Playing at the limits of common sense

Up to now, we "forgot" to mention that we were still living in a democracy. While this in itself is the result of a particular discourse about human nature and relationships, this is no doubt one of the intellectual necessities Ezrahi was talking about: the democratic system is not to be questioned. There is a common agreement, at least in the West, that democracy, albeit imperfect, is the best we can do, and therefore should be protected. Does this mean protected from knowledge? Is it possible that in a different discourse, democracy would loose much of its importance?

First, Let us think of a hypothetical scenario where some scientific conclusion or discovery leads to an anti-democratic verdict. Should democracy be modified/abolished? We have a case study -- among others -- in Nazi Germany. In the name of science, quite a bit more than the abolition of democracy was done. Because of our conventional way to understand the relationship between morality and knowledge, the question of "how was this possible" seems like the most important, most difficult one in the face of the Holocaust: should not morality, religion, culture have steered science, technology and bureaucracy away from the horror that was about to be commited with their help? Unfortunately, the question, as it turns out, is infinitely naive (see Kren and Rappoport, 1980). In fact, knowledge is essentially value-free: when it seems connected to values, it is because we make it so, because we decide to interpret it that way. It is not true that "racism is ignorance" or that information alone will make us better people. Some of the worst Nazi killers were highly educated people, artists, intellectuals. Common sense about these questions just does not work.

Th cooperation of bureaucrats, scientists, historians, engineers and ordinary people with the Nazi project underlines the difficulty of judging situations and knowledges when no final normative "horizon" exists to compare them to -- or rather, when the horizon is not the habitual one, the one that traditional historians and observers use to judge Nazis today. It is never enough to say that eugenics, for instance, is not based on "good science", if eugenics happens to "fit" in the current discursive field, the "common sense" of the majority. Race-based research had already been discredited in the 1920s, but that never stopped Goebbels or Rosenberg to speak ex cathedra about the natural hierarchy of the races and the dire consequences of its ignorance. To this day, the volume of race-based research is still of appalling size and popularity; it is also very well funded, even if it rests on demonstrably illogical bases.

Such conceptual flaws, unfortunately, are not always immediately recognizable, and it would be dangerously optimistic to simply assume that (1) "good science" will always prevail, not to mention prevail in time to prevent holocausts; (2) that in the end, and at any time in the future, good science will always be compatible with what we call today democratic principles (with the assumption that they are unquestionably shared by everyone, and the belief that they are the "end" of history). In the public there is clearly ambivalence about expertise, as is obvious with the current hysterias about genetically modified foods, human cloning or more radically the movement to reject vaccination; they all seem to show an opposite movement away from scientific authority, even though they largely depend on other forms of "knowledge:" it is a rarity to see science rejected on moral bases alone. This is the world the expert has to fit in.

We are already compromizing the values of democracy: apparently, a majority of canadian citizens, for example, would like to see capital punishment reestablished, and yet the government does absolutely nothing in that direction. It will not even permit debate about the question. Apparently, canadians would also like to see the severity of young offenders' sanctions greatly increase. Experts (criminologists, lawyers) tell the government what to do in this case: as little as possible, or actually the opposite of what "the public" seems to call for. The excuse offered is that the public, were it better informed, would change its mind and agree with the experts, but never that moral principles have to cede the way to knowledge; experts do not like to be called amoral. This is the "ethics of knowledge", again: where proper information/education leads to proper interpretations of reality and correct conclusions, and where only informed people can make correct judgments: objective knowledge becomes a necessary and sufficient cause of reasonable judgment.

While we certainly will not question the importance of knowing, understanding and questioning reality, for every citizen, a few problems arise with this point of view: (1) we have seen that "objective" knowledge does not bear immediate normative conclusions; (2) we have also seen that the idea of "learning from our mistakes" depends on how past events are interpreted and certainly not on any core of objective information immediately recognizable in the events themselves; (3) many forms of competing normative systems exist and there is no clear method for choosing between them; (4) there also is no method of judging exactly what and how much knowledge is sufficient for "proper" decisions to be made. Ordinary people, at least according to democratic principles, possess a certain form of experimental knowledge of their reality which cannot be dismissed; that is why there is no criterion imposed for the right to vote. If the work of the expert was simply to convince people that she is right, there would in fact be no need to proceed to a vote.

We have spoken of the great achievements of modern physics and engineering. Logically, if one wants a space shuttle, one will ask NASA to build one, not a local farmer. Ordinary citizens, even if extremely well informed, will be of no help. Now let us see if this model can be applied to the social sciences, particularly criminology. But first, one more example: if the government wants a nuclear power station, it also needs to consult experts on all kinds of technical matters. At a certain point, though, the public will have to be consulted on whether or not it is prepared to accept the risks associated nuclear energy to get its benefits (both being presented by experts and counter-experts). In that case then there is a second level to climb before the station is built, where ideally the public seems to have the last word. And people also have a word to say on whether they are prepared to bear the financial costs of a space shuttle (but wasteful spending being defined by experts, again). Let us be careful: this is not as simple as a court case where the jury has to decide whose expert is the most believable. Even in that clear-cut system the process is difficult and deeply flawed, as recent civil judgements on breast implants based on "junk science" have shown. In real life the choice is between "experts" of all kinds, some self-described, some experts in areas totally unrelated to the question, some self-appointed defenders of "common sense."

