Society's present fight against crime could be flawed by a fundamental misunderstanding of the very nature of the conflict. I consider crime to be a cultural activity and therefore subject to the dynamics that affect all cultural activities. Of course not all crime is cultural. Crimes of passion and desperation are not cultural. Yet the majority of criminal activities are tied to particular segments of society and are in fact a feature of that culture group.

By culture I mean a shared system of values that drives and influences the behaviour of all involved. All value systems present us with objects and actions that are highly valued, considered good and worth having, while on the other hand presenting us with an opposite set of objects and actions which are poorly valued, bad and unworthwhile. Ultimately everything that the culture encounters is placed somewhere along a scale that ranges from the lowest bad to the highest good.

Each culture affects the behaviour of it's adherents by encouraging them to strive for the things valued best and thus when making decisions chose in favour of the higher valued option. Success in achieving highly valued objects or actions is well rewarded within the culture group, because one also, as a result, achieves status and a high regard within the group.

Of course culture is not fixed but rather is constantly changing and in flux. Different cultures are constantly bumping into each other and the borderlines are not well defined. So they are constantly influencing themselves as well as changing with other surrounding conditions. Also, some cultures whose values are opposed can become openly hostile to one another. Yet most cultures manage to bundle themselves together into nations, and societies which are actually subcultures of a broader national or social culture. And in these bundles of society there will also be some cultures whose values are much opposed to the values of the wider society. These subversive cultures are happy to carry out actions that are abhorrent in the eyes of most people, yet within their particular culture group they will be well regarded and given high status for their actions. Many professional criminals belong to such culture groups.

It is my concern that when society tries to fight crime it is careful not to also reinforce the culture from which it stems. Implicit in the history of every culture is a struggle between opposing forces, creating and destroying value respectively. In some cultures this struggle is very much romanticised and can take on mythological and even eschatological proportions. Anything that enhances this sense of conflict will actually be reinforcing the culture. As dramatists like to say, nothing holds the attention like tension. Conflict makes a culture more fascinating to it's members, and to non-members too, and it makes the culture's heroes and icons interesting characters too. Ultimately, receiving attention and being held in some sort of regard is one of the most basic psychological needs of humans and there is every incentive for a culture to accentuate the conflicts it is engaged in.

Currently, law enforcement takes the form of a full frontal assault on the criminal classes. The attempt to gather intelligence on them leads to a closing of ranks and a heightened sense of exclusivity which makes those on the outskirts of the culture more keen to be let in and achieve the exclusive status. The arrest and imprisonment of criminals actually serves to create a rite of passage that gives status to those who've been through it. So we get a situation whereby most prisons can be considered universities of Crime. Prisons are a place where people with the same mindset are pooled together and there they can share anecdotes, compare methods, make contacts, and have their values reinforced by all the others around them. Every culture needs a forum where information can be exchanged in order for it to stay abreast with the world, evolve and survive. Prison provides exactly this. Other forums might include certain meeting places like bars and clubs or even street corners, but prison remains the best forum for criminal culture.

While it would be madness to suggest not imprisoning the enemies of society, it would ultimately be futile not to also take a more subtle approach as a matter of policy and stem the creation of criminals at the root. In other words attack the culture itself.

How does one attack a culture? A direct attack on criminals does little to the culture itself. In a culture where to engage the wider society in conflict, and even lose, has an element of romance to it which enhances the culture how do you fight the crimes? The romance is actually even heightened by the defeat, the ultimate case of which is martyrdom. How do you win when a defeat to your opponent is actually a victory too?

One possibility is to use certain features of culture such as the fact that many cultural values are personified in icons, living and dead. In the minds of the members of the culture group there are certain people who embody everything, or certain things, the culture group stands for. Of course this embodiment is not necessarily real but a projection by the members unto certain individuals. Yet it carries great potency and can be used as a tool by the sheer fact that the individuals concerned are not the cultural values and might have many characteristics of their personality that are at odds with the cultural value. If society after allowing certain individuals to attain iconic status can then expose those individuals as hypocrites it will strike a great blow against the culture group as a whole. Those who aspire to imitate the icons will be forced to call into question their dedication. Nothing is more damaging to a culture than it's members becoming cynical.

Other means whereby iconic figures can be humiliated according to the values of the culture will serve a similar purpose, such as turning them into snitches. They needn't actually be snitches but the mere suggestion that information acquired about the group was sourced from them will have a destabilising effect. This will be most effective using dead icons because they are not around to defend themselves. Imagine the impact of news that the Krays were key informants for the police.

Another means is to destroy the forums that allow the culture to thrive. Perhaps by not sending such offenders as are lower down on the cultural scale to prison, but rather alienating them from the culture group. For example, using electronic tagging to limit their movement while making them serve a community service, not on domestic soil, but in a foreign country where they will be forced to learn a new language just to make satisfactory human contact and also find themselves right down at the very bottom of a new cultural order where their past criminal achievements aren't appreciated. The idea is that if you can force them to find another means of achieving the regard of others it will undermine the criminal culture imprinted on their mindset.

As cultures are constantly evolving we should be aware that the use of icons to attack the culture should also evolve. There is a trend at the moment of Icons that have made it to the top of the criminal culture to turn and denounce the culture and attempt to remodel themselves into model citizens. This should not be encouraged because it is nothing but the final stage in the career of a criminal to eventually 'go legit' and those that are successful in doing so are all the more admired within the culture. The more successful criminals that can make this final transition there are the more it will reinforce the criminal culture, not dissuade other criminals from their career. It is important that the attributes and features of the values of a criminal culture are well understood so that nothing is done to reinforce it.