my wife and I were on holiday, our house was burglarized. So we joined the local Block Watch, put in an alarm, installed three sensor lights, replaced regular locks with double deadbolts on all out- side doors, added a few huge sliding bolts, strengthened hinges, placed bars on the windows and grills on the doors. “This place is beginning to look fike a bar and grill," my wife remarked. “We have created a Maginot Line,” was my com- ment. A Maginot Line indeed. The Nazi panzers simply went around the line, through Belgium. A few months after we for- tified our home, our next door neighbours’ house was broken And, a few weeks later, after they too had taken steps to secure their premises, their neighbour was the victim of breaking and entering. Except in the minds of simpletons, there is no simple approach to crime. A great variety of factors can turn potential criminals into actual lawbreakers. Right now, the need to pay tor illicit drugs figures promi- nently in much current crimi- nal activity. So, does the drive to acquire unaffordable mater- ial goods, especially in a con- sumerist society in which wealth is flaunted in every- one’s face and, in a relentless barrage of advertising, people are told that they are what they own. Many criminals view their activity as just another high- risk business. There are plenty of opportunities, they pay 110 taxes, the overhead is low, and compared to the rate of bank- ruptcies and the level of unemployment, the odds of being caught are insignificant. Only a small fraction of the perpetrators of the scores of break-ins per average day in the Greater Vancouver area are charged, and there are even fewer convictions. The total annual insurance payout for these burglaries is close to $100 million, only part of the picture since not all crimes are ceported, not every- one js insured, and there is a substantial and increasing deductible amount. Our society can go on spending more money on hardware and electronics, installing alarms, hiring private security forces, and living increasingly in a state of uneasiness while the thieves also go on finding new ways to perform criminal acts and expand their activity co other fields. Or we can start to do something about the social and cultural causes of crime. Year after year proposals have been made to de-crimi- nalize the use of certain banned substances. Our much vaunted “war on druge” is an obvious failure. In spite of this, the federal government continues to dghten legislation on drugs. While victims are distressed and pained by theft, it is nor necessarily accompanied by violence. But the potential for violence lurks in any crime. A generation of kids exposed to unprecedented depictions of television violence and the Clean-up! Save up to 50% See store for details Hurry. Sale ends May 2, 1999 Wednesday, April 21, 1995 — North Shore News — 19 | Society and culture are the causes of crime interactive vicarious brutality of many video games are being conditioned to a greater acceptance of violence. Voluntary compliance by broadcasters in reducing the level of depicted violence on television has nor worked. By cutting welfare allowances, making economic assistance harder to obtain, reducing, unemployment insurance eligibility, we are simply shifting tax dollars to police, court, and prisons. If we want to feel safer, what's left, when it is available, will have to go towards insurance, hardware, security, etc., etc. None of this will reduce the level of criminal behaviour and none of it will reduce the degree of fear and anxiety under which we all have to live now. In the U.S.A., where there are more private cops than public cops, with the death penalty in force in many states, with longer and longer jail sentences and a get tough policy, the Prison population has reached an all time high of over 1,100,000! Yet, crime goes on. Surely, we can avoid join- ing this march of folly and do something more effective and meaningful for a change. — Eugene Kaellis writes from the Burnaby Multiculeural Centre. The North Shore News requ- larly allocates space for reader input on a wide range of com- smnunity issues in the ‘form of suest columns, Tf you have a column please send it ¢/o The Editor, North Shore News, 1139 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, V7M 2H4 or via e-mail to . Submissions weust be typewritten and should be approximately 500 words. The Performing Company of Vancouver Island Youth Dance Theatre DANCESTREAMS with Special Guests Arts Umbrella presents Celtic @ Modern Jazz ® Story Ballet @ Flamenco “TOUR 'S9 saturday, May 1st, 1995 at 8:00 pm. 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