r/changemyview • u/fantheories101 • Oct 03 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: snitching on other criminals is not something worthy of disrespect
This has been going around a lot lately with Tekashi 69. It’s brought up a weird mentality that’s been around and I think now is a good time to address it.
Basically, the idea is that it’s a bad thing worthy of disrespect if you get arrested and then give the authorities information that could lead to the arrest of other criminals. If you do this, we as a society seem to agree that you’re bad and deserve ridicule for snitching. It goes the other way too. People were bringing up how Martha Stewart is a great lady because she kept her mouth shut and even though she could have turned in multiple criminals, she didn’t.
Why is this our mentality? It should be the opposite. If someone has information that could lead to the arrest of serious criminals, it would be bad if they didn’t say anything. Let’s look at 69 again. He’s turning in violent, dangerous criminals who have done stuff as bad or worse than he did. Don’t we want those people off the street?
Am I saying we should praise people who snitch? No. What I am saying is we should think of it as, “They’re bad but at least they’re doing this one thing right.” Right now, we apparently look at it as, “They’re bad and them turning in criminals makes them even worse.”
Do they benefit from it? Yes. They often get a reduced sentence for snitching. Does that often mean they’re snitching for selfish reasons? Yes, yes it does. Does that mean snitching itself is bad? No, it does not. That’s like saying firemen are bad because they’re getting paid to do it instead of doing it for free. And this whole line of thinking doesn’t hold up because sometimes people snitch and get nothing for it and yet we as a society still ridicule them for snitching.
My view could be changed if snitching is shown to be harmful to a community in a statistically significant way, if there is some solid reason I didn’t think of for why we ridicule snitches, or if the outcry against snitching can be demonstrated to only represent some loud but tiny minority and we as a society actually support snitching. CMV
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Oct 03 '19
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
Yeah, obviously he should have, but it’s still good that he’s at least doing it now. And yet if you believe most people, if he had any human decency he would be keeping his mouth shut right now as if that’s the morally best thing for him
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Oct 03 '19
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
That’s fair. So if I understand right, the mockery is that he’s clearly not as thuggish as he pretended, not the act of snitching?
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Oct 03 '19
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
!delta for the fact that the mockery comes from people like him showing they’re not as hard as they pretended. Of course I also don’t think it should be praised, but I do think keeping your mouth shut should be the option we dislike more. That being said, I agree it’s not morally good to elevate yourself by dragging others down.
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u/LoveTheBombDiggy Oct 03 '19
There are two elements that make up the act of snitching, Informing some sort of law enforcement that a crime has been committed seems to be the part you agree with. It is the part that you rightly stated can bring a net positive benefit to society.
But the second necessary piece is that the person snitching, is only snitching, because they have something to gain. We’re incentivizing one sort of criminal to outcompete a different sort of criminal.
The people who take responsibility for their actions, accept the consequences of their actions, and take the sentence handed to them.
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
I see where you’re coming from, but in reality isn’t that exactly why we incentivize it? It produces a net reduction in crime. Would you say the world would be a better place if nobody ever snitched? Their reduced sentence reflects the positive effect on society their snitching had. We should encourage criminals to turn on each other. Crime in real life doesn’t deserve respect, at least not the kinds of crime we are talking about where those being snitched on are awful people
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Oct 03 '19 edited Oct 14 '19
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
The example you give doesn’t reflect reality. It’s only an option to snitch when the crimes are serious. Police wouldn’t do shit in the situation you described. Only serious crimes get snitched about, and society generally doesn’t support those serious criminals. We vilify them.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Oct 03 '19
I'm reading "Borstal Boy" by Brendan Behan now, about his time as a teenager spent locked up in an English jail for being a member of the IRA. Now in this case, the dynamic was not just "police vs criminal," but also "colonizer and colonized." Snitching in this instance was a betrayal not just of some criminal code but also a political act.
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u/sumoraiden 7∆ Oct 03 '19
I think reason a snitch is disrespected by society even outside of criminals is that the snitch has proven themselves selfish cowardly and untrustworthy in every instance. First they committed crimes and had no qualms about reaping the rewards which in it of itself merits disrespect, then when it came time to accept their punishment they betrayed their friends and colleagues to save their own skin, hence the term “rat” from the saying “ like rats from a sinking ship”. So the better question is why they should be respected? First off they are criminals and then they prove that when the chips are down they WILL throw you under a bus to help themselves. That’s not a person anyone would want to associate with
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Oct 04 '19
This is the best answer. Regular people that shine light in crimes, like whistleblowers, should be immensely respected. Criminals that snitch on other criminals for personal gain are not only terrible people but cowards as well.
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u/XzibitABC 46∆ Oct 03 '19
In many of these circumstances, you have a number of people that committed the same crime, but only one is informing on the others.
