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CHAOS AND CRIME
Lecture 003
The ABCs of Crime: Attractors, Bifurcations and Chaotic Regimes
Jan, 1991
Rev., Aug., 1999
You see, there is so much energy dissipated, that you can use it to build something...cosmos, life, ourselves, [and even society].
...Prigogine
CRIME AND CHAOS The dynamics of our social world can not be captured by the stable and periodic dynamics which are central to classical mechanics. The same is true of criminal behavior.
Instead, what is seen in new findings of chaos research are patterns of instability and change out of which come the incredible variety in infinite complexity of actually existing natural and social forms. In any society, criminal behavior expands and contracts, folds and unfolds with a richness and a discontinuity which appear to be outside the scope of science.
Yet the new science of complexity embodied in the work of Lorenz, Mandelbrot, Takens, Smale, Prigogine and others offers to reclaim the nonlinear dynamics of social systems to the knowledge process we call science. Chaos theory, by helping to map the nonlinearity in physical and natural systems, thus reunites the social sciences with the physical and natural sciences; this time not by forcing the data to fit classical mechanics but rather by relegating classical mechanics to but a few actually existing physical systems.
In this chapter, I want to offer the reader an exposition of crime and chaos and to make the connections in the everyday life of those who may engage in behavior harmful to themselves, to others, to their society or to other societies. There are two concepts which are fundamental to an explication of Chaos theory and its application to a postmodern criminology; that of the attractor and that of bifurcation. These concepts were introduced in Chapter 3; we will flesh them out and explore the varieties of criminal behavior in more detail here.
Nonlinear dynamics produce those fuzzy, fractal structures of social behavior called attractors; nonlinear dynamics also produce three kinds of change at bifurcation points. Together, these concepts and the insights they offer may help redirect attention to the sources and solutions to criminal behavior as we enter the 21st century.
The payoff from such explorations is an understanding that an observer of criminal behavior will observe differing patterns of crime depending upon the region of the attractor observed. In normal, classical mechanics, if one observed one section of a simple system, one knew the dynamics of every other region in the field. Not so in the science of complexity. In fairly stable outcome field, a given set of parameters might produce very little crime; with a small increase in just one of those parameters, an outcome field is expanded and with the new, more complex dynamics, come qualitatively and unpredictable increases in crime... that is what nonlinearity is all about; changing patterns of crime with the same set of variables.
It is also possible to have one set of dynamics (crime, in this case) in one region of an outcome field and another set of dynamics (prosocial behavior) in another region of the field for any given person, firm, or ethnic group without any prior or independent change in the physiological or psychological makeup of the persons concerned. Chaos is not only a science of the whole but is also a science of complexity of the whole.
Transformations to second and third order change for the same kind of system comes when key parameter(s) bifurcates producing two (or more) basins of attraction to which a molecule, a person or a firm could move. In order to grasp this idea, think of a molecule of water. Without any transformation of the structure of a water molecule, a slight change in key parameter, temperature, will offer two basins of attraction between which a water molecule could move. It could be in uniform and undistinguishable motion in a fluid state or it could be part of a much more complex snowflake. At the same time, the snow-flake could move easily back and forth between states without any change in the physical structure of constituent water molecules. The same is true of a wide range of complex systems; viruses, moth populations, fish populations, economics, psychology and, perchance, crime.
It is the fractal patterns, called attractors, produced by nonlinear dynamics which are the object of interest for those who practice this new science of complexity. One collects a large set of data in time series format, puts it through a Chaos Data Analyzer, looks for these hidden attractors in that data set and then manipulates the variables to find which parameters drive this behavior. It sounds simple and in outline, is simple. But much is to be done before this simple research design can be put in place. With such a research capacity in place there is much to be gained; a society can begin to understand the larger social factors which, at one setting, are beneficial to a society but which, at a larger setting, can drive one of the many forms of crime.
This Lecture picks up on the Second Lecture which posed three challenges for postmodern criminology. In this Lecture, I will begin the challenging task of explicating the non-linear ways in which the life of ordinary people change such that antisocial behavior begins to attract larger and larger numbers of people given changes in key economic and social parameters. We first will focus upon the concept of the attractor and then go on to draw out the implications of bifurcations for a postmodern criminology.
A. Attractors In the literature on chaos, a strange attractor is simply the pattern, in visual form, produced by graphing the behavior of a system in phase-space. Since a nonlinear attractor tends to have a more--or less--stable geometric shape, it is said to be attracted to that shape. Since it does not fit the dynamics of newtonian physics, it is said to be strange. Strange attractors are messy; they have fractal geometry rather than euclidean. Some attractors in an outcome basin have linear dynamics. Some have nonlinear dynamics. If the dynamics are nonlinear, small changes produce large differences.
The Torus The simplest strange attractor is the Torus. The word torus comes from the Latin, which means, literally, a swelling. In geometry, a torus is a doughnut shaped structure in which the pathways of a system expand to encompass more of the time-space available to it.
