At a higher level of severity, although not necessarily criminal, are those demonstrations whose displayed anger aims to intimidate or inspire fear in others, or to cause them emotional pain. Demonstrations are not merely statements; they are powerful expressions through assembly that gain even greater power through symbolic gesture. Demonstrations of those protesting immigration policies, for example, may reflect contrary views and may even offend many, but could remain simply a contained expression of anger if organizers so choose. Demonstrations through areas heavily populated with illegal immigrants by those calling for forcible expulsion
are aiming to confront a group with the prospect of physical consequences. This demonstration specifically intends to provoke escalation and therefore creates a risk to community and broader society.
At a still higher level of malignancy is the demonstration that incites to violence. Dehumanizing messages and calls to violent action show that the demonstration is not intended to be an expression of anger, as above, but instigation to spasms and waves of destruction. Demagogues rely upon these devices to sow civil unrest. Even if destruction does not occur, it is being fermented and may eventually explode. This form of assembly is the equivalent of laying a bomb without personally detonating it.
Destruction of public property and public symbols distinguish demonstrations of still higher grade of severity. These can be subdivided into the scope (burning garbage and tires vs. burning a building) and reversibility (spray painting graffiti, breaking windows) or irreversibility of destruction (shattering monuments with a unique history). The demonstration that incites to violence wishes to cause a riot; the destruction is that riot.
Demonstrations that culminate in attacks on private citizens are the highest level of malignancy and risk to the social fabric. These types of attacks have their
own escalating stages of seriousness, beginning with the destruction of private property. In my professional opinion, the severity of each of these types of attacks should be viewed through the emotional experience of the victim even more than through the actions of the perpetrator. The invasion of a home in which the resident feels terrorized is worse than the attack on a home in which the victim does not. Victim impact must be factored into riot justice.
Looting and physical attacks on another are a higher order of violating the physical and personal rights and integrity of another. Looting differs from mere destruction by the perpetrator’s material benefit from plundering the carcass of an undefended store or victim. Incorporating a sensitivity to the effect on the victim per above, looting is more beneficial to the perpetrator and may be even more emotionally violating than a physical blow.
Not to be forgotten, however, is the special circumstance of how frightening it may be for one to be attacked by a mob. The inability to escape and the sense of being helpless and overwhelmed are familiar antecedents to posttraumatic stress disorder in the victimized. If we can internalize this point, we can appreciate that the extreme endpoint of rioting has far more enduring morbidity to society than bloody faces and broken glass.
Laws for assembly are clear. When violated, criminal penalties should be commensurate with the violation or level of nuisance and should keep the goals of deterrence in mind.
When someone peacefully disrupts but is nevertheless in violation of a law, he chooses as an adult to challenge the boundaries of the law, and therefore should be punished as would be children who choose to behave inappropriately and to test limits. Children are punished for immaturity with timeouts or other withholding of privileges for a brief time, but one sufficient to be experienced as a penalty and a disincentive. Along the same lines, more innocuous breaches of the law can be appropriately punished with court-ordered cleanup, work detail, or volunteering, which confronts the offender with the burden of the byproduct of their immature and self-directed choices. Punishment can be calibrated for those who are not sufficiently dis-incentivized by this form of punishment.
Destruction of property crosses into a realm of disrespect for the material value of another and a deficiency in empathy for costs and consequences. In my professional opinion, jail or prison time is not an effective solution for these types of crimes. I think that restorative justice, including the mandated cleaning up of broken windows and property, and replacement of broken items or vehicles or other property is more appropriate. Penalties of labor should be commensurate with the value of the items destroyed. The vandal then comes to appreciate, through hard work, what it takes to earn the value of the materials, labor, and transportation costs involved in construction and repair. I believe this to be far more corrective than sitting behind bars for fifteen days or paying a fine, as the exercise becomes a valuable lesson, provides restoration of the victim, and invests the offender in a maintaining the social integrity of his community.
NYPTI: Can you explain the psychological principles at play in specific instances of mob activity that have taken place, and discuss how the criminal justice response affected the ultimate outcome?
Dr. Welner: Mob violence, including looting, typically ignites. Many who join are young people attracted to excitement and the lure of defying authority. People do not loot alone; mob violence and mayhem in groups diminish a sense in actors that they are accountable for robbery. Each looks around and sees the person next to him stealing, or throwing a brick or Molotov cocktail, with no resistance from authority. Abandoned inhibitions spread among those who are stimulation and thrill seeking, like flames, the longer it is obvious that police presence is restrained or absent.
Looting and mob violence typically accelerates and perpetuates and is emulated elsewhere when the media and public authority explain away the behavior as "anger" and "disenchantment" by "disaffected youth." These messages imbue marauders with an entitlement that legitimizes lawlessness. Dismissing mob violence as a “need to vent” is a common fallacy peddled by sociologists and others whose neighborhoods never know looting.
Public citizenry rejects leaders who abandon them to predators on sociological pretexts.
Mob violence does not occur everywhere, even in societies that have access to weapons and in which mass demonstration is permitted. Mass assembly is not the problem.
