Before I delve into the cost of violence, I’ll digress slightly and talk about violence, society and socio-economic status and the intricate relationship between them.
Violence is the use of physical force to cause injury, damage or death to others or self. It may cover a broad spectrum of activities, ranging from civil wars to murder of entire population, mob justice and civil lawlessness in societies. I would focus on one of the little foxes, mob justice, in this article; we shall look at the elephants in the room, civil wars and genocide in another piece.
Mob justice: Mob justice (MJ) is the practice whereby mobs, usually tens of people, take the law into their hands in order to injure and kill a person accused of wrongdoing. Mob justice is not a recent fashion but an ancient practice dating back to the Roman Empire.
Due to the establishment of civil structures in societies, the issue of mob justice is becoming less common as law enforcement agencies are called upon to handle incidents of crime. However, mob justice prevails in many societies across the world and occurs both in developed and developing countries. It is not a rural craze as one may be inclined to believe. It is more prevalent in cities and recorded even on University campuses. A recent example is the incident that happened on the University of Ghana in March of this year when some students sexually molested a suspected female thief on camera.
Mob justice is a social and public health quandary in several communities in some African countries. A survey in Tanzania showed that 1249 people suspected of various crimes were killed by mobs in Dar es Salaam during the period of 2000–2004 (Afr. Health Sci. 2006 March; 6(1): 36–38). That is almost 250 people killed by mobs per year in one city. Incidents of MJ are recorded in almost every African country with sentences ranging from burning, beheading, stoning and maiming. The effects of MJ on fragile economies such as those in sub-Saharan Africa can be pronounced.
Sometimes the absence of an effective justice system that merits the confidence of the citizens may in part be responsible for the acts of mob justice. Other factors may include low confidence in police and lack of understanding of the legal process.
Does Violence Make a Society Poor or Poverty Makes a Society Violent?
In the past, if you asked me this question, I would provide you with an answer immediately without pre-meditation. However, today, the more I think about it, the more intricate the question becomes.
Societies make people and people make societies. Individual may be pre-disposed to live out what they grew up observing in the society they live in. And the society eventually becomes what the individuals live out.
Statistically more crimes are reported from poor neighborhoods than wealthier suburbs, but statistics don’t mean anything. There are questions such as whether the police patrol poor neighborhoods more frequently than rich suburbs because they expect to find more crime. And whether that what is reported as violence in a poor neighborhood is something else in the rich area. For instance, is the teenager from a poor neighborhood that intrudes his neighbor’s apartment and absconds with the cash under the pillow and the privileged teen from the upper class suburb who hacks the bank’s ATM network from his computer put in the same category?
What is the cost of violence?
Now back to what I’m here. An objective way to establish the consequences of civil violence is to compare two societies at a point in time. According to the World Bank, Burundi and Burkina Faso experienced similar rates of growth in the periods prior to 1990. Unfortunately, due to the civil unrest that grappled Burundi in 1993 onwards, now Burkina Faso is three times economically wealthier than Burundi. Even though not all acts of lawlessness reach the magnitude to be called a civil war, they nevertheless do impact economic and social development. In fact, there are figures that well correlate level of lawlessness in a society to the overall wellbeing of the population. According to the Economist, since 1990, stable countries as a set have reduced infant mortality by 31% but conflict-ridden states have reduced it by mere 19%. They also state that as of now, there is no single violent country that has achieved even one of the Millennium Development Goals (MGD).
The more violent and lawless a society is, the worse it performs in the global competition. As I mentioned elsewhere, violence is not a third or 4th word obsession, it prevails around the globe but some societies have establish robust economies and infrastructures that are able to withstand the backlash from violence. Studies show that the violence cost the US close to $70 billion a year, a fraction of which will wipe out the entire economy of Niger or Togo. It is easy to imagine the crazy images from civil wars from Liberia and Sierra Leone as that kind of violence we are discussing here. However, there are little foxes that have a way to destroy a vineyard. Incidents of burning individuals suspected of witchcraft, robbery and homosexual bullying in some communities and countries are the little foxes that require surveillance before they jump into the vineyard. There are instances of innocent bystanders killed for being mistaken to be suspects by mobs. These have a way of setting up a chain reaction that leads to more violence and lawlessness and may eventually tip a society into being ungovernable. The cost of violence may be distributed over lost productivity, medical care and destruction of infrastructure.
Is there a Solution?
Even though statistics do not tell the whole story, the relationship between socio-economic status and violence has been established through many studies. The easiest way to get people disavow violent behavior is to elevate their socio-economic status and provide them with the type of education that changes their mindset. The two must go together. I remember those days in secondary school when we thought the best way to express our frustrations at any school policy was to burn down the school electricity plant or school bus. Until a society purges itself of such a mindset, it will turn to destroy whatever is built. Similarly you are not going to build anything if you are waiting for a society to turn a monastery.