The torus is very important for a theory of non-linear social dynamics as well as for a theory of social change for it defines a pattern of behavior qualitatively different from that which is so highly valued in modern science and criminology. Modern philosophy of science holds that theories which yeild great certainty are more valuable to the knowledge process than are theories which do not yeild predictions which are always and everywhere confirmed. If, as Chaos theory suggests, all complex systems behave in self- similar ways rather than precisely identical ways, then the quest for theoretical propositions powerful enough to predict behavior with such contancy and precision is a lost cause. The better mission of research is to identify the key parameters which produce ever more uncertainty in the lives of animals, peoples and whole societies.
The torus also carries in it dynamics, resolution of the polemics about process and structure. One can see, in Figure 1, that structure emerges out of process. The tracing of the behavior of one system over time yeilds sufficient regularity such that other systems might adjust to it; it then has the features of a social structure in that it sets the limits and/or guides the behaviors of others. In like fashion, the self-similar behavior of a large number of systems at any given point in time serves as a structure to which still other systems must adjust.
Figure 1. Becoming a torus
Self Similar Behavior In chaos theory, sameness is replaced by self- similarity. In the case of the dynamics of, say, bicycle theft, for say, a bicycle thief in New York whose work life has been very, very regular, still there are unpredictable variations in any given parameter.
1. If the first cycle in Figure 1 depicted the cycle of thefts over, say a year, one can imagine that more bikes are stolen in early summer and very few in winter time.
2. If the second set of cycles represent his take over a period of six to ten years, one can see that a definite pattern is emerging.
3. And over a great many years, assuming our bicyle thief is not much different from other bicyle theives in New York, one can map the cycles of bicycle theft to a nicety.
4. Over 25 years, there has emerged enough structure for insurance actuaries to predict liability and set rates for bicycle insurance policies.
There are any number of key factors in his routines which converge to affect the time he might begin his day: his alarm system, his bathing routine, his dressing routine, his breakfast routine, his familial and sociability routines, weather conditions as well as his transport routine. If we were to collect data on all such routines, then we would have a sense of why there is self-similarity in this form of crime but not, repeat, not sameness.
Equifinality In like fashion, a lawyer or physician might well bill her/his patients for legal fees most of the time but, in times of financial stress, might over-bill for hours or in the case of a physician prescribe simple but unnecessary operations in order to handle budget problems. Yet if we were to examine the outcome of the clients of the lawyer or the patients of the doctor, and try to find some sharp differences between those clients/patients who were exploited and those who were not, it might be very, very difficult. Complex systems have a way of absorbing small and large differences such that final outcomes are about the same for clients/patients.
The capacity for a system to ignore or absorb small differences without any significant change in the character of the system is, in system theoretical terms, called equifinality. There are any number of pathways to the same outcome. The important thing to note for a postmodern phenomenology is that is it human judgement and human action which obliterates the differences in actual, observable behavior. While the lawyer may bill for far too many hours, still he might do an excellent job for the client. While the doctor may prescribe an unnecessary operation for a patient, still the life of that patient may not be greatly affected. The doctor knows her patient is covered by insurance; she knows the operation is safe; she knows the patient is in fairly good health; she knows the operation will 'cure' the immediate complaint. So equifinality obtains. Client and patient are served and white collar crime goes undetected.
The Onset of Variation In the life of most people, patterns of life are modeled by a simple torus. Routine is the name of the game at work, at school, at play and during vacation. Over the year, sharp changes are noted: at Christmas time, on anniversaries, when the school year begins and when vacation time comes along. Yet most of the time, patterns of life are stable enough and uncertainties few enough for most people to manage.
And even when great changes come along, there are social routines in place which help a person or family or firm absorb these great changes.
In the case of unemployment, there is unemployment insurance which helps cover household expenses for a few months. In the case of ill-health, there are private and public insurance plans which help reduce uncertainty. In the case of death, there are well-known rituals which help the bereaved cope with the terrible loss of a wife or child. So life goes on.
For our white collar professional, life is even less uncertain. Class, status and social power resources are well above that of lower working class persons...and well above that needed to cope with uncertainties which are built into social life. Salaries, fees, dividends, rents and royalties bring more than enough economic power to manage even large increases in interest rates, tuition hikes, or insurance rates. Old school ties, professional associations, club memberships, friendship networks give social power to the white collar professional not available to the marginalized worker. And social honor demands deference and caution when problems come along...bosses pause before firing an engineer; police are careful when questioning a lawyer; administrations are concerned with public relations at hospitals and a few thousand dollars buys good legal service. Class, status and power combine to protect white collar workers from uncertainties...and even from the consequences of crime.
Much more so than marginalized workers. And it is among marginalized workers where we find most theft, most prostitution, most drug addiction and most uncertainty. Theft and prostitution can help with some unexpected expenses; drug addiction can buy relief from most anxieties...for a while.
Yet even for the solid middle-class professional, sometimes uncertainty cannot be absorbed. Most of the time, changing expenditures are fairly predictable; Christmas comes every year; new automobiles are purchased every two or three years; children off to college at known times; I.R.A.s have to be purchased annually before 15 April. However, any number of new and unexpected expenses might arise which could put our white collar employee in a situation which income does not match expenditure and the choice arises between use of long term savings on the one hand [thereby depleting retirement portfolios] and embezzlement or conversion of property on the other hand.