In the current age of news media that is all the more unrestrained about directly swaying history, the “slant” of coverage can play a role in inciting rioters. The Los Angeles riots exploded after the innocent verdict in the trial following the Rodney King beating, but only after the news media’s outrage did what ordinary criminals do at the G-8 summits and other lollapaloozas of anarchists. The press goaded racialists’ outrage and urge to rebel, and as Los Angeles burned, cities around the United States waited nervously for the same entitled violence to flare up elsewhere. Meanwhile, people of good will were simply waiting for “Can’t we all get along?”
France's riots in 2005 brought allowances from pundits of how this devolved behavior reflected poor opportunity for un-integrated youth. These sympathetic portrayals of criminal activity engender free-for-alls and loosen controls of others who might otherwise deliberate whether to break the law and join the mayhem. Again, the intellectuals who pontificate as such consign the law-abiding in these affected areas to be victims for no other reason than the neighborhood in which they reside or operate a legal business.
When institutions fail to repudiate pillaging, it lasts longer and gains momentum from others who are generally selfish but who would not otherwise engage in criminality. The opportunities of enabled chaos sweep people beyond their inhibitions to turn businesses into personal
commissaries and piggy banks. Whether the casualties are Yankel Rosenbaum or Lara Logan or Reginald Denny, the high percentage of victimized innocent bystanders similarly speaks to a depersonalized relationship between the offender and their offense. Detachment is the horror, and so that has to be the portal to interventions of the criminal justice system.
NYPTI: Is mob violence ever really motivated by a legitimate cause or quest for social change?
Dr. Welner: It is a myth to suggest that mob violence and looting equate with protest and are motivated by a quest for social change. Pro-social individuals willing to risk their safety by assembly and protest are evolved enough to know that they gain nothing for their cause by robbing from small businesses that serve their communities. So they don't do it, even when they are angriest. The figure standing in front of a tank at Tiananmen Square risked his own self to register his protest with the military -- he and his compatriots did not loot local businesses and attack others indiscriminately who clearly have nothing to do with a political party.
Rioters rampaged in genteel Vancouver erupted after this year’s Stanley Cup was lost; and in Detroit in 1984 after the Tigers won the World Series. Rioters at G-8 summits are advocates of chaos rather than social change. They exploit the likelihood that if they cause a disturbance, a feckless reporter will go searching for their grievance and give justification to others to join their "venting." It really is the case that some young people find excitement in creating mayhem, and instigators use a pretext to set things off. Watch the goings on at Wall Street right now among the picketers and you will witness the same dynamics repeating.
NYPTI: As we navigate more uncertain economic times, does this type of mob activity increase with rising poverty and economic strain?
Dr. Welner: No, poverty is likewise not the cause of looting. Poverty is widespread in China and Russia, yet mob violence and looting are nowhere to be found. Poverty is widespread in Africa and Asia, mob violence and looting correlate only with gangs who amass arms and have the resources to rob those poorer than those gangs. Poverty did not cause anarchy during Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster overwhelming a city's resources did, along with criminal elements taking advantage of such disaster-related chaos. Mob violence and looting lines up with the customary age distribution of those who are sensation seeking, not those who are impoverished.
Likewise, it is a myth that hopelessness instigates mob violence. Hopelessness engenders passivity, the opposite of violence.
When looting and mob violence events are appraised as "people vs. government," such a message only feeds a public sense of identification with looters and their own willingness to participate. At the same time, this message engenders insecurity in the law abiding and vulnerable and a sense that government is losing control which further traumatizes a community. Those who communicate such messages are irresponsible and escalate the problem – or wish to.
NYPTI: Given everything that we’ve discussed, how can the criminal justice system best respond to more malignant demonstrations that include criminal activity?
Dr. Welner: First, it is important to understand that only a small percentage of hardened criminal characters are found in mobs; they do have an important role in instigating the unbridled lawlessness and setting the vicious tone of its chaos. The distinction between instigators and followers is meaningful, so a uniform approach based only on the involvement in violence would be short-sighted.
When it comes to mob control, the answers must begin not just with the criminal justice system, but within the self, the family, and the community in addition to the police. The media and public institutions can inspire such vital self-restraint by how they establish societal red lines, including that which makes preying upon one's neighbor unacceptable.
The Criminal Justice System
A brutal police force is not the solution. Nor is mere arrest. For perpetrators recognize that legal consequences of looting and destruction of property are limited, especially amidst chaos. But there are other societal tools available to eliminate this behavior. For the mere costs, I do believe that forfeiture of all assets of the instigator, to pay for cleanup and victim costs, is fitting. These financial penalties may draw resistance as harsh, but the abrupt loss of one’s holdings as a result of one’s own hand is an example of using punishment that replicates the victim’s experience.
Perpetrator walks and publicizing the identities of actual looters amid a community rejection of looting humiliates the perpetrator. Shaming creates a powerful disincentive where courts and justice cannot. And shaming punctures the anonymity of group violence in a way that gives prospective looters pause for that risk.
Rioters and looters make such choices only because the group affords them anonymity, and the scope of destruction makes their actions banal. Most people who loot and riot would never do so unless they were one of an anonymous crowd. Their mayhem remains in fantasy. They act in a group because they know they won't be exposed.