Following these natural science models, let us examine the case of prisons and their uses in Canada. Let us examine two simple options: (1) prison could be a moral choice solely based on offenses commited, or (2) one of many instruments designed to create a "better society" (the typical raison d'être of the governmentalized state). We will assume that option (2) is the right one for the following discussion: purely retributive rationales are extremely rarely used when referring to the penal system, either by politicians, experts or bureaucrats. We are well aware, however, that "just deserts" arguments do play a part, just like "emotional" or "populist" rhetoric does, even when completely unreasonable (remember M.P. John Nunziata brandishing the specter of murderer Clifford Olson to justify abolishing judiciary revision of life sentences). Still, the instrumental efficiency of prisons is almost always considered, be it at the very general level of "protecting society". Furthermore, even pure retribution, since incarceration can never be directly measured to any crime, still needs some kind of expertise to draw a list of proportional sentences.

The simple answer is that if the prison is an instrument, whatever its goal, it must be amenable to measurement, and thus to expertise. Experts are needed to decide how best to use it towards the set general goals. This does not mean that experts know how to best rehabilitate, if that is the set objective: however, it does mean that they know best how to rehabilitate. Simply, they know more about it because they concentrate on it and apply reasonably rigorous methods of evaluation to analyse it. At the same time, this does not mean that their conclusions or recommendations are to remain unquestioned by ordinary people, bureaucrats or politicians. But it does mean that their findings should be considered as any other honest intellectual investigation, i.e. it should tend to rise the level of the debate and defy misrepresentations. This is especially important in the current political climate and the multiple "market-oriented" uses that are being made of crime, fear of crime, and punishment.

We mean "market-oriented" in two separate but related ways: first, the current drive towards massive privatisation of government organizations, particularly in the field of corrections. There is no shortage of expertise backing the government's actions in that field, and this is by the way one of the problems we have alluded to earlier: one can always find some expert to approve of his preconceptions -- but not necessarily the right one. Josh Zambrowsky (1988) underlines that in this field, and increasingly, economists (neo-liberal economists, at least) consistently win the expertise battle over criminologists. The "end of the welfare state" brought about by the claimed impossibility of meeting its expenses is today the justification for any kind of government disinvestment from the social sphere. One only needs to pick up any random issue of the Globe and Mail to realize that. Not that the economic imperative is in itself an absolute obstacle to evolution. Synchronicity does break out at times. Experts in Québec, for instance, have long called for shorter sentences and less recourse to imprisonment; due to their costs, six prisons were closed this year, forcing the issue in the right direction, albeit for the wrong reasons. However, financial concerns alone did not dictate the closure of the establishments; services could have been cut instead. There is an entire industry of "cheap" prisons in the U.S., and that was also a possible alternative. This to the point that perhaps in the future criminologists can succeed in government simply by stating that whatever plan they propose will save money. In a way though, this is a very scary thought: when the justification for something becomes external, the need for careful internal examination of the proposal disappears. But it is a powerful way for criminologists to induce productive change.

The second way that crime is "market-oriented" is in the market of common ideas about criminality and punishment. This is obviously closely related to our first concern, as fear of crime, for instance, can only help private enterprises claiming to know how to deal with it, spawning a brand new group of experts: experts in security. As crime becomes more and more a victim problem, potential victims will require ever increasing security services. Gusfield was describing experts as creating social problems in order to make a living; expertise has simply been bluntly replaced by direct business interests; no more camouflage is needed in a economics-based view of society (and the state's interests are more and more confused with those of business; see Christie, 1994). Security experts, of course, have no interest whatsoever in preventing crime.

There is probably no point in trying to decide whether public concern with crime came from politicians creating an issue everyone would agree on, or if politicians were following the flow of public opinion. We have seen the overwhelming importance of contingent definitions of situations and both "public concern" and "criminality" have, as concepts, histories of their own. As far as criminologists are concerned, once the definitional quandaries are recognized not as difficulties to be surmounted but as intrinsic to the problematic at hand, and once it has been accepted that the most difficult thing about the study of crime and order is to unlearn what we think we know, the main task at hand will be to destroy the oversimplifications offered to the public because it is generally assumed to be insufficiently sophisticated to grasp complex issues. Sophistication will never come from sweeping information under the carpet because it is deemed too complicated. Of course, this creates the difficulty of competing with the soundbites that come with oversimplification. Unfortunately, criminology is not in the business of producing slogans. But it can surely destroy a few, and by using the common sense language in creative ways it can "subvert" it. Attacking the "common sense" discourse about crime directly will surely fail, but it has multiple internal flaws that can be used to great effect.

As we have said, however, this will not in itself lead to a more "rational" or even less a "better" society, as the "ethics of knowledge" ideals promised: it will lead to conflict. But conflict of ideas is productive; it is power. We have seen how the so-called "enlightenment model" is either mythical or something to be avoided. The goal is to offer divergent points of view. Choice between limited options is not choice; it is rubber-stamping the decisions of whoever is responsible for the limitation of the choices. As citizens, we are naturally curious about issues we know nothing about; we do not want to be told they are too complex for us, but we do not want a patronizing expert coming to our house to tell us "the way it is" either.