Cascading Uncertainties The appearence of two or more instabilities at the same time has great implications for qualitative changes in the incidence of crime for any given set of white collar professionals.
That instability might come from the intersection of two factors which strain resources for the persons in question. A medical expense might come at the Christmas season, a car repair might come just as a child leaves home for college. A new product might come on the market just as property taxes increase. A friend might need a bit of help just after one bought a new television set. All this adds up to predictable uncertainty. We know that one's expenditures will fall within the geometric space of a torus but we cannot say at any given time how a weekly or monthly pay check will be spent. As long as the deficit between what one has and what one spends is within a limit circumscribed by thrift, deferral of gratification or by just plain modesty of need, then the torus remains intact.
Chaos theory suggests that, while most people can cope with one or two uncertainties, the interactive effects of three or more uncertainties drive people to look for new ways of dealing with these exigencies. Among the new ways, some are most congenial to the human project; others inimicable. Among these later are, for white collar employees and professionals, all sorts of illegal and unethical behavior which helps the doctor or the lawyer cope with uncertainty in his or her life but puts added stress on patients, clients and employees who have to participate in such fraud or corrupt activity.
Thus, in addition to the certainty required by living expenses and business expenses and the kind of known uncertainties mentioned above; the white collar worker might experience a third set of unexpected uncertainties. If that third uncertainty arises, Chaos theory instructs us to expect an entirely new pattern of behavior. A torus explodes to become a butterfly attractor, i.e., an outcome field with two basins of attraction instead of one. One basin remains the pro-social practice of law, medicine, or dentistry which has always marked the life of our subject. The second and new outcome basin/attractor might will be periodic ventures into illegal and/or unethical behavior in the attempt to cope with the new exigency.
Figure 2. New Ways to Cope with Uncertainty
Actually, one might expect a slight variations in criminal behavior for any set of doctors, lawyers or professionals who experience even one uncertainty in a key variable. Slightly more criminal behavior could be expected with a second uncertainty interacting with the first but it is the third uncertainty that threatens to produce large changes in the criminal behavior of a given set of white collar workers.
Among the exigencies which might interact to greatly expand criminal behavior of middle and upper management employees as well as self employed professionals are:
1. divorce
2. major illness,
3. extra-marital affairs
4. retirement and portfolio concerns
The situation as now defined involves a) a set of predictable and known expenditures, b) a set of unknown expenditures which are expected and c) a set of unknown and unexpected expenses. The known and expected might involve mortgage payments, wages for employees, country club fees, college tuition, clothing and utility expenses as well as vacation costs and retirment/savings allocations. We can expect that, of all employees who get divorced, some small and unpredictable set will begin to embezzle, solicit and take brides, set up false billing accounts or otherwise redirect company funds to private use. xxx
When the regularies between cause and effect, between sanction and behavior, between plans and successes fail, a society must then consider other approaches to deal with the problem of crime. For the postmodern criminologist, Chaos theory suggest that, rather than punishment and a narrow deterrence focussed upon and only upon individuals, the better, more useful approach is to identify the key parameters driving these hidden attractors and, then, institute social policy which enables individual persons and whole social categories to cope with life on terms amenable to the larger concerns of social justice.
Fractal Attractors One will recall from a previous chapter that all natural and physical systems so far studied bifurcate when a key parameter exceeds 3.0 times its value at a semi-stable dynamical regime. And if the ratio exceeds 3.44, still another bifurcation occurs such that four outcome basins develop. Eight attractors develop at the critical value of 3.56 while 16 such fuzzy patterns appear when a key parameter reaches a value of 3.569. After four such bifurcations, the period between them decreases precipitously such that the pattern of such bifurcations is said to 'cascade' toward deep chaotic regimes in which pattern and predictability are very seldom observed.
In such a basin with two attractors (each of which can be viewed as a torus loosely connected to each other), the geometry of behavior becomes uncertain; one may move between antisocial and prosocial behavior; one may be involved in both criminal and prosocial behavior at the same time...indeed, the same act may be criminal while the next iteration is prosocial. The concept of crime becomes very fuzzy while the geometry of crime becomes very complex. I can give two hypothetical examples which may, in real life, actually occur.
In the torus above, as long as need and resources remain below a critical ratio, there is no need to develop a new source of income. However, a small increase in the ratio might make a new source of revenue attractive. Suppose the ratio between income and extra expense seldom exceeds, say, 10% of one's total weekly or monthly wage on the one hand and one's basic needs [real and/or false] and, further suppose that within that ratio, one can over time return to a balanced budget. In any given month, one may be behind yet over the course of a year, one's income is adequate to one's life style. Suppose a new situation occurs in which the ratio of the shortfall between income and expense exceeds 30% of one's income in two or more given months. Chaos theory and the Feigenbaum numbers would predict that a torus would transform into a butterfly attractor with not one but two outcome basins.
In order to cope with these exigencies, a person would have to lower desire or increase income to regain the semi-stable pattern of billing marked by the torus. If neither is changed, or if either variable, desire or income, changes in the wrong direction, a second economic activity with which to augment income might be attractive which, only yesterday, was unthinkable. Inflated billing routines, over-billing third party carriers of insurance, use of unnecessary procedures, fee-splitting and a dozen other illegal and/or unethical practices might will help regain the match between desire and income but such activity would be qualitatively different from legal/ethical behavior and constitute a second pattern of behavior or, in the terms used here, an attractor.
