MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-05-19 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Speakeasies and Social Distancing
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Speakeasies and Social Distancing
Prohibition’s lesson: When laws are too heavy-handed, it can promote
disrespect for the law in general.
By Paul H. Robinson
May 19, 2020 1:13 pm ET
Police monitor an anti-lockdown protest in Huntington Beach, Calif., May 1.
Photo: Paul Bersebach/Zuma Press
Policy makers see lockdown decisions as a balance between economic
damage and public health. Equally important can be community perceptions
of the legitimacy of the restrictions, for these may determine the
extent of compliance and ultimately the success of the lockdown program.
That’s a lesson the country should have learned from Prohibition.
Prohibition created a shock to everyday life for the nation, just as the
coronavirus is doing for the globe. Much social life at the time
involved drinking alcohol. There were good public-health arguments for
prohibiting alcohol, and the loss of economic productivity from
hung-over or absent employees was substantial.
Yet not everyone supported the aggressive policy of Prohibition, and
that mixed support quickly produced mixed compliance. Even public
officials and what we would now call social influencers openly violated
Prohibition. President Harding continued to serve whiskey at White House
parties. As a senator, he initially opposed Prohibition, then voted for
it. Bootlegger George Cassiday, known as “the man in the green hat,”
operated out of House and Senate office buildings. He wrote in the
Washington Post in 1930: “I would say that four out of five senators and
congressmen consume liquor either at their offices or their home.”
Public noncompliance sent important signals that Prohibition ought not
be taken too seriously. Many came to see drinking more as a regulatory
violation than a crime. As noncompliance begot noncompliance, the entire
regime collapsed on itself and the 18th Amendment was repealed in 1933.
While public defiance of Prohibition is well known from the stock
Hollywood “speakeasies” of the era, what is less well known is that
noncompliance increased for other offenses as well. Violent crime
increased every year from 1920 until repeal. Per capita homicide rates
dramatically rose. A study of Chicago homicide records shows that the
rate of non-alcohol-related homicides increased. Prohibition appears to
have created a general tolerance of lawlessness.
This experience demonstrated that criminal law’s moral credibility can
have a significant effect on the public attitudes toward legal norms.
Systematic and open noncompliance on alcohol prohibition shaped people’s
views about the criminal law’s moral authority generally.
Similarly, today’s policy makers should be concerned about open public
resistance to lockdown rules. Police in various cities have broken up
large gatherings, and many states have experienced large protests that
violated coronavirus restrictions in the course of objecting to them.
Particularly damaging are violations by the officials who impose the
restrictions: Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot went to a salon to get a
haircut. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio headed to the YMCA for a workout.
The government can’t control everyone, so what is to be done? In
striking the proper balance when determining the severity of a lockdown,
it’s critical to assess what measures can gain public support, so that
people can reasonably expect others to comply and will continue to see
noncompliance as wrong.
Whether a community sees lockdown restrictions as legitimate or as gross
overreach may depend, for instance, on whether the restrictions are
designed for a city or a sparse rural county. Imposing severe lockdown
conditions appropriate for the former may ignite public noncompliance in
the latter, perhaps ultimately legitimizing noncompliance everywhere.
Even if the government officials believe they have sound technical
reasons for their restrictions, their program may fail unless they
convince the general public of this. Even in an emergency,
minidictatorships won’t win the day. Success depends on social
compliance, which in turn depends on community perception that the law
deserves to be obeyed.
Mr. Robinson is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a
co-author of “Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers: Lessons from Life Outside
the Law.”
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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