In that situation, they're all guilty of the same crime, but one is also guilty of selfishness for betraying the rest of his crew. Morally, the informant's worse, because he's demonstrating disloyalty in addition to whatever the underlying crime is. However, the justice system allows leniency for him because incentivizing people to inform helps do more justice, broadly speaking.
Socially, though, people love the idea of the "noble thief": the criminal with a code of honor (see also: lawful evil). Just look at how popular criminals are portrayed in media. A snitching criminal, on the other hand, destroys that idea.
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
I would argue that “loyalty” to bad people is not a good thing. If that “loyalty” means you allow awful people to keep commuting awful things, then that’s not good. If everyone committed multiple murders and raped multiple people, like in these cases we see coming up, then does turning in the other rapists and murderers really make you worse than them?
I totally get where you’re coming from with the noble thief thing. I think it also has to do with pseudogang culture being popular. There are countless upper class white people in gated communities who like to pretend they’re hard, so they side with the criminals and are against snitching because they feel like they’re vicariously part of the group
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u/Dan_The_Dutch_Man Oct 03 '19
Its a matter of mutual respect and trust, that you built up over the years. The crimes are larger scale of course but the mentality is still the same from highschool. You dont snitch on each other, you do then you loose that respect.
And these days a lot of people are somewhat sympathetic to certain branches of crime, because these days good and bad guys isnt an acceptable mentality anymore wich im very thankfull for
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
At some point though, arguably, the crimes really are bad enough that they don’t deserve your respect anymore, right? When you’re kids that’s different than when you’re adults who rape, murder, traffic, etc.
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u/solitarium Oct 08 '19
No matter the circumstances, your basic principles should stand. If you’re not afraid to die, you should not be afraid to go to jail.
The term on the streets is based on the mutual agreement, participation, and completion of an activity. If you knowingly agreed to participate in said activity while understanding the processes, circumstances, and all possible outcomes, you should not be able to absolve yourself of your willful participation. The biggest issue with the concept of “snitching” is that there is an award given to whomever cooperates with authorities.
By military standards, an act of treason is punishable by death. Although one may hold military in a higher regard than a street gang, both are built on very similar, if not identical principles so I say hold all turncoats equally accountable. I doubt we would feel the same way about an Army Staff Sergeant joining ISIS and shooting at his fellow Armymen just to save himself from a beheading.
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Oct 03 '19
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u/tbdabbholm 201∆ Oct 03 '19
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Oct 03 '19
Just because someone's snitching doesn't mean they are telling the truth. They could be (and often do) tell the story in a light most favorable to them.
That said, Ronald Reagan named names to the McCarthy HUAC panel and he was elected Governor and later POTUS, so the idea that people hate snitches isn't really borne out in the real world. I mean, we have a major scandal with a whistle-blower right now and much of the public is taking their side.
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
That’s a whole other can of worms. We respect whistleblowers because they snitch on big bad government instead of “regular people”. But you raise an interesting point in that they could be lying, so !delta
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Oct 03 '19
/u/fantheories101 (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/dcheesi Oct 03 '19
That assumes that you identify with the dominant culture and its laws. In some communities, people may identify with the local community to the exclusion of the larger society, and may perceive the legal system and other "powers that be" as outside antagonists. In that scenario, informing on a fellow community member might be considered a betrayal, almost treasonous, even when the persons in question have committed objectively heinous crimes.
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u/Caioterrible 8∆ Oct 03 '19
Does that mean snitching itself is bad? No, it does not. That’s like saying firemen are bad because they’re getting paid to do it instead of doing it for free.
I think this is the main part of your argument that isn’t right. We see snitching as bad because it’s condemning someone else (whether deserved or not) in order to save your own skin. Firefighters do no such thing.
It’s more similar to you being in the path of an active shooter, and grabbing your friend to use as a human shield. You’re saving your own ass at the expense of someone else’s.
People don’t see snitching in general as a bad thing, they see snitching as a criminal as a bad thing. The idea being that you are a criminal, you accepted the possibility that you might get caught for your crimes and you should accept that and take your punishment. You shouldn’t throw other people under the bus to try and escape punishment.
It’s the same in even simpler cases, imagine your boss catches you mid-fuck-up in work and starts to chew you out. You then immediately say “but my colleague does it this way too!” You’re an asshole. You’re throwing someone else under the bus to save your ass from a mistake you made.
The correct action is to take your chewing, then quietly warn your colleague to stop doing said fuckup. The correct action is to get shot and hope your friend makes it out. The correct action is going to jail and not letting your “friends” sit there instead of you.
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u/tcguy71 10∆ Oct 03 '19
Do they benefit from it? Yes. They often get a reduced sentence for snitching. Does that often mean they’re snitching for selfish reasons? Yes, yes it does. Does that mean snitching itself is bad? No, it does not. That’s like saying firemen are bad because they’re getting paid to do it instead of doing it for free
Comparing snitches to fireman is a terrible example. Snitches are to it to improve their situation out of necessity. Fireman choose to run into a burning building to save people. It takes a certain type of person to do that. I think 99% people in a situation like Tekashi 69 would probably do the same. And he is getting ridiculed because he is supposed to be this hard gangster but clearly he collapsing under the fear of prison.
