SAFE AND sound. It's a nice phrase, sort of warm and fuzzy. Wouldn't we all like to be safe and sound, to snuggle up under the warm blanket of feeling safe? Surely most of us feel that appeal at least sometimes. The problem with pursuing that unrealizable utopia of safety is that it drives us to pretend that crime is a simple problem with simple solutions.
When we hear about a violent crime - an assault, a rape, a shooting - we're tempted by a knee-jerk response to propose naively simplistic solutions. We want that comforting feeling of safety so badly that we forget that our dispassionate, reactionary responses to crime are uncaring and unsympathetic. We should learn to accept that crime and safety are complex problems, that quick fixes won't work, and focus instead on responding to these situations by treating survivors with compassion and understanding.
We don't like to fear for our physical safety. We want to be - and particularly to feel - safe. Hearing about a crime intrudes on that illusory dream of safety. It shatters our porcelain bubble, making us stare reality directly in the eye and realize that the victim could have been any of us, that we could have been in his or her shoes when life suddenly got ugly. The desire to feel safe makes us hunger for a fast, simple and effective solution - a quick fix. We want to return to our comfortable lives and sleep soundly at night. We want to not have to be afraid.
"Don't walk alone!" we cry. "Improve the Escort Service!" "Install more blue phones!" "Give us better parking!" These overly simplistic, reactionary proposals trivialize the problem by ignoring the complexities of safety. They imply that the solution to their problem is a simple and obvious one. If only you weren't walking alone, if only you were near a blue phone, if only you had a better parking space, it wouldn't have happened. Not true. It might not have. But then again, it might have.
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Don't get me wrong. I'm entirely in favor of any and all safety-promoting measures we can implement. But there's an important difference between trying to promote safety and trying to achieve it. These naive cries reflect the latter goal. That's the wrong approach.
It's crucial to understand the distinction between risk reduction and prevention. Risk reduction is almost always possible. Prevention is almost never possible. The victim can do many things to reduce his or her risk. But since the victim, by definition, isn't the one committing the crime, he or she cannot definitively prevent that crime from occurring. Only the perpetrator can do that.
That's not arguing we shouldn't do everything in our power to reduce risk. But we shouldn't to pretend that the proposals we spout off after every reported incident are "solutions." Those measures can help, but they can't make the problem go away. They can make us safer, but they can't make us safe.
When we suggest that they can, when we imply that they could eliminate the problem if only people would listen, we belittle the experience of survivors.
Yelling "Better parking!" and being done with it ignores the bigger question at hand. If we acknowledge that we will always face some safety threats, how do we respond when crimes do occur? How do we treat survivors of assaults, given that there will always be some?
Our job as human beings, when it comes to safety, is twofold. Yes, we should do everything we can do to decrease risk as much as possible, to make crime less frequent and less destructive. But any way you cut it, living comes with risk; there's no way to be perfectly safe. Our second job, then, once we accept that some degree of risk will always exist, is to respond to crime and suffering as best we can - to make the experience of survivors less unpleasant, less painful and less distressing.
Calling for more blue phones or more parking or better lit walkways is the easy part - necessary, but not sufficient. The harder task is facing up to crime and violence - being willing to crawl out from under the falsely comforting blanket of "safe and sound" to confront reality alongside a survivor as he or she puts the pieces of his or her life back together. This job is unpleasant because it forces us to let ourselves feel unsafe and be afraid. It refuses to allow us to turn away and feel safe at night. But its unpleasantness doesn't make it any less necessary.
Keep this in mind next time an assault occurs. When you hear about another attack on a student - and unfortunately, the correct conjunction here is "when" and not "if" - don't fall into the appealing trap of demanding quick fixes to safety problems. Don't just demand "Blue phones!" or "More parking!" and think you've answered all the questions and done all there is to be done.
Sure, pursue those risk-reducing improvements. But don't just do that. Recognize the complexities of the issue, and focus on the more difficult and more helpful task at hand - being compassionate and supportive when crimes do take place, helping heal those whose lives have been shattered by the actions of others.
(Bryan Maxwell's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bmaxwell@cavalierdaily.com.)
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