There are about 800,000 doctors in the USA. Suppose their income is stable and insurance rates double from that which is covered by ethical/legal billing routines. Chaos theory suggests that even with a doubling of insurance rates, doctors would be able to adjust other expenses and remain within the constraints of law and ethics. Suppose Insurance corporations triple insurance costs to cover a great increase in claims and/or jury awards. If so, they would have imposed the first Feigenbaum point. Some number of doctors might begin to move to a form of practice in which insurance rates are lower while other hang on a while making adjustments in other expenditures rather than make the qualitative break to illegal practices.
At the same time, some number might move to a strategy in which they use the trust within the patient/doctor relationship to increase the number of unnecessary operations while other doctors in the same circumstances might lower life style ambition. While the emergence of new attractors emerge with astonishing predictability, the remarkable thing is that it is impossible to predict which sub-set of physicians, out of all physicians similarly situated might move to the new attractor comprized of illegal behavior.
B. Bifurcations A bifurcation is a forking or splitting of a parameter. Figure 2 shows the map of a bifurcation process in which a stable parameter, Y, explodes to fill the space available to it (Region D) after it has undergone 3 bifurcations or doublings of its cycles.
In natural or social systems, there are moments when a very small change in a parameter can explode to open up a new track for a system. Systems may then have two states (the limit attractor) to which any member or any iteration may go (Region A). If the system bifurcates again, then a torus develops (Region B). First Order uncertainty creeps in after the second bifurcation. Sameness is replaced by self-similarity.
It is the uncertainty which comes with each bifurcation which one can use for a theory of exploding crime rates. For many, crime may be a way to reconcile the otherwise untractable parameters of life. Property crime, violent crime, and political crime surge nonlinearly when critical social parameters bifurcate. In all complex systems such that involving crime, a person may have a 'modus operandi' in which s/he skirts the borders of criminal behavior now and again. When uncertainty increases qualitatively, a new basin of attraction opens up; some may involve prosocial behavior; some anti-social.
Rural Crime In the case of a given population in an pre- dominantaly rural region, most people might engage in agriculture as their main source of income. One or more key parameters might change to force some off the farm and into a factory for wages to supplement income. Interest rates might increase, weather conditions turn unfavorable, food imports might increase, tax on farm land might exceed a critical value; any one of a dozen factors might change slightly and produce the need for different sources of income. Two or more forms of behavior which yeild income take the form of a Butterfly Attractor (Region C) with uncertainty within and between them. If wage labor is not available or help from kin or state welfare, some small set of farmers may turn to crime to cope with the uncertainty in the income they do have.
Banditry, rustling, kidnapping and highway robbery developed in rural areas in Europe with the advent of industrial capitalism and all the uncertainty it entailed for agrarian peoples. In the USA, Jesse James, Billy the kid, Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde among others were folk heroes to populist sentiment in the 1870s to the 1930s as they 'robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.' In some societies, kidnappers are seen to be heroes since they extort money from the rich.
In his excellent study of banditry, Pat O'Malley of Monash University in Australia found that:
*bandits were supported by their rural community
*bandits tended to rob class enemies: merchants and squatters
*banditry tended to redistribute wealth downward
*bandits are symbols of resistance against the ruling class
More to the question of control vs. prevention of political crime, O'Malley confirmed Hobsbawm's theses that banditry disappears when the state ceases to act on behalf of class elites. Hobsbawm held that unorganized class conflict is the natural terrain for banditry (Cited in Young, 1993:33). When the urban and rural poor are able to organize for political relief of uncertainty, such crime declines.
It is Region C which is of most interest to a postmodern theory of crime since the causal field opens up to accept two different patterns of behavior for the same person or set of persons. It is important to keep in mind that the same set of variables are at work; the causal field expands because and only because a small change in an existing variable (called a parameter in Chaos work) has occurred. And, a new kind of uncertainty has appeared in Region C which we will call second order change since entirely new patterns of behavior are called forth by that small change.
After the fourth bifurcation, uncertainty increases greatly. In technical terms, a system tends to fill the space available to it rather than settle down to a point or to fluctuate between two, four or eight basins of attraction. But note that there are regions of order even in deep chaos...<E>. These regions of order constitute third order change. Here we might see revolutions in which one economic formation replaces another; migrations in which one marriage form replaces another; underground structures in which one sexual modality is replaced or supplemented. Of all the emergent orderliness in deep chaos, some may be congenial to the human project and some most hostile. All will be called sin, crime, deviancy, pathology, evil, or some such pejorative phrase which privileges more traditional ways of doing economics, politics, religion or kinship. These implications for Deviancy Theory are spelled out in another chapter.
Attractor Basins In the Chaos paradigm, systems tumble from one dynamic state another in a very complex pattern of behavior. In so doing, they produce a fractal basin of outcomes with any number of attractors. There may be two, four, eight, sixteen or many, many more states (attractors) to which they are attracted.
