On Wed September 6 2006 2:00 am, Dave Long wrote: > Is it not preferable for innocents to get away, criminals to get > incriminated, and everyone to be spared from terror?
I don't think anyone can argue with this - which is the ideal situation. But let me use this opportunity to try and explain what I am getting at when I keep harping on differences in governance and terrorism between India and western democracies. The ideal situation as you rightly point out is: 1) Criminals incriminated 2) Innocents spared While this is the ideal situation, the fact is that criminals hide among innocents and do everything they can to try and appear innocent. That puts law enforcement agencies in a fix. If they try and catch every single criminal, they inevitably end up catching some innocents. But if they err on the side of leaving innocents alone as far as possible, some criminals will inevitably slip through the net. I believe that Western law enforcement agencies have consistently erred on the side of trying to catch every single criminal, leading to the inevitable implication of some innocents. Western security agencies have a greater index of suspicion of terror and end up with more false positives in their search for terror. This causes resentment among a population that suspects the security agencies of raising too many false alarms. But the consequence of this seemingly harsh security paradigm can be seen in the fact that West has seen fewer acts of terrorism. On the other hand Indian law enforcement agencies have consistently erred on the side of allowing known criminal activity to go unpunished (due to poor governance, corruption or political interference). That has led to rampant terrorism as well as suffering of innocent people - both from terrorism and from needless incrimination in an environment of corruption. Because the reaction to terror is different among the security agencies in the West and in India, I believe the way forward is different for both entities. Western agencies no doubt need to reduce their index of suspicion and the number of innocents they implicate. I personally do not have much to say about that. But in India security agencies need to be able to work in an environment unfettered by political interference and corruption so that known criminal aand known crimianl activity can be curbed. For India the question of "Exonerating some criminals in order to spare innocents" is inappropriate. Criminals are already going scot free and innocents are not being spared. shiv
