Street Justice

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Don't worry Mom, this one is strictly observational.

Last weekend I hitched a ride back from the Boabeng-Fiema monkey sanctuary in the back of an NGO's pickup. As we rolled into Techiman I noticed a large crowd circled in a gas station parking lot. From my vantage standing up in the back of the truck, I could see that there was a little hole in the center of the circle, into which young men were jumping periodically from the broader crowd. As we got closer, I noticed they were jumping in and also kicking and stomping at something on the ground, which I couldn't quite see because of the people standing tightly packed, probably at least 150 or 200 of them. As we rolled by in the slow Sunday traffic I watched for about 30 seconds, until a man on the ground saw my confused look and shouted up "Thief" and smiled at me. Apparently somewhere in the middle of that circle was a mob-size portion of street justice being doled out on a pickpocket.

As I've said before, Ghana is an incredibly safe country, and I'd heard about this zero tolerance for thiefs as part of the culture that does not tolerate crime almost the first day I got here. From afar I thought that sounded like a great idea, as most thieves elsewhere manage to sneak off into the crowd, only to rob again. But seeing the people coming back for second and third helpings of kicks and stomps was a little much for me. Worse still, a colleague explained to me that in some places they will actually burn the thief or lynch them. Interestingly enough, he said this happens more in urban places, since in villages at least some of the people will know the thief. This contradicts what I know about lynchings from living in places like Guatemala, where it's an almost solely rural affair. But that's just an aside, the real issue here is how much is enough, or is any of this too much? Obviously the fact that bystanders don't just stand by helps deter crime, and the thief is the one who did the first wrong, but at the same time that seems like a slippery slope into moral relativism. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but I'm trying to block it out as I gleefully stroll around town at night, surprisingly at ease, irregardless of what actions or cultural norms unknown to me my sense of safety has sprung from.

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Comments

[kjell]

thats scary
its a good thing you are a man of the cloth.

[rkm]

Re: thats scary
Uh-oh, does that mean I have to intervene next time? I may have to renounce the faith if that's the case.

[Buko]

"Common Law"
If punishment is meant to deter an act, how does enforcement actually work? In other words, the act needs to be committed to ensure punishment to ensure the act properly deterred; effectively testing if the threat of punishment is real. So how much punishment is needed to ensure the threat of it deters the act? Ideally it's the "just enough" strategy but that is difficult to find. What makes troubles worse is that "more than enough" punishment will work only slightly better than "just enough" at getting the same solution but at a much higher cost. However, observers see only the outcome (deterred acts) and rarely see the threat (punishment). I don't have a good answer to this.

[rkm]

Re: "Common Law"
Good to have you back on board Buko, and to hear you're getting along well with the Canadians already. I still don't have an answer about the street justice question either. I think you're right that "just enough" is too hard to define, and that's really the problem with the way they handle thieves, even if it does provide good results overall for society here.