In Figure 3, one can see at least seven attractors or endstates toward which a system or person might tend. One attractor state might be wage labor, another might be kinship support, a third, medical fraud, a fourth might involve tax evasion as a way to enhance income.
xxx If we were to translate the basin to corporate crime, given income or cost problems, a corporation might defraud customers, plunder retirement funds, endanger workers, violate minimum wage laws or dump dangerous toxins in rivers, earth fills or the atmosphere. At times, the basin of attractors for corporate crime explode to fill the space available. The operative question for a theory of corporate crime centers around those parameters which force open a causal basin.
The size of the basin of outcomes and its geometry are central to a theory of crime based upon Chaos theory. In a society with a mixed economy and with two sets of compelling parameters (x = parameters of desire, need, obligation or affiliation and y = parameters of income and resources), given persons or groups may be attracted to more than one state. Thus one might depend upon salary, embezzled funds, insurance fraud and income tax fraud as well as fraudulent loans in order to expand the geometries of income to match the geometries of life style expense. If one is disemployed, one might steal a little, accept state welfare illegally, prostitute oneself occasionally, and borrow from friends and family in order to reunite desire and demand.
It is more than of passing interest to note that, on the lower slopes at the intersection of any given set of x parameters or y parameters, causality loosens and prediction (hence control) fails. The operative point is that, given a small increase in x parameters of desire, need or human obligation or small changes in y parameters of wages, salaries, profits, rents, or familial aid, a banker, a doctor, a lawyer or a teenage might move from the regions of an outcome basin in which economic behavior is legal to other regions, some of which are illegal.
Given compelling need, desire, or obligation along with income uncertainty, a person or a group may seek new ways to meet the contingencies and exigencies of life. Some of these pathways may be harmful to the human project. The challenge to criminology, indeed to all social science, is to understand why stable systems bifurcate. In general terms, the question is what is it that kicks a system into far from stable dynamics. In social terms, the question becomes, what is it that makes crime an 'attractive' i.e., normative pattern. Generally, linear feedback amplifies variation while nonlinear feedback tends to promote stability. In more human terms, I suggest that when differences in class, status or power bifurcate without restraint, both property crime and violence pops open in a fractal basin of social dynamics.
xxx Property Crime For our purposes, the unit of analysis involved in street crime may be a particular person or a set of persons. Since property crime is an economic activity, if one wanted the full portrait (in phase space) of the economic attractor(s) for that person, one would have to track the amount of income a person obtained from several sources, say, from wage labor, from private charity including friendship and kinship charity; from state welfare as well as from other unearned income sources such as rents, interest and profits.
In Figure 4, each Box gives two ways of tracking income behavior. Box A might depict the income pattern of a person as s/he grows older; high in the middle years and tapering off to a steady state at retirement. Box B could depict the income pattern of a seasonal worker; high in summer and next to nothing at other times. Box C represents the income pattern of, say, a real estate sales person over four or five months; four of five years; it grows and declines but keeps within limits. It is Box D that is interesting to a theory of crime increase. The lower view shows the butterfly pattern one could not see from traditional time series tracking.
One can see two distinct periods or patterns of income in Box D. One wing of the butterfly might be income that is generated by wage labor. If our subject turned to state welfare, borrowed money, begged from parents, or provided illicit services, the fractal would have two, three, four, five or more wings (or regions) in it. If our person or group invented a new form of crime, still another region would be constructed in a basin of outcomes.
For property crime the question arises, what forces the bifurcation from one source of income to two, three, four or more. The answer is that the same person or set of persons may have a life style changes which pushes the person to generate more income that is available from family, wage labor, charity, welfare or other sources.
Young people, as they move into adulthood, undergo a life style change. Desire for cars, separate lodging, fashionable clothing, concert tickets, jewelry or other items special to youth culture. Allowances and part-time work might not suffice. Charity and welfare are closed options. Most are too young to have unearned income from property. I want to suggest that is bifurcations in a social parameter, in this case desire for consumer goods and services, which destabilizes the economic life of a young person and opens up, nonlinearly, the possibility of property crime as an economic attractor. One must expand one's basin of options if one is to participate fully in youth culture in a consumer society.
For some, the tension between income and desire for goods might be resolved by dropping out of school and working full time. For others, it might mean doing without and foregoing participation in youth culture. Some young people turn to petty theft as a way out. Young men and women shoplift in order to reconcile the growing disparity between income and desire for commodities and services. Some steal from friends and family.
These are the lucky ones; in many cities and towns, organized crime offers opportunity and income. The presence of organized crime circles which require illicit labor and offer relatively large wages in return make crime as an economic endeavor even more attractive.
Organized crime offers several manageable alternatives to open up (bifurcate) a basin of economic attractors for young people. One can steal and supply the demand for fenced auto parts. One can find work in the drug trade or in the policy rackets. One can find work in prostitution or pornography with which to reconcile desire and income. A young person would find it difficult to reconcile other parameters however. Demand on time would might be a problem.
For such a person school work, part-time work, social demands of friends, family affairs and property crime activity all make conflicting demands on time. Again the person might juggle school, social life and theft for a while but if we map out the time parameter in phase space, we would find two, four, eight or more attractors each demanding time.
