Crime: proactive solutions

With Karachi's street crime rates showing no signs of abating, the recent imposition of a 23-year prison sentence on a man convicted of robbery and attempted murder, among other charges, at least provides reassurance to citizens that criminals who do get caught will face appropriate punishment. The sentence also reminds criminals that their actions have severe consequences. However, it is always important to remember that the long-term solution for most crimes has very little to do with policing or harsh punishments. Nor is it simply a matter of religiosity or morality, as some conservative commentators would claim. If either case were true, countries like Saudi Arabia would have no crime.

While policing is considered the easiest and fastest way to stop criminals, it is also the least effective in terms of addressing the urge or need of some people to indulge in crime. This is because crime is primarily attributable to a sense of deprivation, whether real or imagined. In Pakistan, which has ongoing economic, education, healthcare and security crises, to name just a few, the sense of deprivation is very real for most of the population, creating fertile grounds for cultivating criminals.

Addressing this would require a multi-prong approach that gets out-of-school children back in the classroom, makes healthcare services more affordable and accessible, increases employment and wages, and improves the social security net to reduce the number of people living in poverty. The prison system also needs significant reforms to ensure that convicts learn employable skills behind bars, so that when they are released, they are capable of finding honest work, rather than returning to a life of crime.

Unfortunately, not only do all of these measures require money, which the government barely has, but they also require several years to begin showing visible results. This makes all of the most likely scenarios - those in which the focus remains on reactive solutions like policing and judicial actions, rather than proactive ones.