Organized systems of society are useful for people who have common goals to collaborate on reaching those goals. We call a culture successful when, by way of involvement in that culture, there is a high rate of success in the reaching of collective goals.
 

"WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

This preamble of the American Constitution very loosely defines cultural goals.  Perhaps one of the reasons that success in achieving these goals is so sketchy, so far, is due to the fact that the goals themselves are not precise. We haven't been thinking like engineers.

We can start to apply scientific thinking by becoming more specific in our goals. Let's start with one of these goals: "the establishment of Justice."

Our society's institutions of "Justice" focus on responding to bad experiences - destructive episodes - named crimes.  If we wished to,  we could define our current blueprint towards "establishing Justice" with a numerical equation, like an equilibrium constant.

"Perfect justice" is achieved as J approaches 0. 

Our criminal justice system defines justice as a race to match every bad experience with a mirroring partner. In other words, it doesn't matter how many bad experiences occur. As long as every bad experience is closely followed by a mirroring bad experience for the one named perpetrator, we say that "justice has been served."

Though we may notice that Justice would also be served by eliminating all initial bad experiences, there is no preference for that method over the first. Nowhere in the equation defining our criminal Justice system is there any imperative to reduce the number of initial bad experiences for people.

If you think this is purely theoretical, listen in when a woman calls the police looking for protection, having been threatened with personal assault. "Sorry, ma'am, we can't do anything till after he has actually attacked. Call us again when we can see that you have sustained damage."

Is this what we mean by "establishing Justice?"

It is possible to adjust our thinking and recognize that there is another Justice. There is an alternate equation. This new stasis could be measured by simply combining the number of bad experiences, (mirroring pairs count as two), relative to the number of people being counted over time, in the following way.

Each day a new number is compiled.  Justice increases infinitely, as n and m approach zero for the highest possible number of people over the longest period.  Justice is continually increased as more and more people are free from all bad experiences, including the experience of being locked up in prison. 

This redefines Justice as the process and movement towards the changed situation wherein being subject to any crime is the rare exception, rather than any general rule. Counting convictions is beside the point or is actually a measure of failure in preventing crimes in the first place.

We can think of "destructive episodes" (bad experiences) in the same way that a chemist thinks of a chemical reaction. In some circumstances the reaction tends to occur. In some other circumstances the reaction does not tend to occur. Using this model, successful Justice is a chosen stable compound with as few stray reactions as possible.

A foundation for the cultural engineer is having as much knowledge as possible about both the stable compound and the unwanted stray reaction. A competent engineer would notice which factors contribute to the stability of the compound, and which tend to produce unwanted reactions. Then, action can be taken to affect circumstances such the results are what are desired.

An important part of taking that action is to receive feedback whether or not the action is actually accomplishing the desired effect. That is how we learn to modify the actions: by receiving the feedback and then adjusting action or approach until the feedback shows real improvement.

In position as cultural engineers, our legislators are adding the factor of specialized legal threats to our Life Style stew.  Does this work to reduce unwanted reactions?  What does the feedback show?

We don't know how many crimes are prevented by adding these specialized threats. There are problems in collecting data.  Before enactment of a specific criminal law, there is no systematic method of compiling reports.  After enactment of law, we can count incidence of report - but this is necessarily different than incidence of the event.

But of this we can be sure: destructive episodes do continue, sometimes in quite alarming measure, regardless of penalties promised. When we expect that the motivation to avoid punishment (which legislators presume is universal) does promote adherence to rules, we are not looking at all the information. Looking objectively, we can see that there are clearly two ways to avoid punishment and the second is to not get caught.

A scientist assumes that for every effect there is a cause. Criminal behavior does not come out of nowhere. Let us assume that it is caused. Let us suppose there is some factor or factors that predispose some percentage of all people, some percentage of the time, compellingly towards destructive behavior.

What can we logically project as the most likely result of promising to punish a person who is helpless to do other than be compelled, if we should see evidence of the behavior?

The effect on those who experience having little or no choice but to exhibit the destructive behavior is certainly to drive the behavior "underground."

Those who continue to feel (despite the behaviors in some distant legislative meeting) that they have no choice but to continue to present the destructive episode merely develop ways to keep the presentation out of view.  And legitimately so, for we legally justify even homicide in cases of self defense.  Surely secrecy in self-defense from the criminal justice system is less a crime than murder.

So the criminal justice process that we base upon the idea that Justice = Punishment does create at least one distinct effect. The criminal justice system serves to remove much of the destructive behavior from the public eye, hence we might gain the illusion that the behavior has actually been eliminated.

We might gain, when criminal justice "works," some illusion of safety or success. And for some, illusion satisfies. But cultural engineering is never sleight of hand, and mere illusion isn't really enough.

We do see some cases where specific statutes clearly do create sweeping change in behavior. When we legislate that automobile factories must install seat belts in every car, and then attach penalties for non-compliance, the "law" certainly works. Compliance is always completely verifiable by affirmative inspection with the public display of the product.

(Of course, the question of whether this actually leads to the goal of reducing auto fatalities is a separate issue.)

Perhaps rules with attending penalties work well to modify behavior when the behaviors being controlled are necessarily public - and compliance is measured positively as an accomplishment of a defined deed.

But "crimes of passion" are almost always private.  A mandated "absence of assault" is only vaguely measurable.  The absence of assault is everything in reality minus the assault.  How can we simply measure that, checking for compliance?

Perhaps we would have more success in setting up for the absence of the assault reaction if we could identify preventative action that people could take to virtually eliminate likelihood of the event, and then make it mandatory to do that.

It would be best if the preventative situation was clearly measurable and definite in time and space, like the installation of a smoke detector is. Of course, we would need to identify the ideal preventative behavior. We would need to isolate and name those actions which actually serve to bring about the positive situation we desire.

Is there a preventative situation which we can act affirmatively to bring about, to put an end to criminal reaction?  Surely this is the establishment of Justice, a goal that is worth setting our minds to.

The stable compound we wish to identify and create is the desirable society where the maximum number of people live for the maximum number of days months and years, without committing or being subject to any crime. What is the nature of this stable compound?  In discovering this, we can discover what affirmative actions we can take to stop all fostering of crime.