Crimes of Violence There are several forms of power available with which one person can shape the behavior of another. I want to focus on four: physical power, economic power, social power and moral power. The case I make here is that each form of power is an attractor. If we track the life of any given person, we will find one or more of these activities. Most of us use social power to shape the behavior of known others.
Social power arise from social relationships: family, work, church, recreation and community. Those who are disemployed and who are embedded in a strong and supportive network of friends, neighbors and family often rely greatly upon social power to meet the contingencies and exigencies of life. Symbolic interactions are the media of social power.
Economic power can be used to shape the behavior of unknown others: indeed it is bad form to use money to influence friends and family but not clerks, owners, and tradespersons. Given a regular and adequate income; given levels of desire manageable by either social power or economic power, then violence is not likely to be used. Legal tender are the media of economic power but sometimes direct exchange is made.
Ordinarily, one uses physical power only upon inanimate objects or animate objects without the capacity for symbolic interaction. Absent social power or economic power; given insatiate levels of desire, one might use physical power to reunite desire and supply.
Given uncertainties in resolving discrepancies between needs and resources; given limited resources available within social networks; given limited job opportunity; given incremental debt burden; given continuing desire for housing, food, transport, entertainment, clothing, and given demands by friends or family, one might, nonlinearly, use violence to take what cannot be bought or borrowed. One scarcely need mention that it is minority youth who are most often closed out of social power and economic power by racism. Racism is the parameter; not race per se.
Moral power arises from shared values. Those values are often embedded in a religious tradition but can be secular. Professional ethics is a source of moral power as are laws and civil rights. Moral power can be a constraint on the use of social, economic and physical power in the pursuit of desire. In Part I, I spoke of the bifurcations in social organization that tend to dilute moral power. In Part III, I will use ideas from Currie, Pepinsky, Hulsman, Iadicola and others with which to reinforce and expand moral power as an alternative to physical power and an adjunct to social power in social policy. Generally, social justice is preferable to criminal justice as a solution to crime.
Gender Violence There are several parameters found in American culture which tend to promote violence against women and men. Patriarchy sets the stage for violence against women. By itself, patriarchy might not produce high levels of gender violence, but, coupled with aggression as a solution to uncertainty, they produce a dangerous instability. Low level violence is normative for some families. When a male has a dispute with a female, he often uses physical power to supplement social power inside the household. Some research suggest that, as uncertainties arise on the job or in domestic finances, males increase the frequency and violence of force as a pretheoretical tactic against children and partners.
One cannot predict when a given person will move from supportive gender relations to abusive; nor can one ascertain the precise mix of violence and caring. All one can say within the Chaos paradigm is that women should be on guard when uncertainty enters the life space of males socialized to the use of physical power.
Warfare Men are taught assiduously from childhood that violence is a solution to the determination of status. One fights with fists, knives or guns at home until a certain stable hierarchy is known. Given uncertainties in social power, economic power or physical power, violence may expand.
Men are taught as adults to use guns and bombs as a solution to uncertainty in foreign affairs. Patriotism combines with aggression to create a culture of violence. Again social standing is gained, indirectly by being a proud Brit, a proud German or a proud American. Given uncertainties in foreign markets, access to raw materials (oil is a case in point), or capital flow; given fragmentation of social power or failures of economic power, one nation may use physical power in the effort to shape the behavior of another. Such efforts should be futile, if Chaos theory is correct, since causal connections between force and compliance fade and fail as force bifurcates.
Racial Violence Given the degradations of racism, it begins to be acceptable to use physical force against minorities. As social power and economic power become uncertain, one should expect recourse to physical power. One might expect both declassed Anglos as well as Blacks to use violence in their existential terror over jobs, housing, status and local politics. Given the covert backing of institutional racism, moral constraints on Anglo violence are reduced; Chaos theory would suggest unpredictable outbursts of Anglo racial violence as uncertainty increased in two, three or more arenas of life: jobs, politics, marriage or such.
Organized Crime Organized crime is considered crime since it profanes sacred supplies. The commodification of sex, gaming, drugs, violence and other such services continues to grow and thrive in a market economy. Those who provide illicit goods and services themselves, if Chaos findings are relevant, may be caught up in bifurcated life situations reconciled by offering such services. Again, if we set desire for a life style as a driving force, then we have to think about the alternative attractor states available for those who deal in drugs, prostitution, fencing, extortion, gambling and other such income producing ventures.
Many legitimate income attractor states are more or less saturated. Small business is very competitive. Large business organizes market monopolies. Professions require credentials. For those closed out of such occupations, illicit markets attract both workers and entrepreneurs. If police and courts do not complicate things too much; if markets are stable; if supply is available, then organized crime is an attractive income alternative. Racism tends to protect established economic privileges. For such persons, organized crime offers growth markets for sex, gambling, drugs and stolen goods.
Yet if uncertain supply of drugs, uncertain supply of pushers, uncertain enforcement by officers and courts (rather than collusion) as well as vagaries in moral onus converge to complicate the life of the illicit entrepreneur, s/he might well find that there are too many variables to juggle and give over such trade. The person or the set of persons might try other ways to reconcile desire and resources with which to reconcile desire.
