Common crimes in society

Common crimes in society are fortunately the ones that prevail and at the macro level, the issue of security in society has two aspects: the absence of threats and the absence of fear.

To be truly safe, objectively there must be no apparent dangers that they face in daily life, and subjectively, we must be able to do our business and live our lives without feeling/believing that we are in danger.

For this reason, the issue of security is often more felt in some parts of cities, or in some geographical areas than in others, etc. beyond the subjectivity of the individual who has a personal perception of the danger related to culture, personal abilities, knowledge of danger, etc.

The United Nations in 1994 created a comprehensive definition of “Security” that included rights and freedom for individuals to develop their full potential etc. but is it still relevant in 2020?

Common crimes, but crime in general and actions that go clearly against the laws that human beings have set out to live in society, have always existed since ancient times.

Not even deterrents such as prison, or the severe death penalty in some states and which is still in force in some countries of the world, can act as a deterrent and the reasons are varied and complex because they are the sum of different social and psychological aspects of the subjects.

Motives such as necessity, which leads to non-violent criminal acts which, although they are not acceptable and justifiable, can still be compred.

Serial criminals

On the other hand, the discourse is different when we talk about real serial criminals who live off crime or seek easy profit through theft and robbery, which requires a more careful and rigorous judgment so that modern society continues to function at its best.

Be careful that you should also not exclude computer scams that are still crimes that are perceived as less dangerous to the individual but that exist and that have less to do with personal security but on which you still need to be careful.

Unfortunately, the phenomena of micro-crime, which are also often widespread on the territory, but which, for various reasons, are beyond the control of the authorities and whose communication by the victims is sometimes not taken for granted because they are not reported and this is a mistake, remain in the shadows.

What you can control and what you can control

From a personal management and risk reduction perspective, in general you as an individual have little ability to reduce or eliminate the threats that exist in society.

For example, how can you influence the number of robbers and thieves in your city, in your supermarket, the drugs that circulate, the driver gone crazy, the house mice, the violent people who go around, the rapists, etc.

You have the opportunity to reduce your vulnerabilities and exposure to potential risks and “threats” through behaviors and attentions/precautions that you can implement at different stages and contexts and that eliminate the advantage that you can deliberately or inadvertently give to an attacker.

We talked about this in several posts, such as being distracted during your phone, or closing an open window, attitude, context, etc.

But part of the composition of your security is definitely living with the absence of fear, and that’s why I’m doing this analysis with you because over the years I’ve observed a lot of people and how some mistakes are triggered that many people have about crime and violence and that leads them to live in a state of perennial fear outside and in some cases inside the house.

Your personal safety and that of your family members must not result in perennial fear and paranoia.

Violent crimes

It is very easy to be distracted by dramatic and particularly violent crimes, especially when it comes to violence against women, minors,even animals.

Television and print media often engage in that sequence of horror distortion by doing services, schematics, plastics, etc. with dozens of macabre assumptions as if they wanted to extol fear and terror.

The story of a horrible story with the aim of “entertaining” the audience but that goes to touch the most hidden emotions and fears of people creating a sense of insecurity often unjustified and not real in people.

This “state of artificial fear” is then built until a new baseline is created and we accept that this extreme is the new normal even when it is not.

We are talking about manipulation of reality!

It is not only the media that are responsible for leading people to believe that they live in a new non-existent reality, academic and professional communities are also responsible for contributing, I too could build an exasperated security idea with this blog by raising that line that I repeat is often imaginary and not related to the reality of where you are.

Attention! This affects your life negatively, if you want a comparison term it’s like you become on the subject of hypochondriac safety.

Hypochondriac (suffering from hypochondria) is when a patient or person continues to misinterpret certain bodily sensations despite receiving relevant, valid and well-founded medical reassurances, and despite having the intellectual skills to understand the information received.

This phenomenon can be created on different issues! That’s why I invite you to do a research on false memory syndrome (FMS).

When does FMS occur?

FMS occurs when an individual believes or is objectively convinced that they have experienced something in the past, usually due to some form of “suggestion” in a therapy session (or through the “guidance” of psychologically unhealthy self-help books), but the accident/violence/event never occurred.

Memories are extremely malleable, however safe we are and in fact, the belief cannot be used as evidence of the certainty of an event, as has been demonstrated by many inaccurate accounts of witnesses convinced that they had seen or heard something and that they were absolutely certain of what they saw and heard and then cameras or other witnesses declared totally different sequences and facts.

The reasons can be many, also linked to stress, to a wrong perception beyond the perjury that can also happen but in this case it is a crime made in bad faith for the personal interests or of the accused.

Court cases

In jurisprudence there are unfortunately court cases where witnesses or victims made statements through the help of psychologists that led to the conviction of innocents for first-degree murder, based solely on a suppressed/repressed memory of witnesses as minors, and which brought this practice into discussion by creating a debate in the foreground.

It is not a strange thing even today where there are cases of people who have been taken away by children for false testimonies and induction into children of false memories that led them to think and say phrases as if they had really suffered violence.

It is now better understood and accepted that we can create memories in which we believe and that memory alone is rarely reliable to establish real events especially in procedural stages but it is always important to pay close attention to what is stated by witnesses.

