(Bus) Safety

It is very possible that there is a person alive in Winnipeg today who would not be had Vince Weiguang Li been denied his knife of a Greyhound Bus in July of 2008. His horrible, tragic, unprovoked, and brutal murder of fellow passenger Tim McLean was not a rational act, and was a crime that likely would have been committed eventually anyways, and would not have been stopped by increased bus security.

And yet, an increase in security is exactly what Greyhound intends to do. Passengers in major terminals may now be swept by hand-held metal detectors, have their luggage checked, and may be required to store all luggage save for purses and wallets under the bus (CBC, 4 Dec 2008). Greyhound officials say that these measures are the result of a two-year safety study, and do not directly relate to any one incident. I am all for increased safety, but all that these measures lead to is an increase in security instead.

It is hard to argue that metal detectors and luggage searches that remove knives from buses will not lead to an increase in security. But at the expense of time, money, and personal freedom, these measures overpower the safety they look to ensure. Particularly concerning is the prospect of not being allowed carry-on luggage. I often travel with a newspaper, book, camera, snack, water, etc. and such a provision would make this impossible. The Greyhound is great because it is cheap and fast, and does not require reservations, however these security features put that in jeopardy, as wait times and costs would surely increase.

Knee-jerk reactions of increased surveillance and inspection are indicative of a time and place where a Prime Minister gets re-elected with a tough-on-crime agenda. We are constantly being warned about the threats to our safety, whether it's killers on the bus or terrorists sending signals across Swedish borders. Furthermore, the only way to stop these threats is increased surveillance and harsher penalties.

What these theories fail to address is the root of the problems, and instead they just exacerbate them by directing funding away from development and into punishment, and locking criminals up, together, for longer periods of time, with less effort directed towards rehabilitation. The justice system is supposed to serve three simultaneous purposes: punishment, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Punishment is really simply a primal instinct for revenge, and does not serve a whole lot of purpose beyond satiating our desire to see this. I do not deny possessing these feelings myself, but in the grand scheme of justice and society, it serves the least purpose of all three. Deterrence commits the fallacy of assuming that all criminals are as rational as those making the laws. Vince Weiguang Li was clearly not deterred by any threat of capture. Most crimes have underlying factors (mental health issues; drug addiction; lack of social support) that cannot be fully understood by those on the outside to whom dislike for prison would be a rational deterrent. Perhaps the best example of harsher penalties not leading to a decrease in crime is the lack of correlation between the death penalty and a lower homicide rate.

That leaves rehabilitation, which can be tied together with prevention. Only by investing in discovering and addressing the root of the problem can crime ever really be effectively dealt with. This may seem like an obvious and vague conclusion, and not really offer any tangible direction on how to spend limited resources. I don't pretend to have the answers, but I know that Greyhound drivers with metal detectors is not one of them. We are continuing to invest more and more in our infrastructure and our youth, and particularly with at-risk groups, and I believe this will ultimately prove to be the method that best quells the flow of crime.

RM