collective benefits from deterrence would far exceed the collective i costs, for the profitability of anyones incurring costs for deterrence ~ may depend upon everyones (or almost everyones) incurring them. I One way of getting around this is to organize entities so large that it will pay them to invest in preventive measures whether others do or not so large, that is, that the gain to them from the preventive ~
measures, even though not the whole gain (that is, even though others
ride free ) is nevertheless large enough to make the investment t
profitable. This is what economists call "internalizing the externali- L ties,
It is of course a function of government to act where a collective
advantage can be secured only by the exercise of an authority that
of the tax collector able to compel people to pay for a good or service (reduction of crime) whether they want it or not. This is the theory that justifies public support of law enforcement agencies and presumably it is the one that justified Congress in requiring manufac- turers of automobiles to equip all new cars with antitheft devices and certain cities in requiring builders to install locks of a kind specified in
a "minimum security code,
There is much to be said for governmental measures to reduce or remove the disincentives that tend to prevent people from taking simple measures to deter crime, Insurance companies could be forbid-
den to reimburse owners for loss of cars that were left unlocked (two-fifths of all those stolen, according to one report), Shoplifters could be arrested by the police, rather than by store detectives, and the cost of their arrest, detention, and trial charged against the mer- chant in whose store they were caught. The bad-check collecting services that the police perform could be charged to the storekeepers who accept bad checks. A strong argument for doing these things is that the cost to the individual of deterring crime is trifling as com- pared to the cost to the public of dealing with it after it has been committed. A California study showed that the average "career cost"
of a forgery and check offender is $ 16 900, as compared to $5, 800 for an adult homicide offender.54 ("Career cost" is what the authorities spend on an average offende~pver his entire lifetime,
One must take into account, however, that certain benefits are more or less incompatible with deterrence, and the loss of these must be
SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME 207
weighed against the gains to be had from it. Millions of people are
convenienced by the ease with which checks can be cashed, and millions are served by having the goods in department' stores and supermarkets displayed so that close inspection of them is possible.
These benefits to the consumer are worth something; possibly they are worth all the billions that they cost in the higher prices that must be charged to cover losses by theft, in the taxes that are required to sup-
port police forces, courts, jails, and in the welfare payments to the dependents of persons who are in jail.
One must also take into account that the costs of collectively required deterrents may exceed their benefits, It is not obvious, for example, that Congress got much for the consumers money by requir- ing him to purchase antitheft devices with his new car. (Car thefts decreased by 6 percent about 61 000 cars from 197 I to 1972, If we assume that the devices were solely responsible for the decrease and that they cost $30 per car, or $330,000,000 for the I I million cars produced, the per theft cost of prevention was $5,410,) Nor is it obvious that cities which require home builders to install locks that cost an extra $50 to $ 100 per dwelling thereby secure public benefits large enough to justify the added burden on the home buyer.
It is arguable that intangible benefits to the public from the reduc- tion of crime will outweigh almost any dollar-and-cents cost to con- sumers or taxpayers. Neither convenience nor money, some will say, ought to count for much, or perhaps for anything at all, against the value of lawabidingness,
Even if legal penalties were brought much closer to the present, and even if potential victims took all reasonable precautions, it is safe to say that some people mostly young, lower-class males would continue to commit a great many serious crimes, There are individu- als whose propensity to crime is so high that no set of incentives that it is feasible to offer to the whole population would influence their behavior, They may be compelled, but they cannot be deterred, The
only entirely effective way of compelling someone not to commit crimes is to lock him up in the most extreme case, in solitary
confinement. Society does this even if the individual has not commit- ted a crime when it is considered almost certain that he cannot be prevented in any other way from committing very serious crimes. No
208 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED SEVERAL KINDS OF CRIME / 209 peace" bond; he might not possess firearms or ride in private
automobiles, and he would be liable to search at any time,
2, In addition to the above , he would be sequestered in a
small town.
