Feel the fear and do it anyway?

I have always been interested in why people do the things they do. I don't mean why people sneeze when they look at the sun, or why they hate Jessica Simpson and yet continue to buy magazines with her mug on the front of it, thus ensuring her "celebrity" for another week at least. Rather, I'm interested in why people do the things they're not supposed to do.

I work as a human factors consultant, and most of my projects involve examining why people routinely ignore or violate procedures. Sometimes it's because the procedures are rubbish, or the system is badly designed. Sometimes it's due to the "it seemed like a good idea at the time" syndrome. And very occasionally it comes down to the fact that people are just plain mean, stupid or bad.

For my undergraduate degree I studied Sociology and English Lit. I absolutely loved Sociology. So much so, that I'm considering studying it again part-time purely out of interest. There were three classes that have always stuck in my mind: Sociology of Religion, Urban Sociology, and Sociology of Crime. I eventually wrote my dissertation on the demise of religion in Ireland, but my favourite class, without a doubt, was Sociology of Crime.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by crime. I'm not so interested in the gory details, as to why people commit crime - what drives them to do it? - and what society can and is doing to prevent it. Crime, or rather the prevention of it, runs in my family - my father was a detective (he's retired now) and one of my brothers is now a policeman with an Garda Síochána. My uncle, Dad's brother, is a policeman with the Met. I grew up hearing sanitised stories of "baddies". As I grew older, the stories became grittier. I remember when Dad qualified as a forensics detective and brought home his suitcase of goodies, including everything from liquid latex for getting impressions of footprints and whatnot, to swabs for collecting saliva, to that special tape they use for lifting fingerprints (it smells of pineapple!).

I also remember the day Dad brought home a slim, rectangular case and placed it on top of the dresser in the kitchen, out of reach of the kiddies. We badgered him for ages about what was in the case - "what's in the case Dad? Can we have a look Dad? Please Dad? Is it more fingerprint stuff? C'mon Dad? What's in the case? What's in the caaaaaaaaaaassssssse?"

Eventually, we wore him down, and he opened the case just to shut us up:

It worked.

That was also the day that it finally hit home how dangerous my Dad's job was.

But I digress.

In my Sociology of Crime class, we examined the different reasons why people commit crimes. We looked the preconceptions that people have about crime - that criminals come from predominantly poor backgrounds, broken homes, ethnic minorities, etc., and at how the rise in white-collar crime affected these preconceptions. We discussed how fearmongering affects our perception of crime - are the streets really as dangerous as we're led to believe? And we looked at how criminals are punished - does rehabilitation work or is it better to just lock them up and throw away the key?

Really interesting stuff.

Anyhoo, I can't remember if it was part of this class or another, but on the reading list for one of them was "Discipline and Punish" by the brilliant Michel Foucault - an incredible (and deliciously graphic) book, well worth a read if you can. It was in this book that I first read about the Panopticon.

The Panopticon is a prison designed by an English philosopher called Jeremy Bentham, which places a guard tower in the middle of a circular room of rows of prisoner cells. The basic principle behind it is that from the central tower, the guard can see all of the prisoners at any time. However, the prisoners can't see the guard at any time from their cells, and so they never know if or when they are being watched. As a result, prisoners become paranoid and they discipline themselves. Prisoners are also isolated from one another to maximise the psychological effect. Whilst the Panopticon design itself has never been used, it has influenced the design of a number of other prisons worldwide.

What fascinates me about this prison design is that it uses the concept of fear and paranoia to regulate the prisoners. This method of regulation is prevalent throughout all our lives. Think about it - how many times have you been driving late at night and you come to a cross roads controlled by a traffic light. The light facing you is red. You can clearly see that there's no other traffic around, yet you still sit there and wait for the light to turn green? Why?

For most people, the fear of getting caught is what stops us from breaking that red light. The idea of Sod's (a.k.a. Murphy's) Law is what keeps us on the straight and narrow - "knowing my luck, the one time I break a red light is the one time I'll get caught".

I always wait for the green light, because anytime I've tried to give the two fingers to Sod, I've gotten caught. For example, when I was studying for my PhD I spent a lot of time in Germany, particularly in Bielefeld. One night, having had dinner at a collegue's house, I was waiting for the tram home when I decided not to buy a ticket. I'd been on the tram so many times before and I'd never had my ticket checked, that I figured "Why would they check it now?"

Ten minutes later, two big burly ticket inspectors, carrying fecking machine guns, boarded the tram and started asking for tickets. I nearly puked. When they got to me, I feigned ignorance and did my best "me no speaka da german" tourist impression. They were having none of it. There's nothing like having two huge Arian men towering over you, shouting at you in harsh German and demanding your passport, to put the fear of God and all things lawful in you.

A €70 fine and a stern talking to later, I vowed never again to get on a tram or train or other method of transport without a ticket.

Just like in the Panopticon, fear and paranoia are routinely used in our everyday society to control the masses. Sometimes it's useful and to be encouraged, particularly when it works - for example, increased police presence on the streets at weekends to discourage drunken brawlers, and visible and frequent police checkpoints on the roads in the run up to Christmas to deter drink drivers. But sometimes it seems more insidious - for example, the fearmongering perpetuated by the media and beamed into our homes every night in the form of the evening news.

I'm not sure how useful this kind of fear is to society as a whole. It pretends to encourage vigilance, but I'm worried that all it does is perpetuate suspicion and paranoia. I'm sure you've heard about Jean Charles de Menezes who was shot dead at Stockwell underground station in London in July 2005. Apparantly police had been surveilling the block of flats in which de Menezes lived, and mistook him for a suicide bomber. Initial reports of the shooting claimed that de Menezes had been wearing a backpack and bulky clothing, possibily concealing a bomb, and had been acting suspiciously. Photographs of his dead body were released showing him wearing a tight fitting denim jacket - no backpack in sight. de Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at close range.

It was about two weeks after the July 7th bombings in London which killed 52 people, and one day after police foiled another bomb attack in London. The police who shot him apparantly thought they were "protecting London from what could have been another terrorist attack". Were they right to take that chance? What if he had been a terrorist? Even if he had been, are seven bullets to the head and one to the shoulder an acceptable method of prevention?

Looking at this from a sociological perspective, how has this affected society? Has it put fear in the hearts of actual terrorists? I'm not sure. In my opinion, what this has done is increase the level of mistrust the public has towards the police, and fueled the hatred of those few extremist groups. Of course, had it been proved that de Menezes was a terrorist, the police involved would have been heralded as heroes. Society is such a fickle bastard.

On a vaguely related tangent, one interesting psychological study which demonstrated the effects of fear and paranoia amongst prisoners was the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971 at Stanford University. Twenty undergraduate students were hired to play the roles of guards and prisoners in a mock prison built in the basement of the psychology department.

The students were randomly assigned as guards or prisoners, and the experiment was supposed to run for two weeks. It had to be cut short after six days as "prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their assigned roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to genuinely dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early" (source). There is a video of the experiment, which has been broken into five sections. I'd recommend watching them - they're really frightening, but also incredibly interesting.

The experiments have been widely criticised as unethical, unscientific and unrealistic. Having only ever been in a prison cell once (when my Dad locked me in "for a joke"), I can't really comment as to realistic or otherwise the experiements were. I know somebody who works as a prison guard, and from what he's told me of prison life, the feelings of disorientation, denial, alienation, paranoia, definace, solidarity, etc. of the prisoners seems to have been fairly accurate.

What does this teach us about prison as a form of rehabilitation for criminals? There's a lollipop for anyone who can answer that.

In the meantime, I continue to live in fear of German ticket inspectors.