NAVEED PARA
Prof. Gillin has observed that “it is the not the humanity within the criminal but the criminality within the human being which needs to be curbed through effective administration of criminal justice”.
Those who expect a new law to magically make all that nasty bad behavior disappear actually fool themselves. You can change the said behavior by severe means, but making laws is not one of them. At most, it reinforces the other methods.
The delusion of members of our political class is that they truly believe that human nature can be controlled or even modified, by the creation of more laws. The reality is that laws only succeed in taking away the liberties of law-abiding citizens and never deter the criminal. Criminals do not bother with laws, more the laws more the criminals.
The more laws and restriction there are the poorer people became.
Law are written by the powerful, for the powerful; therefore voting for lawmakers is like deciding which wolf may eat you for supper. Laws are the primary means by which a minority may control a majority, because the enforcement of law rationalizes coercion. The more law binding the ruled majority and fewer the laws binding the ruling minority, the more inequality rules the day. If the law had served its supposed purpose in the first place (i.e. justice for all) there would be no need for more laws. One bad law begets another and another and another. The more new laws that are passed to address injustice, the less effectively justice has been upheld by old laws. Justice should be the one putting wrap on politicians.
Laws that purport to serve common interests centralize authority, they undermine the rights of individuals and function as reigns that may be used to steer society as if it were a team of horses. The first basic problem with our legal system is that they are the Xerox copies of the then British governments which in turn has led to the non-effectiveness of such laws because they were suitable for the English for their conditions not for our social conditions as everyone knows that law is a common sense then why to imbibe it with lot of technicalities which on the practical ground reduces its effectiveness.
Obviously social defense (elimination of crime and criminals from the society) is the objective of the law. The problem of crime control essentially involves the need for a study of the forces operating behind the incidence of crime and the variety of co-related factors influencing the personality of the offender.
As recently after Dhamini case in Delhi the legislators came up with a new anti-rape law as they were unaware of the existing law. More and more law making is a loss of time and energy. Even after this law as everyone knows that rape cases continues with faster rate as recently 5 year old girl was raped in Delhi even in presence of the tougher anti-rape law. So finally making more and more laws is not a solution as it will escalate more crimes and more conflict. What we lack is the effective implementation.
(The writer may be reached at naveedpara@gmail.com.
The views expressed are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper)