The headlines in recent weeks have sent shock waves through Naga society. In ways like never before, the public imagination is having to seriously contemplate upon the moral and social questions around the nature of crimes that the society is compelled to confront today; and more fundamentally, the profile of its offenders. For close knit community based societies, the scientific study of crimes has indicated that questions concerning crimes of a serious nature, such as homicide have always been difficult to redress in a clinical method largely because of the social implications and the concrete collective social perception on what it considers to be acceptable and unacceptable.
Bearing in mind the overriding need of community based societies to maintain the balance of all harmonious relationship for its continued communal existence, a criminal justice system must be culturally evolved so that it is enabled to address both the ethics of justice as well as to ensure that the continuity of harmonious relationship in the society is not imbalanced as a result of the due process of law. This need is important because the roots of the present criminal justice system has been derived from within the social values and world views of a society that is centered on individualism; which remains insensitive to the nuances of community life.
For quite some time the public conception of violence focused predominately around factional violence, so much to the extent that it failed to fully comprehend that the Naga society itself was increasingly becoming more vulnerable to violence, giving rise to crime. The recent incidences of teenagers and young people involved in serious offences of murder quite clearly reveal the disturbing fact that not only is our society become more prone to violent crimes, but the supposition that the offenders are within a young age group just simply cannot be ignored. The denial syndrome will only encourage it further and it requires us to address the question of violence from a broader societal context – be it political violence or socio-economic violence.
Therefore, in light of the disturbing trend of increasing criminal offences particularly amongst the youths, the society by large need to objectively address the situation and introduce remedial measures. To begin with the Government of Nagaland should initiate an independent body of the highest qualification to do a study on the nature of crimes in the Naga context and the factors that are causing youths to take to them. In this case the behavioral impact of violent Hollywood and Bollywood movies, gang culture and violent videogames must also be studies thoroughly, considering that children in our society are exposed to them at a very early age, with no parental control or censorship. The role of trauma in contributing to violence must be studied in a more deliberate manner.
The need to have a specially trained and well equipped team to investigate serious crimes like homicide cannot be more emphasized. Notwithstanding the important contribution of the regular police force, it is a matter of prudence to have a homicide unit with the specific purpose of investigating all cases of homicide in a professional manner which is culturally and socially sensitive to the people. Likewise, considering that the institutions of customary law itself have not developed sufficiently and scientifically enough to address complicated nature of crime, a criminal justice system that would be relevant to the context of the situation needs to be seriously explored.
The responsibility of mass media in crime reporting needs honest deliberation and the media must acknowledge its accountability to the public in providing information, without sensationalizing the news and to avoid all forms of speculations while investigations are ongoing; and most of all by remaining sensitive to the needs of the affected families. This raises the need to also have journalist who are trained particularly for crime investigation and reporting. Perhaps in this concerted manner, we will be able to start engaging with the roots of the increasing violence.
Finally, considering that the increasing crime rate has moral, social and spiritual implications, the responsibilities of religious institutions needs to be weighed. It would therefore be tragic if the highest institutions of the church, maintains the status quo, by stating, that its jurisdiction is only confined to the spiritual realms of human life!