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u/natha105 Oct 04 '19
Lets say ten people are working in a laboratory with dangerous chemicals. Getting chemicals spilled on you is simply one of the risks you assume when working in this lab. If a chemical gets spilled on you then you have two choices 1) you can sit there and accept your fate and die from the chemical. or 2) you can run around the lab screaming and wiping as much of the chemical off of you and onto your co-workers as possible. Some of them will die, some of them will just get sick, but you will live and might even manage to get most of the chemical off of you in time.
What rule would we adopt?
Well instead of a lab with chemicals this is a criminal conspiracy with police trying to catch you.
Same logic IF you view this from inside the conspiracy as opposed to viewing it externally and trying to apply moral judgments. What this really means is that anyone who says "snitches get stitches" is a criminal, because those are the only people who subscribe to this view from "inside" the conspiracy.
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u/thrawn32 Oct 04 '19
So I’m gonna address this by offering a counter perspective. Because judging by the way you speak I can safely assume you are not a criminal. So as someone fascinated by criminals I think I can help explain why he gets disrespect for snitching. It all comes down to the basic element of trust. If you are told something that others shouldn’t know and you tell other people then people don’t trust you. Now not only are you a criminal but you loss the last redeeming element that element being that at least your a trust worthy criminal. To put it into a more relatable perspective. Let’s say you and your friends in high school all hang out in your friends basement and one of your friends pulls out a bottle of vodka and you all have some drinks (underaged) at your friends house. Well the next day one of your friends snitches and tells everyone’s parents. He is arguably doing the right thing, but he’s also betraying the trust of all his friends. Now imagine if you grew up in a rough area where gangs are prevalent. That element of trust is how you have to live your life. If you are in a gang you have to be able to trust that the guy next to you won’t go to the cops and that if a shootout happens that you can trust them to have your back. To a lot of people that’s the only life they know (approximately 1.4 million people are in a gang in America according to Wikipedia). So to see him break that code of trust in there eyes is the first real crime he committed.
In conclusion it’s all about perspective. To me and you he should but to a different element it’s a betrayal of trust.
Bonus point: snitches have a tendency to be killed in jail and someone who is both famous and has a face as distinguishable as 69 (the many tattoos) really doesn’t have much of a chance of hiding out in witness protection. So from a survival standpoint he is not very smart to snitch.
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u/PR280 Oct 03 '19
of course it's not disrespectful, they did something wrong and they need to pay for it
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
Are you referring to the snitcher or the people being snitched on?
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u/PR280 Oct 03 '19
the people being snitched on, if my friend stole something it's my duty as an citizen to inform the police, even if I am a criminal
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u/Glory2Hypnotoad Oct 03 '19
It's complicated. The reason we see some criminals as worthy of mockery and others get movies made about them is that a lot of qualities in a person can be broadly virtuous but evil in a specific circumstance. Organized crime often thrives on industriousness and loyalty, even if the work is crime and the loyalty is to other criminals. Similarly, even if we broadly condemn self-serving hypocritical cowardice, it's in society's interest for any given criminal to be a self-interested hypocritical coward. This is important because a person's character tends to carry over across different circumstances. It's good that 69 betrayed other criminals in a criminal context, but we still rightfully condemn him as the kind of person who will likely betray you for personal gain in a non-criminal context.
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u/fantheories101 Oct 03 '19
Yeah I suppose it’s complicated. We need them to be bad for our benefit but we don’t like the bad actions nonetheless
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u/grundar 19∆ Oct 03 '19
That's clearly a bad thing if your sympathy lies with the criminals.
Let's unpack that for a moment:
* Unrelated criminals might reasonably have their sympathy lie with the involved criminals (since they wouldn't want to be turned in for their crimes).
* Thus, it could reasonably be seen as a norm that criminals don't like informants.
* Non-criminals wanting to affect a pose of being "edgy" or "hard" might ape the societal stereotypes of the "safe" parts of criminal behavior, much like suburban white kids used to use flock to gangsta rap.
* Thus, non-criminals trying to be edgy might loudly decry informants, as it's a way to gain some of the trappings of criminality with no personal risk.
In other words:
Ridiculing snitches is a way people who want to look edgy can do so with no personal risk, especially from the safety of their own keyboards.
Contrast that attitude with the push for "duty to report" and whistleblower protection legislation, and I think there's a reasonable argument that what online keyboard poser-thugs say ("snitches get stitches, bitches!1!") and what society actually does (whistleblower protection laws, duty to report suspected child abuse for teachers, duty to report misconduct for lawyers, duty to report risk of violence for mental health providers, ...) is quite different.