How would an anarchist society deal with criminal elements?

This post started out as a comment I made on a post by @bisade. The post, My Thoughts: A Critique of Anarchism as a Social Model, contains a fairly accurate and fair assessment of what anarchism is "all about". Not a perfect assessment, but it is especially well-drawn, considering that the author is not an anarchist. The article then goes on to present objections to the feasibility of an anarchist society, and here again, the author impresses me with a thoughtful argument that skips over the tired "but who would build the roads"-type complaints.

My main objection to @bisade's formulation of anarchism is that he or she fails to incorporate the most important tenet of anarchism: the non-aggression principle. Without understanding the non-aggression principle, one cannot understand how an anarchist society would work. While @bisade did affirm his/her understanding of the NAP in a subsequent comment, it was not clear in the original post. Furthermore, it seems to me that having a firm grasp of this concept would prevent what I see as the fatal error in @bisade's argument.

The fatal error can be seen most clearly in this excerpt of @bisade's piece:

Take this scenario for example:

Adam, living in an anarchist society, proclaims that Facebook is the best social media platform in the world. However, Eve being a die-hard Steemit fan disagrees with Adam, and subsequently beats him up for making such a ludicrous statement.

In this scenario, what redress does the anarchist model allow Adam? Are Eve’s actions perfectly permissible in the anarchist model? if they are not acceptable, and some sort of punishment is brought forth, then surely a rule backed by punishment has been created? Does this not contradict the very basis on which the anarchist model sits? The problem is this, it is extremely difficult to guarantee the freedom conferred upon someone, without the existence of a form of punishment to deter those individuals that are willing to impinge on that freedom. If there is no punishment for encroaching on the freedom of another, then the anarchist model is seemingly relying on the goodwill of humans in safeguarding those freedoms. This is obviously a bizarre notion to accept; why on earth should Adam rely on Eve’s goodwill in making sure he is not beaten up when he declares that Facebook is better than Steemit? It is this possibility of human infringement on the rights of another that makes one question if individual freedom would indeed be expanded under the anarchist social model.

First of all, no, Eve's action would not be permissible in an anarchist society, because it violates the non-aggression principle, which states that one must not initiate aggression against another. However, if Eve is the type of person to ignore the non-aggression principle, and goes ahead and attempts to beat Adam up anyway, then Adam would be perfectly justified in defending himself from such an attack using aggressive force.

And therein lies the punishment: individuals in an anarchist society are emboldened to meet aggressive force with aggressive force, to protect their own lives and the lives of others from those who would harm them.

To extrapolate, here is the comment I left on @bisade's original thread.

The main deterrent to aggressive behavior in an anarchist society would be the simple fact that potential victims need not rely upon a middle man to react in defense of their lives and property. In a society where the "law of the land" is DO NOT AGGRESS UNLESS AGGRESSED UPON, and there are no state agents to depend on to arrive at the scene of a crime twenty minutes after the crime has been committed, people will be more proactive about protecting themselves by owning small arms and knowing how to use them, by forming better relations with their neighbors, and by securing their property more efficiently. Criminals will be well aware that any individual walking down the street has a more than 50% chance of being armed for protection, that any house or business likely has guns inside, and that most neighbors watch out for each other, since that responsibility has not been passed off to a police force. That will prevent a lot of attempted crime in and of itself.

Another thing to keep in mind is that many of the reasons people commit crimes in the first place will be greatly reduced. From an economic perspective, an anarchist society would reduce poverty by allowing people to keep 100% of what they earn, start businesses without jumping through a multitude of bureaucratic hoops, and build homes, make transactions, and grow food without needing approval from the state. Since poverty is known to be a major contributing factor to crimes like robbery and home invasion, this should again cut down on society-wide crime.

Another huge factor is that without laws prohibiting the sale and consumption of drugs, the biggest source of organized crime will be eliminated. A majority of violent gun crime in the U.S., for instance, is tied to gang or cartel activity. Gangs and cartels stand to make enormous profits from the trafficking of drugs, simply because they are illegal. The fact that they are illegal is what creates the black market and all of its attendant violence. Remove those laws, the black market disappears, and the violent crime rate is again severed.

Of course, no one pretends that there would be no crime or aggression in an anarchist society, but most of us do contend, with good reason, that there would be a lot less. For those crimes that still occur, there are many ideas about how an anarchist society would dispense justice. The most popular idea is probably the private security and arbitration firm, which would operate much like an insurance company. No one would be required to purchase insurance from one of these firms, and there would be a lot of competing firms that would serve all economic strata. Other ideas include community-level judiciaries that would make decisions by consensus (the caveat being that in order to live in the community, one would be obligated to abide by the community contract, which would presumably lay out rules for behavior and penalties for breach of the contract), community watch organizations, and Old West style sheriff services.

For literally any problem that an anarchist society might face, there would probably arise multiple competing market solutions. The best and most efficient would become standard, but there would always be options for the individual. The most important question, though, is not "how would an anarchist society overcome x problem?" The most important question is "does the possibility that an anarchist society would not overcome x problem justify supporting the current paradigm of enslavement to the state?"

TL;DR:

• Individual freedom to defend oneself is, in many ways, its own crime deterrent.
• Crime would be greatly reduced in an anarchist society due to the elimination of economic restraints and black markets.
• Free markets can provide a variety of solutions for criminal justice and dispute resolution.
• Uncertainty about how an anarchist society would address societal problems is not a good justification for continuing the abuse and tyranny of statism.

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Hi! I'm Leslie Starr O'Hara, but my friends call me Starr. I live in the mountains of North Carolina and I am a FULL TIME WRITER! I write humor, essays, and fiction here on Steemit and elsewhere.

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