In criminal law, the prosecution and the defense each try to establish a timeline — what happened, where, when, who was involved — and thereby determine whether the defendant is actually guilty of a crime.[1]
Community misconduct disputes are nothing like this.
There is only rarely disagreement over facts, and even when there is, it is not the crux of the matter. Community disputes are not for litigating facts. What they are for[2] is litigating three things:
The character of the accused
The character of the accuser
The importance of the accusation, in light of points 1 & 2
I think basically all the terrible things that happen in community disputes are a result of this.
When what’s being ruled on is a person — their place in their community, their continued access to resources, their worth as a human being — the situation feels all-or-nothing, and often escalates out of control.
This dynamic:
discourages people from speaking out about their experiences, both because they may be reluctant to ‘ruin the person’s life’ over something non-catastrophic, and because they know that they will be opening themselves up to a punishing level of scrutiny and criticism, and may end up having their own life ruined
allows everyone to avoid actually addressing what happened, when they can instead focus on other evidence about the parties’ characters
puts every accused person (and whoever is on their side) in an extreme defensive stance, which is counterproductive to truth-seeking
similarly puts accusers in an all-or-nothing stance, and may cause accusers to exaggerate their claims, knowing that the bare truth will not be sufficient to indict the entire person
gives rise to both the feelings that ‘Everyone always believes accusations uncritically’ and ‘No one ever takes accusations seriously’
A couple concrete examples:
A community organizer was accused of a whole slew of infringements on basic decency by a dozen different people. The defense brushed off the accusations and built their case around the claim that the accused was an irreplaceable pillar of their community who had done a lot of good things, and kicking him out or punishing him would make everyone worse off.
Similarly, when Brent Dill was initially accused of gross misconduct, the official report on the case “did not mention that there were allegations of abuse” and “largely read like a pro-Brent press release”.
Intracommunity conflicts are generally a horrifying minefield. I think some of the problems arise because of the dynamic named here, and more arise because people don’t explicitly recognize that this is the dynamic — they believe that the conflict will be resolved by some kind of fact-finding mission, or they don’t realize how quickly things can escalate because they don’t understand what’s at stake for the people involved.
My hope is that just pointing out that this is happening might help people approach disputes in a way that ends up being slightly less catastrophic for all. Obviously there’s much more to it, but maybe this can help a little.
Yes this is an oversimplification that I learned from media, but it’s one that many people have learned from media, and therefore it’s probably how many people see criminal law.
Read press releases by prosecutors talking about new cases, or speaking indictments. They often try to character assassinate the defendant, and they try to build up the "victim" when possible.
In criminal law, the prosecution and the defense each try to establish a timeline — what happened, where, when, who was involved — and thereby determine whether the defendant is actually guilty of a crime.[1]
Community misconduct disputes are nothing like this.
There is only rarely disagreement over facts, and even when there is, it is not the crux of the matter. Community disputes are not for litigating facts. What they are for[2] is litigating three things:
I think basically all the terrible things that happen in community disputes are a result of this.
When what’s being ruled on is a person — their place in their community, their continued access to resources, their worth as a human being — the situation feels all-or-nothing, and often escalates out of control.
This dynamic:
A couple concrete examples:
Intracommunity conflicts are generally a horrifying minefield. I think some of the problems arise because of the dynamic named here, and more arise because people don’t explicitly recognize that this is the dynamic — they believe that the conflict will be resolved by some kind of fact-finding mission, or they don’t realize how quickly things can escalate because they don’t understand what’s at stake for the people involved.
My hope is that just pointing out that this is happening might help people approach disputes in a way that ends up being slightly less catastrophic for all. Obviously there’s much more to it, but maybe this can help a little.
Yes this is an oversimplification that I learned from media, but it’s one that many people have learned from media, and therefore it’s probably how many people see criminal law.
That is, what they actually do, even if this is not how the people involved see them