At the level where social scientists become involved with social
issues, our discussion of deindividuation leads to the following suggestions. Police must be retrained to cope with the emergence of the
“new” kind of crime and criminal depicted in this paper. The
policeman must be individuated in the perception of those he must
deal with, and must feel so, in order for him to maintain his individual integrity (they should wear their names on their uniforms as
athletes do). Also, the current theory of ever increasing deterrents
against crime (more police patrols, search and seizure, aggressive
police action) is based upon outmoded concepts of the criminal.
When a dehumanized person has become an object, then it may be
that the only means he can use to get anyone to take him seriously
and respond to him in an individuated way is through violence. A
knife at someone’s throat forces the victim to acknowledge the power
of the attacker and his control. In one sense, violence and destruction transform a passive, controlled object into an active, controlling
pierson. When driven to the wall by forces of deindividuation, the
individual must assert his own force or become indistinguishable
from the wall. Conditions which foster deindividuation make eat h
of us a potential assassin.
