The thief in all of us
March 15 2003
Related links:
How honest are you?
Faced with a faulty machine giving away money, most of us would do the right thing ... wouldn't we? Don't be so sure, says Julian Baggini.
Free, unlimited cash. It has got to be the ultimate dream of the contemporary consumer who wants it all and wants it now. And it's what the Crosdale family of Coventry, in England's West Midlands, thought that they had found last year, when they, along with many others in their neighbourhood, discovered a cash machine that just couldn't say no.
On repeated visits to the machine, the four of them took out £134,410 ($350,000), splashed out on an Alfa Romeo, a Jamaican holiday and a sofa.
The first reaction of many people to this story is, I suspect, to laugh. Indeed, the chance discovery of unearned loot is a feel-good comedy staple. Remember Waking Ned Devine? But, on thinking about it, you can start to feel like the ashamed schoolchild who has just been caught drawing smutty pictures. For why should theft be funny? These people were thieves. We are much less likely to laugh along with people who take money from cash registers in shops, or who walk out of department stores with digital cameras stuffed down their trousers.
And let's be clear that this is theft. If you walk past a shop and the window has been smashed, you know it is theft to reach in and take what you want from the display. The fact the merchandise was readily available for the taking does not make it a gift. The broken cash machine is just like the broken window. Due to mechanical failure, accident or vandalism, what usually separates you from the booty has disappeared. But it is still theft if you go ahead and take it.
That is what the courts have decided, and now Jubert Crosdale and his daughter, Charlene, are to serve 15 months in jail. His son, Leroy, will spend 12 months behind bars and his wife, Catherine, is yet to be sentenced. More Shallow Grave than Buster.
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Theft it may be, but these sentences are absurd. In the light of guidelines issued late last year by Britain's Lord Chief Justice that first-or even second-time burglars should not face custodial sentences, they just seem perverse. And the Crosdales are unlikely to reoffend, unless, of course, lightning strikes the same cash machine twice. So a slap on the wrist and a modest fine or light community service would seem much more appropriate.
But, given that this was a crime, why do we instinctively find this kind of theft less serious, or even harmless?
There are two reasons. One is purely psychological. We can imagine what it is like to be in such a situation and, once in it, all the social conventions and cues that help to prevent theft disappear. You are not confronting a person, but a machine. You don't have to try to deceive anyone, you just put your card in and take the dough. It doesn't feel like theft because the transaction is impersonal and we do not have to be surreptitious. And the threat of being caught does not seem real.
On this rather pessimistic account, what stands between us and a life of crime is not moral goodness, but opportunity. Put simply, most of us don't have the stomach for the prolonged and repeated deceptions that a life of crime requires, nor are we willing to risk getting caught and punished. Take away these restraints and we would steal at will.
But there is a second, more principled explanation. As Jubert Crosdale said: "It is a victimless crime and the bank gets its money back from insurance, anyway." This is probably how most people view taking money (or goods) from large corporations: it harms no one. So what's the problem?
It is not quite true that such crimes are victimless. We pay higher prices in shops, for example, because companies need to add the costs of stolen goods and security measures. Our insurance premiums would also be lower if people never made fraudulent claims, or insurers never had to pay out to building societies whose cash machines go wrong.
But these reasons are not persuasive because people know the cost of their individual thefts is negligible. Society only benefits if large numbers of people refrain from taking advantage of broken cash machines, making bogus or exaggerated insurance claims or otherwise diddling big business. And, even then, the cynics might say we can't trust businesses to pass on the savings, anyway.
And so the no-harm-done mind-set is vindicated. But could it be that all this shows is a barren and inadequate moral viewpoint that only looks at the consequences of individual acts and undertakes a strictly utilitarian calculation accordingly? Do we want to be the kind of people who are only willing to refrain from doing wrong if others do the same and we all benefit? The kind of people who, if we see wrongdoing, shrug our shoulders and join in, afraid that if we don't others will get ahead and we will just be mugs?
The alternative view is that leading a moral life requires us to do the right thing without always stopping to work out if we gain or lose by doing so. We do what is right and hope that others will do the same because we want to be that kind of person, not some kind of egotist who is forever trying to work out what acts will serve our petty self-interest.
If that sounds pious and idealistic, then perhaps the pessimists are right and it is only prudence that stops us all from being thieves.
In any case, the Crosdales are as much victims of bad luck as their own greed. Many otherwise blameless people know now that had they put their cards into the generous cash machine, they could have been the ones facing a year behind bars.
