Everything you know about crime, why it happens and how it can be stopped is probably a carefully filtered illusion.
That’s the argument Mississippi State University sociology professor Raymond Barranco presented Thursday to the Exchange Club of Columbus at Lion Hills Center.
Only about 20% of the population has had direct, firsthand experiences with the criminal justice system, he said. That means everything the remaining 80% believes they know about crime and the criminal justice system is secondhand knowledge.
“If you don’t have to deal with it, then you assume that it kind of works the way that it’s supposed to because you haven’t experienced it yourself,” Barranco said. “Whereas someone who’s been through it probably doesn’t think that it works exactly the way it should.”
Barranco explained that each individual’s perception of reality is socially constructed through both firsthand experiences and secondhand understanding often influenced and filtered by significant others, like friends and family, social groups and institutions as well as by media. The combination of both creates how each person perceives what is real and true, he said.
“We’re taking that information that we’re being told is true, that we haven’t experienced ourselves, and we’re putting that in with our experienced reality,” he said. “And once we meld those two together, we get socially constructed reality.”
Imagine you’ve only interacted with police officers three times in your entire life, and each time, the officer was rude and uncaring, Barranco said.
“Based on these experiences, you may believe that the police are rude and uncaring, whereas in reality, most of them are probably very nice and very caring,” he said. “But based on your experienced reality, that is your view of what the truth is.”
The problem comes when communities have vastly different perceptions of what is real and what isn’t, Barranco said. If half of the community claims everything is fine in the criminal justice system while the other half believes the system is broken, it’s hard to land on an agreeable solution.
“That’s two completely different policy explanations or policy changes, and you’re not going to get consensus or anything like that to make changes,” he said. “It just stays the same, and nothing gets done.”
Fixing the problem starts with rebuilding community connections, Barranco said. When no one cares about other community members, they don’t care to get involved when there’s a crisis, he said.
“If you think about small communities where everybody knows everybody, if someone’s going down the road who’s not supposed to be there or if they’re doing something wrong, you know who to call or who their parents are … and you can take care of that really quickly,” he said.
Being open to different perspectives also plays a critical role. Barranco said people often think their experience applies to other people, and so they search for confirmation of that in people who think similarly, rather than considering a different perspective.
“If people were more willing to listen to others’ experiences and not just say, ‘Oh well, that’s not what really happens’ or ‘I’ve never experienced that, so I don’t think that’s true,’” he said. “People come from different backgrounds, have different life experiences. You’ve got to be willing to listen to what they’re saying.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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