as society are not making any effort to control the degradation of the moral values in the society but want  the things to improve on their own. This is not going to happen, We as society have to invest interms of efforts required to improve society, we have to look to the circumstance through which the crime takes birth and we have also to ensure that whoever commits crime is properly, quickly and adequately punished so that the element of deterrent is duly maintained. Exceedingly large number of failure of the prosecution in courts these days has created a big army of people who are resorting to crime because of weaker lawsand weaker execution of laws. The more difficult the procedure, the more chances of the prosecution failure to run the case.
The procedures have to be simplified for effective justice and with due dispatch. The patronage of the criminals by the politicians is another area which is required to be urgently redressed as in large number of cases the budding criminals are considered to be assets by the politicians for their own use and the protection is granted to such criminal from the criminal justice system which is killing the whole system effectively. We have to control the nexus between criminals and politicians, criminals and polices and to block the look whole system and also to simplify the procedure and order to restore confidence in the public in justice delivery system.
Today civil society is crime fouled and is at the verge of collapsingagainst the flawed system of crime control and it is high time for the state authorities to take serious remedial measures for the  whole system in order to find the effective remedy before the situation goes totally out of hands. A person who doesn’t prevent a crime when he can, encourages it. If there is stagnated water at the backyard , it will be no use killing few mosquitoes in the house.
The breeding ground will ensure large number always coming back.
(The author is senior Advocate)

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