Wheat from the Chaff Blog

On August 6th, Neil Boyd, a widely quoted criminologist from SFU, wrote an opinion piece that decried those who criticize him and other academic commentators on the issue of crime. Here’s a brief response.

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Neil Boyd, a well known SFU criminologist, seems puzzled that people “don’t like what academics have to say” about crime. I would propose the opposite: Boyd does not like to hear what others think about crime, and that he represents a point of view that most Canadians wholeheartedly reject.

Boyd and many others in his trade take a social scientific view of crime. Criminal behaviour is analyzed with statistics and identifiable trends, and the response to crime is framed by rehabilitation, deterrence and other approaches amenable to measurement. Moreover, these empirical preferences carry a significant normative commitment, to which Boyd appears deeply committed.

But I would posit that the large majority of Canadians don’t see crime in the same way. They see crime, particularly violent crime, as primarily a moral issue, and have a normative commitment clearly at odds with Boyd’s professional perspective. Even if there were only one violent crime next year in Canada, the question would remain: did the convicted criminal receive a penalty of reduced entitlements commensurate to the rights he or she took away from his/her victim(s)? This is justice as equity or fairness. Crime in this sense is not conceived as a medicalized problem that must be solved by experts. It does believe that people must be held responsible for their actions, particularly when these actions are so heinous that they violate the basic rights of others. Indeed, it’s a view that believes the justice system is as much about the victims of crime as the criminals themselves. It also believes that drugs or alcohol – especially if attached to violent crime – do not automatically provide a get-out-of-jail-for-free card. If one is capable of the mundane tasks of eating, finding some form of shelter and securing drug supplies – all of which require at least a modicum of rationality – then why is such rationality immediately and quite conveniently ignored when it comes to criminal responsibility? Finally, it believes that the criminal justice system ought not be a social working institution. If there are legitimate human needs for social welfare, then why does it appear that the police and the courts are obliged to be primary social working agencies? They lack the requisite resources to accomplish such a lofty goal, with the end result that they do a mediocre job of both policing and social working.

The criminal rights faction usually responds (condescendingly) that this normative perspective is mere retribution, and that it doesn’t solve the problem of crime. Unfortunately, we rarely hear in any extended way why retribution is indeed wrong, except that it is supposedly “uncivilized”. Apparently moral responsibility is barbaric. Moreover, the demand for “solutions” merely restates a rather self-serving standard – the kind of standard that employs a lot of people in the criminal rights industry – that simply ignores the call for moral equivalence.

If Boyd wants to be taken more seriously, perhaps he should talk less of “ad hominem” attacks, and more of a fundamental clash of values. This may take him beyond his comfort zone of statistical analysis, but it might answer his aforementioned puzzlement more honestly.