3, He would be confined to a penal village or work camp where he might receive visitors and support a family but which he might not leave,
one would doubt the wisdom or justice of confining indefinitely a madman who, if released, would rush to attack anyone he saw and this even if he had not as yet seriously injured anyone, The case is
very different, however, if as may be with most of those who might l be found undeterrable (say, those who are very present-oriented and have little ego strength and a preconventional conception of moral-
ity) the probability of their committing serious crimes is, although high, by no means a certainty, Even if one could be sure - which, of ,
course, one cannot that a particular boy now aged sixteen 'has a . An arrangement of this sort might be justified both on grounds that
probability of committing several robberies over the next ten years, it is more humane than imprisonment (a consideration that ought to one would not lock him up for that period as a preventive measure, have special weight in dealing with people who are not able to control If there is any acceptable way of dealing with this problem
and
themselves to the normal extent and whose moral responsibility is there may not be it would appear to be by abridging the individu- i accordingly less) and on grounds that, being more humane and also aI's freedom in a degree that corresponds to the expected costs In I fairer, judges would be more willing to make use of it and it wouldcrime to society of his being free (that is, to the probability of his: therefore be more effective in reducing crime, 56 As a practical matter
committing crimes times a measure of their seriousness), Thus, for ! however, it might prove unworkable, If, as seems likely, the unde- example, the boy with a ,5 probability of committing several robber- I terrables could not be deterred from breaking the rules of such a
ies might be kept under the surveillance of a parole officer, whereas I system, the authorities would be forced to abridge their freedom one with a ,9 probability of committing murder might be confined, wholly - by imprisoning them in order to abridge it at all, If this The principle implies, of course, that the law provide a gradation of effect were general, the scheme would not work: it would lead to the abridgments of freedom, more or less onerous ones to be imposed imprisonment of all the undeterrables, including, of course, those who
upon the individual as his behavior raises or lowers the probability of would never have been imprisoned but for the scheme iteslf, It may be his committing serious crimes,55 The knowledge that his freedom doubted, too, whether the least onerous abridgments (Level I) would would be further abridged if he misbehaved would doubtless have be very effective in preventing crime, Conceivably, their chief effect some deterrent effect in many cases, but it must not be forgotten that would be to sort out rather quickly those who required more stringent the reason for the abridgments of freedom is not deterrence (it being abridgments,
undeterrables who are here under discussion) but the reduction of the The scheme is, of course, open to objection on the ground that any
individual's opportunities to commit crimes, In other words, he is not abridgment of an individual's freedom on the ground that he may threatened with some partial loss of freedom in order to make the commit a crime is incompatible with the essential principles of a free criminal action relatively unattractive; rather, he is deprived of some society.57 But, of course, unless it is for retribution, the imprisonment
freedom in order to prevent him from taking the criminal action that of persons who have been convicted of crimes is on the assumption
he prefers.
that they may commit more; the grounds of this probability judgment, Such a scheme might employ successive levels of abridgment, as
although different, are not necessarily any better and under certainfollows:
conditions may even be worse than those of judgments regardingpersons who so far as is known have not committed any crimes, In any event, if abridging the freedom of persons who have not committed crimes is incompatible with the principles of free society, so, also, is
I, The individual would be required to keep in touch weekly with a probation officer, to observe a 10 P.M, curfew, to post a
212 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED
This is not the view that will be taken here, The assumption that if!
Negroes riot it must be because they are Negroes is naive, So is the!
assumption that if people who are poor, or who have long been!
treated unjustly, riot it must be because they are poor or have long!
been treated unjustly, If one rejects these starting places and looks:
at the facts instead, one sees that race, poverty, and injustice, although;
among the conditions that made the larger riots possible, were not the!
causes of them and had very little to do with many of the lesser ones,
Indeed, it is probably not too much to say that some of the riots would!
have occurred even if (other things being the same) the people in the, riot areas had all been white and even if they had all had incomes\
above the poverty line, The possibility of a riot exists wherever thew are crowds of people3 and an "explanation" of the Negro riots which!
fails to take account of the generality of the phenomenon of civil!
disorder is inadequate, Distinctions should be drawn along analytical!
lines so that they will provide "building blocks" from which ani account of all sorts of riots in all sorts of places may be constructed,!
(I)
Two thousand juveniles break windows after an amusement park closes early, leaving them without transportation,(2) A gang of hoodlums robs a clothing store and smashes the
display windows of three other stores, stealing watches, cam-
eras, and rings,
(3) A young man has been shot and killed by the police during a burglary, and a crowd, shouting "This is for Willie," pelts the
police with rocks, bottles, and fire bombs,
(4) Following an inflammatory speech by a racist politician, a mob overturns automobiles and assaults motorists,
To that strict behaviorist, the man on the moon, all four of these events probably look alike: all are "riots
" and, if the
rioters areNegro, presumably "racial." But to an observer able and willing to take motives into account (that is, to take note of the meaning of an act to the actor) the events are very different and some are not in any sense racial. The first is a rampage by frustrated teen-agers who happen to be black, Tl.!~ second is a foray for pillage by young toughs who find "taking" things the easiest way of getting them, In this case, I too, race is not a motive and is in fact irrelevant to behavior: the
RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT
213
toughs are Negro, but they could as well be white, The third event is an outburst of righteous indignation on the part of people who have witnessed what they think is an act of gross injustice, The young man who was killed was black and the policeman who killed him was white, but it is possible that the indignation the crowd feels is mainly
or even entirely against the police rather than against whites as such,
(In September 1962, Negroes in the all-Negro village of Kinlock, Missouri, rioted when a Negro policeman shot a Negro youth, Indeed, some members of the crowd may be indignant at whites,
others at the police, and still others at both whites and the police, and so it might be impossible to say whether or not the riot was "mainly racial" even if one had full knowledge of the subjective states of all rioters. In the final case, the event is a demonstration carried on for the express purpose of calling attention to a political position; since the position is a racist one, the riot can properly be called racial.
Each of these four motivations implies a riot of a certain character.
