Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

How to Deal with Crimes?

Crimes are lethal for a society as they can disturb the law and order situation and can bring huge losses to human beings in different ways. In fact, crimes are detrimental for both the criminal and the victims. The criminals, who get involved in crimes, may generate temporary benefits for themselves but in the long-run they can face different sorts of trouble. Among them punishment by the law and order system is the most dominant one.
Since crimes can disrupt social settings, every society wants to know why they are committed. Some people think that human beings are determined by their social settings, while others suggest that people commit crimes because of their mentality. Though social psychology plays a role in choosing the way to crimes, it should be kept in consideration that human social psychology is developed within a society and there are impressions of social circumstances. There is a saying that a society prepares crimes and criminals commit them. This saying, in reality, describes the role of society in the crimes. But, the choice of an individual may also play a role. However, the concept is not that simple and there are many complications in understanding the concept. Therefore, it is also important to note that the number and types of choices available for a social animal is highly dependent on the status of the individual as well. Mostly, the people who are economically weak, they have the choices between bad and worse; while the people who belong to the rich strata of the society, they have better choices to make but it does not suggest that there is no crime committed by them. There are many crimes committed by them; unfortunately, many of them go unnoticed or they are ignored completely or the system is not able to make them accountable for them.
Whatever may be the reason of the crimes, their effects are very disturbing and have the capacity to bring serious disturbances in the society; therefore, measures must be there to curb them. There are two strategies to control the crime. The first one is the short-term strategy and the other one is the long-term strategy. The short-term strategy is basically carried out by the law-enforcement system in the society that works through the institutions of courts and police.  
Law-enforcement system within a society basically works on the principle of identifying the criminals, bringing them to the justice and punishing them. Every society in this regard has a criminal law that defines and explains the crimes, the criminals and the practices and procedures regarding bringing the culprits to the justice. The societies that have strong courts, police and detentions, they are able to control the crimes to a certain extent. However, as mentioned above this could prove to be only short term.
The countries with weaker law-enforcements systems suffer greatly in providing justice to the alleged criminals. Such societies also suffer from lack of providence of timely justice. There are many cases that take many years in courts and yet remain undecided. The people who are influenced by such cases experience a complete change in their lives, which is from bad to worse and by the time they reach to justice, their lives are already destroyed. It has been also observed that the cases that belong to influential people are pursued immediately while the ones that involve the ordinary people are kept in files and they never reach to the courts. And then there are detention centers that, in fact, do not transform the criminals into useful citizens, which is the basic philosophy of them. They, on the other hand, turn them into bigger criminals and if unfortunately, which mostly happens, there is a person who has been punished wrongfully; such a person becomes a true criminal after leaving the detention center. Unluckily, Afghanistan is one of the same types of countries that suffer from weak law-enforcement system. Though there has been much development in this regard, serious concerns still prevail and raise questions about the system. The police force in Afghanistan is still in the preliminary stages and it really requires years of attention and support to reach to a truly professional stage. There are many areas in the country where the police do have enough penetration and where they cannot reach to crimes and criminals. Then there are many areas wherein the people still go to traditional courts, which are dominated by religious and tribal leaders instead of going to the courts that are established by the government.
However, the law-enforcement system can provide short-term solution to the crimes. If a society is really interested in controlling them there should be a long-term strategy that must deal with the basic reasons of the crime and try to nip the evil in the bud. There should be efforts to work on efficient administration, better economic condition, political stability, good governance, providence of basic human rights and control of corruption. Justice should reach to all the people of the society alike and the citizens must not feel alienated from the society. Moreover, there should not be discrimination as far as practical implementation of the criminal law is considered. Law should not serve the rich alone as is happening in many societies of the world; rather all should be treated equally in this regard.