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Guest Editorial: On the Protean Nature of Crime

In the editorial of the February issue of this journal, our Editor-in-Chief, Dr. George Palermo, questions whether we are witnessing a different type of criminal behaviour, to judge by the terrorist attacks in New York. Dr. Palermo wonders about psychodynamic explanations leading to the concomitant immolation of the perpetrator at the time of the criminal deed. Is it mandated by rational thinking about the need for self-sacrifice in the interest of a “cause,” or by a subconscious wish driven by a deep sense of guilt? This question deserves further elucidation. Unfortunately, we have no means to peek into the soul of the suicidal bomber, but we could speculate about a “new criminology” that is independent from the perpetrator and in which the perpetrator is as much a victim as a victimizer. Crime independent from the perpetrator is not a new phenomenon. On occasions, the perpetrator may not be fully aware of the damage inflicted on the victim as is exemplified in the article in this issue concerning adolescent prostitution in Nigeria. The “john” seeking sexual pleasures with an adolescent, sometimes a prepubescent child, is just the paying instrument at the end of a system of systematic sexual abuse of the child with the profits going to third parties far away from the scene of the crime. Other times, the perpetrator is just a pawn being manipulated by others directly through threats, or through appeals to sacrifice for a cause. Manipulation of others to become cannon fodder to advance a particular social or political point of view is not new either. What seems to have changed in this respect, however, is the beneficiary of the crime, from the perpetrator or from a small group of committed individuals as seems to be the case with the IRA or the Colombian FARC, to a cause, regardless of cost to anybody. At the bottom of the change in this type of crime is the belief that the final victory of a point of view is well above any other considerations and that sometime in the future, millions will benefit from the deed. Security of the self or of other members of the group or suffering to be inflicted on a countless and anonymous number of potential victims are secondary issues not worth debating about. The terrorist’s fanatic belief in the cause is further solidified though the stark reminder of subjugation and poverty as happens among the Palestinians in Janin or Ramallah. Further solidification of the belief in the cause also develops through the appeal to a higher being whose magnanimous rewards will be showered on the sacrificial lambs in the afterlife as happened among the terrorists in New York.