One must inquire about the demand for illicit goods and services. The essential thing about most goods and services offered by organized crime is that these are solidarity supplies used as pathways to the Holy in premodern societies. Massification of markets, schools, churches as well as their bureaucratization together with industrialization has reduced both the realm of the Holy and the reach of the Holy. The privatized use of drugs, sex, gaming, erotic literature and other psychogens, combined with the market economy tends to desanctify these supplies. One can then use them for any personal or social purpose one wishes.
Given high levels of interpersonal insecurity and given the definition of such commodities as solidarity supplies, one learns to reach for them when the problematics of life grow untractable. When authentic intimacy, sensuality and love are unavailable, commodity love and intimacy offer short term satisfaction. When wages are uncertain, gambling becomes a magical way to reunite desire and need. When truly religious spirituality is lost to the rationalization and formalization of the church, a certain privatized spirituality is available through the use of alcohol or other drugs.
Corporate Crime Corporations thrive in a rational environment. If labor supply is tractable; if demand is dependable; if taxes are manageable; if competition is congenial, retail outlets are captive and if governments are friendly, one would not expect corporations to commit crime. In this case, desire for profits could be met. Changes in any expense parameter could affect the attractor state for corporate income. Labor costs, management perks, taxes, capital equipment, raw materials, licenses, bribes, campaign contributions, association dues are among the parameters which can force a bifurcation. Several can change at once and force a firm to look for other ways to generate order. As H. Ross Ashby once said in his Principle of Requisite Variety, only variety can cope with variety to generate order. Crime offers several such options for re-instituting rationality and predictability.
The picture one gets from Chaos theory is that, in order to forestall bankruptcy, to attract capital investment, to satisfy ownership and otherwise function as a corporate entity, corporate officers find crime an attractive alternative economic tactic. If workers are weak and or legislatures friendly, labor can be exploited. If customers are unorganized and legislators indifferent, fraud and defective goods offer possibility for reconciling desire for profits and expenditures. If legislators are carefully preselected and low income neighborhoods vulnerable, toxic wastes can be dumped.
If only one of these parameters is untractable, say labor supply, then it can be managed by increasing wages. If two are unpredictable, say labor supply and competition, then the corporate officer could reconcile desire for profits by increasing prices and seeking government subsidy. Disorder is transferred to customers or to the state. Chaos theory suggests that corporate officers might begin to consider criminal action as three or more attractors become fractal, i.e., worker supply, competitor activity or, say, customers become unpredictable and there are fewer alternatives from which to seek and obtain order for the system.
If governments become untractable, firms can exploit dealerships, franchises, captive retail outlets and thus transfer disorder to small business. If governments become too untractable; passing pollution laws, labor laws, consumer protection laws and such, they close off the options for reconciling profits, costs and income. If laws are passed and if corporations cannot count upon benign neglect, or if policing laws even becomes uncertain, the rational thing to do may be to move to, say Mexico, Korea or Malaysia.
Chaos theory teaches us that a corporation might live with two or three unmanageable parameters but when a fourth, fifth and sixth parameter explodes to fill the space available to it, then crime becomes a quick and easy solution. One either eliminates the effects of the parameter or one turns to another parameter to generate order.
White Collar Crime White collar crime involves deception and subversion of the social trust and social power by doctors, politicians, lawyers, banker, professors and real estate brokers not to mention small businesses which depend upon the social power of community, fellowship and friendship with which to compete with big business.
If we use Chaos theory as an intellectual tool with which to sort out white collar crime, we would for small changes in income or in life style. Generally professionals have three sources of income; fee for service, rental property and investment portfolios. Life style demands can be very high. Houses cost hundreds of thousands of dollars; furnishings and maintenance tens of thousands more. Country club memberships, cultural affairs, vacations plans and community benefits demand thousands more each year. Add to that the costs of college for the children of the professional classes, tax burdens as well as insurance costs and one has a demand for high and steady income sources.
If we put ourselves in the life of, say a physician who has an income of two hundred thousand a year and expenses of roughly the same, then one has a steady state that might vary even less than the fractal in Box C above. A small change in any one of their parameters might destabilize the economic state of a white collar family. Divorce is a particularly expensive process; it forces a sharing of income between two households both with life style needs. While the data suggest that income drops more for wives, curiously, it is white collar males who tend to turn to crime; it is they who have social positions to exploit.
Income might drop. Investment portfolios might fail in a savings and loan crises. Property income might fail if a major corporation moved from a city. Governments may alter third party health care schemes and curtail sources of income. Patients may default on bills as wages decline or jobs disappear. A doctor might be able to handle one, two or three such losses but four or more might drive her/him to crime.
The possibilities for violation of trust are many for doctors. They can prescribe unnecessary and expensive medical procedures. They can bill Medicare and Medicaid for services not rendered. They can massify and mechanize the clinic substituting interpersonal therapies with drug therapy. They can bill patients at $40 to $100 dollars a visit when most of that time is taken up with low paid nurses and technicians. Doctors can exploit the labor of employees, promising retirement plans, profit sharing, and wage increases---then dismiss the nurse or technician without so doing.