The Guardian
March 15 2003
Related links:
How honest are you?
Faced with a faulty machine giving away money, most of us would do the right thing ... wouldn't we? Don't be so sure, says Julian Baggini.
Free, unlimited cash. It has got to be the ultimate dream of the contemporary consumer who wants it all and wants it now. And it's what the Crosdale family of Coventry, in England's West Midlands, thought that they had found last year, when they, along with many others in their neighbourhood, discovered a cash machine that just couldn't say no.
On repeated visits to the machine, the four of them took out £134,410 ($350,000), splashed out on an Alfa Romeo, a Jamaican holiday and a sofa.
The first reaction of many people to this story is, I suspect, to laugh. Indeed, the chance discovery of unearned loot is a feel-good comedy staple. Remember Waking Ned Devine? But, on thinking about it, you can start to feel like the ashamed schoolchild who has just been caught drawing smutty pictures. For why should theft be funny? These people were thieves. We are much less likely to laugh along with people who take money from cash registers in shops, or who walk out of department stores with digital cameras stuffed down their trousers.
And let's be clear that this is theft. If you walk past a shop and the window has been smashed, you know it is theft to reach in and take what you want from the display. The fact the merchandise was readily available for the taking does not make it a gift. The broken cash machine is just like the broken window. Due to mechanical failure, accident or vandalism, what usually separates you from the booty has disappeared. But it is still theft if you go ahead and take it.
That is what the courts have decided, and now Jubert Crosdale and his daughter, Charlene, are to serve 15 months in jail. His son, Leroy, will spend 12 months behind bars and his wife, Catherine, is yet to be sentenced. More Shallow Grave than Buster.
advertisement
advertisement
Theft it may be, but these sentences are absurd. In the light of guidelines issued late last year by Britain's Lord Chief Justice that first-or even second-time burglars should not face custodial sentences, they just seem perverse. And the Crosdales are unlikely to reoffend, unless, of course, lightning strikes the same cash machine twice. So a slap on the wrist and a modest fine or light community service would seem much more appropriate.
But, given that this was a crime, why do we instinctively find this kind of theft less serious, or even harmless?
There are two reasons. One is purely psychological. We can imagine what it is like to be in such a situation and, once in it, all the social conventions and cues that help to prevent theft disappear. You are not confronting a person, but a machine. You don't have to try to deceive anyone, you just put your card in and take the dough. It doesn't feel like theft because the transaction is impersonal and we do not have to be surreptitious. And the threat of being caught does not seem real.
On this rather pessimistic account, what stands between us and a life of crime is not moral goodness, but opportunity. Put simply, most of us don't have the stomach for the prolonged and repeated deceptions that a life of crime requires, nor are we willing to risk getting caught and punished. Take away these restraints and we would steal at will.
But there is a second, more principled explanation. As Jubert Crosdale said: "It is a victimless crime and the bank gets its money back from insurance, anyway." This is probably how most people view taking money (or goods) from large corporations: it harms no one. So what's the problem?
It is not quite true that such crimes are victimless. We pay higher prices in shops, for example, because companies need to add the costs of stolen goods and security measures. Our insurance premiums would also be lower if people never made fraudulent claims, or insurers never had to pay out to building societies whose cash machines go wrong.
But these reasons are not persuasive because people know the cost of their individual thefts is negligible. Society only benefits if large numbers of people refrain from taking advantage of broken cash machines, making bogus or exaggerated insurance claims or otherwise diddling big business. And, even then, the cynics might say we can't trust businesses to pass on the savings, anyway.
And so the no-harm-done mind-set is vindicated. But could it be that all this shows is a barren and inadequate moral viewpoint that only looks at the consequences of individual acts and undertakes a strictly utilitarian calculation accordingly? Do we want to be the kind of people who are only willing to refrain from doing wrong if others do the same and we all benefit? The kind of people who, if we see wrongdoing, shrug our shoulders and join in, afraid that if we don't others will get ahead and we will just be mugs?
The alternative view is that leading a moral life requires us to do the right thing without always stopping to work out if we gain or lose by doing so. We do what is right and hope that others will do the same because we want to be that kind of person, not some kind of egotist who is forever trying to work out what acts will serve our petty self-interest.
If that sounds pious and idealistic, then perhaps the pessimists are right and it is only prudence that stops us all from being thieves.
In any case, the Crosdales are as much victims of bad luck as their own greed. Many otherwise blameless people know now that had they put their cards into the generous cash machine, they could have been the ones facing a year behind bars.
The Guardian