The acceptance of manipulative psycho science and the sequence of distorted news that lead to the distortion of crimes by the media can lead many to believe that they are victims of violence, abuse, living in an unsafe environment, surrounded by criminals, etc. and that sexual abuse is more common and growing more than perhaps even one who makes a more risky advance by making a compliment as an act of sexual violence or to make believe minors to be abused by their parents because they gave them an “educational slap” on the butt certainly not to hurt.

Thankfully, even if you have unrealistic expectations about the types of crimes that can happen to you, the reality is that most criminal acts are trivial and ordinary, such as property theft, computer and non-computer scams, etc.

You can also have unrealistic expectations about your objective security, such as the role and effectiveness of law enforcement and law enforcement regarding crime prevention and reduction, this is another common mistake that many people believe in.

It is worth noting that in almost all cases a crime is committed first and then the police arrive and sometimes, the criminal justice system does not always know about it and in some cases is able to act by punishing the culprit.

More police don’t mean more security

Many people believe that an overall increase in police patrols is effective in reducing crime, and as logical as thought in most studies and tests done is not so.

For when the police significantly increase their presence in a city, for example, neither criminals nor civilians notice that this has happened.

Only concentration in a given area acts as a deterrent, but it is unrealistic and always happens for some reason and that also means that many other areas are even less protected.

This is because if you consider the extent of the control even in a small town, it is impossible, even doubling the number of officers, to “double” the police presence, due to the size of the area that needs to be covered.

The only effect you can theoretically get an intervention time that is reduced, since statistically there is more chance that an agent is close to you, but in actually making people and criminals aware of a greater police presence can only be achieved by concentrating public security agents at certain known hot spots, and specific places/routes, etc.

Today, however, technology can help but there seems to be little will to experiment with solutions to be integrated into the physical presence of security agents.

Crimes and the presence of law enforcement

Crimes are rarely prevented by the presence of an officer, since criminals know that a law enforcement officer, at some point, will have to go on as part of the job, it is not that he is always at the same point.

I also understand, however, that in some cases many cities are short of staff and resources, but unlike popular belief, the increase in the number of patrol officers has been shown to have a small effect on deterrence, apart from when patrols have been concentrated in specific areas.

Fortunately, the chances of you facing an assault are very low!

The crimes you’ll face are more likely to be trivial than dramatic, e.g. a theft of a mobile phone or purse, your phone pickpocketed or grabbed, etc., and most of the snatches and robberies in the street are unlikely to involve an exposed weapon.

The theft of a car or motorcycle that takes place when you are not present, you are hardly stopped at traffic lights with a pointed weapon that tells you to get off and leave his car or motorcycle.

Home burglaries

Even most home invasions fortunately are not a danger to your person because they usually happen when you are not at home, but the wrong people who get in the way of what they think is their property exist and for this you have to work on home or housing prevention and security, etc.

Clearly there are also more violent crimes, what are commonly called assaults in the villa but again it is necessary to adapt to your condition with security systems and behavior suitable for the context.

Surely if you have values at home such as watch/gold collections, etc. or do a certain type of work as a jeweler, etc. you are more exposed to risks especially if this information ends up in the wrong hands.

This does not mean that you have to discard these threats and dangers, it is likely that the same precautions that are necessary to protect your home from theft are also useful for other types of crimes.

It’s critical that you work on realistic expectations of the situations you can face and where you’re more likely to get involved and prepare to address these situations and plan to prevent accordingly.

Investigative Police or Preventive Police

Usually the police in most countries are investigative which means that in most cases the police respond after an event rather than during.

Once they intervene they do an investigation to take the i or the criminal.

To sum up, it’s up to you to initially deal with most unpleasant encounters and criminal situations.

The Preventive Police, on the other hand, also stops people who seem suspicious or otherwise trying to intercept any criminals or people with aggressive tendencies before they commit the crime but is often seen as an abuse of this form.

I think it depends on how the security forces are put in place.

Surely today there is a perception of little security and where the criminal is often free to commit crimes and turn freely undisturbed.

In some countries it is necessary to adapt the regulations to the new levels of violence and after decades to reform the security orders to try to make them more modern and above all more citizen-oriented to rebuild that just trust in law enforcement that, however much you think when you have a problem who do you call? so they do their job.

Certainly, even if it is my opinion, it is necessary to reform and modernise the police forces by trying to enhance their best characteristics and to remove those who are not suitable for carrying out delicate and complex functions such as security and the protection of citizens.

Conclusions

It is very important in terms of safety to always work on the objective reality and not on the perceived reality because the risk is to arrive at a paranoid approach that affects your life and that of your family members creating a state of fear and general insecurity.

That’s why it’s important to analyze common crimes and their dynamics.

Unfortunately, I know of several people who have come to that point also for having taken non-professional courses of personal defense that over time have led them to carry out behaviors that have negatively affected their personal lives.

It is important to always work in a real context and not fantasy, and I assure you that often most courses are pure fantasy, both as arguments and dynamics of aggression, and also technically where gaps are unbridgeable.

Fortunately, as I told you in this post even those who attend these courses will hardly face a real aggression or situations of real danger, and this is also the luck of the many fake instructors who can tell stupidity so much no one will ever tell him that what he teaches is stupid.

Stay Tuned!

Street Fight Mentality