Again, one must wonder why it is possible for good people to commit crime and to escape guilt and shame. In Part I, I suggested bifurcations of moral responsibility are part of the answer. In the case of a physician, third party payment dilutes the effects of fraud. The putative 'victim' becomes the abstract state or the remote insurance company. One has less compunction robbing them than patients directly. But doctors do over prescribe drugs and operations for known, trusting patients. They tend to do so for persons of low status. People receiving state aid are degraded in our health care system much more so than in Canada or Europe. Women are the victim of choice for unnecessary operations in a sexist society. Elderly persons are the victim of choice for over prescription of drugs.
Those forms of crime which can be done by remote or diluted agency are preferable for those professionals who are well socialized and who have good images of themselves. There is less onus for harming nonpersons than persons with full social standing. The same doctor who exploits the government can be very compassionate for friends or for charity patients of his own. The more bifurcations of responsibility, the more attractive become the crime. The same is true of corporate officers above or political criminals below.
Political Crime. There are four generic kinds of political crime, each of which has its own attractors and bifurcations. There is first the crime of a state against its own people. When politicians subvert the political process at home in the interests of corporate elites, gender privilege and ethnic preference they do much harm to women, minorities, workers, customers, residential areas, small business and others excluded from the political process.
Then there are crimes of one country against others. All the rich countries, as a loosely connected bloc, subvert the economy and politics of their client states in the third world. The kinds of crime observed here vary from out and out warfare with pillage, rape and murder to the bribery of political leaders. Genocide is a third major form of political crime. One people may eradicate another in order to have access to land, game, natural resources or property. Then too, there is the crime of citizens against their own government. Assassination, rebellion, treason and other forms of crime are included in this genus.
Chaos theory would suggest one would look at larger social parameters, note when they change from Box C to Box D, above, dynamics. Then given disorder, inquire into the tactics used to restore order. In the sixties, students, women and minorities all engaged in destabilizing street politics. The antiwar movement added a fourth destabilizing arena. At the same time, there were constant political attractors which were privileged. The Nixon government had built its legitimacy on law and order, on economic support of business, upon a subtle appeal to racism and upon the firm grounds of patriarchy. Chaos theory would suggest that, while a government might be able to manage one, two or three forms of resistance and rebellion, they could not ignore four, five or more.
The Nixon administration did, in fact, respond to the anti-war movement by withdrawing from Vietnam and by moving to the tactics of 'low-intensity' warfare in its other military operations. This response successfully dampened anti-war disorder. However, Mr. Nixon could not go back on the law and order theme; aggressive policing of street crime masked the fact that business was being deregulated and corporate crime overlooked as part of the Nixon effort to keep American business competitive with Pacific Rim nations.
Nor could Mr. Nixon support ERA and equal opportunity for women since most men (and many women) accepted gender inequalities. The entry of women into the labor pool as auxiliary to the income of males meant that employers did not have to pay full wages and benefits to such 'part-time' employees.
Racism offers several advantages to politicians in search of legitimacy; it offers racial superiority in lieu of economic democracy or social justice. It creates a surplus labor pool with which to drive down labor costs. It transfers the costs of 'development' to unorganized sectors of the population. The death of Mr. King was a crucial, sensitive event that sent civil rights movement in a different trajectory.
As long as women, Blacks or workers have no political power; as long as they are denied voting rights or their social power fragmented by other means, such disorder is manageable by the usual control tactics; force, fear and minor concessions. When women, workers or minorities have votes and are represented in law making bodies, they may not be safely ignored. One way to manage dissent is for the state to go underground. Mr. Hoover used a variety of dirty tricks to discredit Mr. King. Mr. Nixon was able to destabilize Democratic party opposition by his Committee to Reelect the President headed by John Mitchell.
Given a set of prime attractors and the resources to do so, it is rational to wage an underground warfare in the effort to end destabilizing social protest. Mr. Nixon and his administration used illegal tactics at home and abroad with great skill. Mr. Reagan and his administration did more with lesser ability.
Political crime of citizens against their own government are commonplace. Perhaps the most common such crime is income tax evasion. IRS estimates that from 30 to 50% of returns are fraudulent. Most of this comes from small business and professionals since waged persons have much less room for creative accounting. For such crimes, one would return to an analysis of the deteriorating income sources or unpredictable expenditures faced by those with a middle class life style to maintain. One can 'save' several thousand dollars by any one of a dozen illegal tactics.
One must note that a certain political legitimacy can be obtained by transferring uncertainty to third world countries. Social justice programs which offer long term response to inequality and uncertainty at home for minorities, women, and workers can and often does increase social distress and disorder in client states. The lessons of empire learned by the British, French, Portuguese and Germans illuminate the transfer of uncertainty and inequality to colonies. Crimes against other states often stabilize and bring order with them.
Finally, but not unimportantly, genocide is a short term solution to inequality and uncertainty. The surplus population of Europe organized to slaughter Native American Indians in order to clear the land and provide economic security to immigrants. Germans gained much from the slaughter of Jews in WWII. Property was confiscated, competition eliminated, jobs were provided in the military, the SS, and in the prison camps, social honor was reinforced (by claims of superiority for self and by degradations for others) as well as some debts canceled.