Does popular literature nurture criminal minds?

By Maurice Aluda

In the wake of escalating wave of crime and hardcore criminals in Kenya, tight security measures are required to revert the trend. Government efforts to launch community policing and village vigilante initiatives are commendable but we need to get into the root causes of the vices to uproot them.

It is at this point that the country needs to rethink the social function of crime literature and its role in the wave of crimes.

The glaring loopholes in our security structures notwithstanding, a section of the ‘insecure and uncertain’ populace is now pointing accusation on the emergence and flourish of crime literature as part of the major causes of criminal activities in the country.

In fact, some readers of crime fiction have openly expressed displeasure in how writers have often tried to link humour with crime in literature.

Kenya saw notable emergence and growth of popular literature in the 1970s and 1980s. Crime and prison literature emerged as sub genres of this populist literature. Actually, it was an important strand in the development of the popular literature.

John Kiriamiti became instant household name with his My Life in Crime and My life with a Criminal novels. Crime fiction was simply part and parcel of literature that was cheap and readily available for consumption.

Violent creative instincts

What was the impetuous behind this type of literature? Was it a mere fascination and inspiration of actual crime and criminals by the authors?

Well, I wouldn’t be wrong in asserting that the appeal of rampant murder cases during that time must have, to some extent, drawn on the crime writers’ violent creative instincts in response to our history.

True, many people had simply been disillusioned by the failure of independence to provide the symbolic ‘fruits’ of our labour. For instance, lack of sustainable job opportunities, shelter, food and other basic needs led to emergence of crime in urban centres.

Thus, many writers found themselves inevitably responding to the kind of violence that was defining Kenyan history immediately after independence. But certainly, crime literature was also a response to the love of drama and exciting and suspenseful narrative by emerging writers.

No wonder it is alleged crime literature, as a genre is partly to blame for the creation of hardcore criminals like Rasta, Wacucu, Wanugu, Musevo, Cheruyoit and Simon Ikeri Matheri.

Many parents believe many criminals are partly a consequence of the unguided consumption of this ‘dangerous’ literature, in addition to the widespread crime movies from the West, which are readily available for our youth.

But if crime literature is to blame for the wave of crime in our society, can it be part of the solution? I think it can.

I consider the common argument that dismisses reading and writing about violence as a relatively harmless channel through which the well-behaved countrymen vent their suppressed hostility, still unsatisfying.

Source of passion

Although much scholarly work remains undone, we should begin or continue to document, through critical consideration of the Kenyan and African writers and artists across the decades, that factual crime is worthy both of historical study and of transfiguration in works of imagination.

A principal source of the passion for true crime, in our society as elsewhere, is the abundance of psychological revelations that can be mined from criminal trial reports in our corridors of justice.

A German legal scholar, Friedrich Schiller argues that crime literature can be very instrumental within our criminal courts of justice, if its relevance is rethought.

Schiller eloquently appraises the value of crime narratives in elucidating human motives when he says: "We catch sight here of people in the most complicated situations, which keep us in total suspense and whose denouements provide pleasant employment for the reader’s ability to predict the outcome.

"The secret play of passion unfolds before our eyes, and many a ray of truth is cast over the hidden paths of intrigue. The springs of conduct, which in everyday life are concealed from the eye of the observer, stand out more clearly in motives where life, freedom and property are at stake, and therefore the criminal judge is in a position to have deeper insights into the human heart".

The writer is a lecturer at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology — aludanngunzulu@yahoo.com