Preservation of culture is key for lower crime
Preface: This was written for The Lumberjack newspaper and NorthernArizonaNews.com as a staff editorial. As such, it's written in such a way that it represents the opinion of the paper and not me as an individual. The included image was not published as part of this editorial.
Technological flotsam.
Never have our cultures been subjected to as many influences as they are today. Public schools have something to do with who people are, but they aren't everything. Families and friends play a fairly significant role, but not for everyone. The big cultural wave-maker for society has crept up on everyone, and its doing more harm than good.
In the '60s and '70s, over-the-air television began to take prevalence in middle-class American homes. In the '80s, television broadened its reach to areas outside of broadcast range with community access TV, now cable. In the '90s, the Internet was introduced, and speeds went from bauds to megabits. And, in the last decade, both TV and the Internet have started to merge together and find their way to our smartphones and tablets.
The last 50 years have seen an enormous spike in mass media consumption.
What else has seen an enormous spike in that time? Incarceration. In the late 1970s, 0.1 percent of the American population was incarcerated. Recently, over 0.5 percent was thrown behind bars, according to Bureau of Justice statistics.
Something had to have changed to cause this rise. The correlation between culture and crime seems to be significant, and mass media certainly affects culture.
Floods of information have been pouring through the Internet lately, and people with this new-found means of communication have caused traditional media outlets to rethink their programming to go with what's most popular and not necessarily what's most important.
Take a good look at the CNN homepage. Earlier this week, headline topics included temper-tantrum survival, iPad prices (still?), and questioning whether or not tattoos should be taboo in the workplace.
This begs the question: How much of this "news" and other information is really relevant to our everyday lives? And how much of this irrelevancy can our cultures handle?
The average American watches at least 4 hours of television per day, according to A.C. Nielsen Co. Factoring in 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours at work, and time spent online, how much time does the average American actually have to live?
The Lumberjack is certainly a form of mass media, and you, our readers, are beloved. Mass media isn't always inherently bad, but remember to take breaths while swimming in this ocean of info we all seem to be drowning in. Big, deep breaths.
America is known world-wide for being the country that has the highest rate of imprisonment. It's even gotten to the point where the government is outsourcing prison management to private companies because it can't handle the burden of nearly 2.5 million prisoners nationwide (as of 2006).
Many have been asking the question of why the incarceration rate has been climbing so rapidly, with quality of education an often cited reason for high crime rates. However, high knowledge doesn't equal high character, despite statistical improvements in education.
Student to teacher ratios have fallen from 17.4 students per teacher in the late '80s to 15.3 students per teacher, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council.
The ALEC also shows that there has been an increase in per-pupil expenditures over the last 30 years: $4,924 in '81-'82 to $9,389 in '06-'07. (Note that these are national figures and don't immediately reflect Arizona's educational budget cuts.)
Higher quality education leads to higher crime rates? Insane.
It really all comes down to deciding what information, be it from school or a screen, is important to us as individuals. Should children grow up with The Wiggles, then Miley Cyrus, then Pregnant 16-Year-Olds, then Glenn Beck? Or should their parents and family be their source of model behavior?
When one allows their reality to be crammed with information, stretched and tugged with opinions, then left hung out to dry momentarily only to be thrown back into the mix, their culture, and sometimes individuality, get buried.
And when one loses their culture and identity, their virtues and moral code can degrade along with them.
It hasn't been proven that overconsumption of media increases crime rates. But if more individuals improve their self-identity, their culture and therefore their virtues by moderating intake of media, it would lead to a generally happier population, one that doesn't have as many criminal compulsions.
Let's try to spend less time clouding our minds with barrages of information and refocus our on individuality, culture, and community. Return to local reality and teach culture and mutual respect over punishment, fear and media-encouraged isolation, for the sake of our societal sanity.
Pro-tip: If you want some real news from CNN, click on "International Edition" in the upper left. Or check out Al Jazeera English.