As a basis for the analysis of more complicated events, it will be useful to describe four "simple types" of riot as follows:
The rampage, This is an outbreak of high spirits, Young men,
especially, are naturally restless, in search of excitement, thrills, action," Also, as David Matza has explained, they are apt to feel pushed around"; one who is caught in this mood of fatalism (as Matza calls it) wants dramatic reassurance that he can " make things happen," and breaking the law is one of the few actions open to him that immediately and demonstrably makes things happen,
4 Rioting (which Matza does not mention) is a way of making them happen on a wholesale scale, "These young people, to whom a voter registration campaign, a picket line, or an economic boycott means very little, have found that they can stun an entire community by engaging in rioting, They can mobilize entire police forces and National Guard compa- nies, keep mayors at their desks through the night, and bring repre- sentatives of the news media from all over the country,
A rampage may start either with an incident for examp'le, an argument or an arrest or "out of the blue, " If it starts with
incident, the incident is more in the nature of a pretext than (as in a riot of the outburst of indignation type) a provocation; that is, the rampage begins not because the incident made the rampagers angry
214 / THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED
(although they may pretend that) but because they were "looking fori trouble" or at least were in a mood to seize upon an excuse (signal?) to:
rampage, There is no pattern to the violence once it starts: it involves destruction for the sake of destruction and fighting for the sake of fighting. The police are frequently attacked by rampagers; this is not because they are hated (although they may be) but because they are at
hand and will put up a good fight. Rampaging byteen-agers has always been a problem in the cities, From the very earliest times, I
harassing the watch, vandalism, and arson have been favorite pas- times of the young.6 In Pittsburgh in 1809 an editor proposed satiri- cally that the city establish a "conflagration fund" from which to buy twelve houses, one to be burned each month in a civil celebration, Until the middle of the last century fire companies in the large cities were manned by volunteers, mostly boys and young men, and were in i
many cases what today would be called conflict gangs, Whether they put out more fires than they started is a question, In Philadelphia, for ! example, firemen used to riot almost every Sunday, using bricks, stones, and firearms, apparently with intent to kilL8 In the slums of
the large cities there were also street gangs, some claiming more than a thousand members, which fought each other and the police almost constantly.9 Usually the authorities did not try very hard to interfere with these activities, which were regarded as in the nature of sport- ing events.
Youth rampages occur today not only in the slums but elsewhere, Thousands of college boys rioted at Hampton Beach, New Hamp- shire, and at Seaside, Oregon, in 1964, the year the inner-city riots began, and there have been large rampages of white boys on the Sunset Strip of Los Angeles, in Atlantic City, and elsewhere since, It is not only American boys who behave this way, but boys almost
everywhere, In Stockholm, for example, hordes of teen-agers hang around the subway stations committing acts of vandalism and harass-
ing the police, "The police say that if a constable has to arrest a drunk who is disturbing the peace, the youngsters will often set upon the
policeman, and a major riot looms before reinforcements can be called,"l1 Probably many of the student " political demonstrations reported in this and other countries are actually rampages,
In the upper classes the norms of culture tend to restrain the
RIOTING MAINLY FOR FUN AND PROFIT / 215
restlessness of youth and to encourage its sublimation, In the lower classes, on the other hand, cultural norms reinforce feelings of rest- lessness and the " mood of fatalism," Accordingly, lower-class youths are more apt than others to be caught up in frenzies of mob activity, and even adults of the lower class are, by comparison with those of the other classes, highly susceptible to the same influences,
The foray for pillage. Here the motive is theft, and here also boys and young adults of the lower class are the principal offenders, Stealing is ordinarily most conveniently done in private, of course, but when disasters earthquakes, fires, floods, power failures, blizzards, enemy invasions, police strikes interrupt law enforcement it may be done as well or better in public, On these occasions, when "Every- one is doing it" and " If I don t take the stuff it will just go to waste
upper-working- and middle-class adults who, under normal circum- stances, would not steal, are likely to join the looters, (In I7
lithe
selectmen of Boston passed an act to punish persons "taking advan- tage of such confusion and calamities (as fire) to rob, plunder
embezzle, convey away and conceal the goods and effects of their distressed neighbours,"12) From the standpoint of the youth or of the lower-class adult who makes a practice of stealing, it would be
convenient to have a riot every day, Riots are seldom started by thieves merely to facilitate stealing, however. One reason is that the culture of the lower class renders it incapable of the planning and organization that would ordinarily be necessary to start a riot by design, Another and perhaps more important one is that although all thieves would benefit from a riot, no one thief would benefit enough from it to justify his taking the trouble and running the risks of starting it. (As an economist would put it, the riot is, from the standpoint of the thieves, a "collective good,"13) But if thieves rarely
start riots, they are always quick to join ones that are under way, and their presence in sufficient number may transform one from, say, a rampage to a foray for pillage. " I really know of no instance of a riot occurring in New York, or in any other: large city, during which
robbery did not playa prominent part," New York's Police Chief Walling wrote toward the end of the last century.14
The outburst of righteous indignation, Here the rioters are moved by indignation at what they regard, rightly or wrongly, as injustice or