It is for this reason that I am a strong advocate for areas of high crime and high concentration of population to deploy recording cameras on street corners. Traffic cameras record violators; they are just as invasive of privacy as any other monitoring. But these cameras discourage moving violations and inform successful prosecution. In my professional opinion, those who know an area is being monitored think twice about looting and plundering with no accountability.
Camera technology aids in terrorism prevention, far less common than mob violence, and an investment that would prevent or curtail the spread of looting ahead of time.
Such a police policy is especially easy to achieve in England, given the proliferation of high-grade security cameras all across London and other cities. Security cameras aided justice efforts in a recent takeover of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Society cannot thrive without a sense of order and public safety. Many inner city residents cannot raise their children to enjoy the aspirations of a free society because drug dealers and thugs contribute to a frightening environment. So it is with mob violence and how fear of the mob thwarts community development and vitality. In the absence of mob violence, camera infrastructure would be a deterrent to criminal drug activity that controls certain areas and makes them far from habitable by those who wish to go about their business and want no part of the underbelly.
Even in safe areas, the value of camera monitoring was recently highlighted in the disappearance of eight year old Leiby Kreitzky and the arrest of his killer. Cameras likewise recently captured the horror of an unrelenting pounding of an 81-year old Bronx man who was attacked for thirty dollars. A community that witnesses this horror can not avert its gaze or blither intellectual explanations for something so unacceptable. When a community is confronted with the horror of the selfishness of some crimes, police-community relations become more collaborative. In my professional opinion, such collaborative spirit aids the resolution of missing children and prosecution of sex offenders. The same community-mindedness should contribute to squelching mob and rioting activity before it starts; video exposure of the plundering of marauders does serve such a beneficial purpose.
Family/Community/Society
Society cannot thrive without a sense of order and public safety. Many inner city residents cannot raise their children to enjoy the aspirations of a free society because drug dealers and thugs contribute to a frightening environment. So it is with mob violence and how fear of the mob thwarts community development and vitality. In the absence of mob violence, camera infrastructure would be a deterrent to criminal drug activity that controls certain areas and makes them far from habitable by those who wish to go about their business and want no part of the underbelly.
Even in safe areas, the value of camera monitoring was recently highlighted in the disappearance of eight year old Leiby Kreitzky and the arrest of his killer. Cameras likewise recently captured the horror of an unrelenting pounding of an 81-year old Bronx man who was attacked for thirty dollars. A community that witnesses this horror can not avert its gaze or blither intellectual explanations for something so unacceptable. When a community is confronted with the horror of the selfishness of some crimes, police-community relations become more collaborative. In my professional opinion, such collaborative spirit aids the resolution of missing children and prosecution of sex offenders. The same community-mindedness should contribute to squelching mob and rioting activity before it starts; video exposure of the plundering of marauders does serve such a beneficial purpose.
Family/Community/Society
Fundamental to eliminating mob violence is to first identify it as criminality, rather than a social phenomenon. That responsibility rests upon elected leaders, community leaders, teachers, parents, mass media and police.
The community and press should emphasize the vulnerability and pathos of those victimized by random mob violence and looting. From the 89-year old shop-owner whose premises are destroyed to the friendly bystander who is pummeled into a fractured skull and irreversible brain damage, vivid examples of the senseless byproducts of mob violence and looting nurture a community's resolve to prevent them.
The news media can be particularly effective in massing empathy for these unfortunate victims of circumstance and in mobilizing public outrage toward those who unravel the tapestry of daily order.
Adding to this focus from the mass media, local communities have to reject looting as a shame to themselves and repulsive behavior that embarrasses them. If this rejection occurs loudly in houses of worship, schools, and
among neighbors, then police and public officials can leverage such societal morals by exposing looters upon arrest and shaming them before their neighbors.
Yes, name names; of looters, their parents, their communities, name even the gang to which they might belong.
Violent mob attackers and looters are detached from faceless victims, particularly when hatred has been incited and the victims are dehumanized by instigators goading combatants to swarm. But participants are self-interested enough to resist shaming themselves or their loved ones.
Since many looters and violent attackers are young people, identifying the communities from which they originate is psychologically sound. To do so does not cause prejudice; the general public knows what is going on and is not fooled by political correctness.
Parents have to assume greater responsibility in controlling their children. All too often, parents tacitly approve when junior brings home a TV set that "someone gave to me." When families and communities are identified, pressure builds within the community to control its own renegade elements to avoid bringing unwanted attention and shame.
Even gangs that are embarrassed by the actions of one particular outlaw will double down on elements that bring unwelcome scrutiny to criminal enterprises that prefer to operate invisibly.
Racist and homophobic speech have been eliminated through public shaming; the level of scorn and repudiation directed toward ignorant epithets ruins
careers and isolates people at all socioeconomic strata. Learning from this example can help us to contain another such scourge, mob violence and looting, before it continues to be emulated by opportunists elsewhere.
To read more on the use of social media in response to looting,
click here
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
%20(2).jpg)
.jpg)
