There are many factors that contribute in forming criminal mindset of individuals. First of all we don't even have a clear national definition of what is a crime and what is an unusual behavior or maybe a sin but not crime punishable by law
. Such confusions create a large gap between state and society; state's laws mostly come from English common law that do not reflect society and Pakistanis often don't trust the state and take law into their own hands. Furthermore institution of judiciary is not well developed and connected with the people, this leaves the ground open for politics on daily life issues and political situation serves as 'matti pao' on such criminal conduct of the society. For example 'pasand ki shaadi'
is a big issue, many people consider it a serious crime but it infact is not a crime in the law. As a consequence, people are quick to take law into their own hands in such matters and societal attitude is mostly sympathetic to offenders. Political setup sides with societal mood, and this serves in offenders' evading the law honorably
. There are many examples like 'pasand ki shaadi' which are not crimes, but..... for example conversion of a muslim to non-muslim, or even close male-female friendship
. There is very low near to no role of state in enforcing laws, helping, supporting and disciplining individual lives and societies (like for example there is no popular 911 service
), and therefore it mostly remains open for exploitation by exploiting politicians and generals (am I rite, I think this is because the state was setup by British for exploitation and we have continued it, so it is still doing the same job and so far nation of 'Pakistanis' has not emerged under it
)
Lack of social and political knowledge of individuals is also a factor that leads to individual's isolation and thus creating a mindset that can lead to crime. What do I mean by lack of social and political knowledge would require me to do a lot of explanation
, but a short explanation can be individuals are less exposed to the society in Pakistan. For example schools (atleast an overwhelming majority of them) focus highly on 'book ratta' education
but don't play their role in social and organizational grooming of children, lack of clubs (sporting and other kinds of) and other facilities that could promote healthy activities and competition and instill organized behaviors in individuals causes them to remain aloof from society and remain more under influence of family; they are primarily indoctrinated by family and since not all families live in ideal conditions at home so,, you have many confused non-confident individuals who are prone to take any direction
. This particular phenomenon is in urban societies, in rural areas the situation is different. Individuals are more connected with their small societies like 'bradaries' or clans. This instills in them a sense of over confidence and pride in their own particular dogmatic values. This mindset also leads to unhealthy competition for dominance and crime.
Poverty in society serves as a double edged sword. It not only motivates common individual to do crime, it also motivates law enforcer to corruption and also trigger general empathy towards the offenders. Economic procedures of a large modern society are significantly different than the old feudal one. For example in old times people used to live their whole lives in well defined boundaries. Regardless of age group all male members of family used to work and bring something home and females used to take care of home, needs were few, societies were small and well connected and resources were plenty, but the same is no longer the case. Now you are increasingly isolated and need money to feed your family, educate your children and live a reasonable life. Needs have greatly increased, and it again requires more and more money. For more money you need to work more, but the economy does not give you enough work. Therefore individuals resort to crime and corruption to fulfill their needs
.
There are countless other social, political, economic and even religious (sadly) factors that serve to rise in crime, and the ideological confusion in the society often causes offenders evade the law with little or no punishment, even reward of acknowledgement in some situations (for example in the high profile case of Governor Taseer's murder)
. From an overlooking point of view, the society is forced to transform from collection of many tribes and clans into a bigger modern national society. This phenomenon is, at one end, causing confusion as we don't want to abandon our old values, traditions and norms but still want to be a unified progressive nation; but on the other end each one want to enforce their values, norms and beliefs on the whole society and reject anything else. We had this country in the name of Islam, but again there is no unified ideology that can unify us under law. This confusion and insistence is not only evident in national politics, it can even be observed in our economic activities and now it has reached down to individual level and criminal conduct has increased. State is paralyzed and Pakistan has virtually landed into a state of anarchy within itself, and God knows where this all will lead to. Until now it doesn't look like Pakistanis are evolving in the right direction