Epiphanies 2023: What does "systemic" mean?
TurquoiseTastic
Kerygmania Host
This is not necessarily an Epiphanic discussion, but since so many of the examples that will probably be used are Epiphanic I thought it would be better to start it here and save time.
In the SNP thread @Alan Cresswell states with reference to racism:
This is what people now seem to mean by a "systemic" or "institutional" problem - something that is all-pervasive.
But when I first came across the idea of "systemic" evil - and I think this was in Walter Wink's writing - it seemed to mean something rather different. It was structural evil, something for which no individual was to blame, but rather a "structure of sin". This idea was I think fairly central to many varieties of liberation theology.
So Wink gives the example in Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath":
This seemed to me like a fairly useful concept and when you consider how organisations and societies work you can often identify "systemic" pressures (not necessarily for good or evil) that will tend to push the organisational culture (and indeed individuals) in a particular direction.
But as currently used this idea seems to be dropping out. So when we talk about "systemic" problems in an institution we seem to merely mean that the organisation is full of bad people, and that if they were all replaced with good people everything would be fine. But if there are really "systemic" problems in the original sense, then this won't help at all - the system will continue to produce bad results no matter who is staffing it.
Maybe the meaning of this word has now shifted and it is unlikely to shift back. But this seems a shame as it has a meaning which is difficult to capture using other words.
In the SNP thread @Alan Cresswell states with reference to racism:
Alan Cresswell wrote: »When basically every Black, Asian or other "non-White British" person will be able to tell you stories of racism they have experienced, that's basically the definition of 'systemic', something that is present everywhere.
This is what people now seem to mean by a "systemic" or "institutional" problem - something that is all-pervasive.
But when I first came across the idea of "systemic" evil - and I think this was in Walter Wink's writing - it seemed to mean something rather different. It was structural evil, something for which no individual was to blame, but rather a "structure of sin". This idea was I think fairly central to many varieties of liberation theology.
So Wink gives the example in Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath":
"It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster.
This seemed to me like a fairly useful concept and when you consider how organisations and societies work you can often identify "systemic" pressures (not necessarily for good or evil) that will tend to push the organisational culture (and indeed individuals) in a particular direction.
But as currently used this idea seems to be dropping out. So when we talk about "systemic" problems in an institution we seem to merely mean that the organisation is full of bad people, and that if they were all replaced with good people everything would be fine. But if there are really "systemic" problems in the original sense, then this won't help at all - the system will continue to produce bad results no matter who is staffing it.
Maybe the meaning of this word has now shifted and it is unlikely to shift back. But this seems a shame as it has a meaning which is difficult to capture using other words.
Comments
I don't think we necessarily are; but I think some confusion could have crept in because the issue has come up a lot in the threads about the Metropolitan Police, where the mitigating excuse to charges of institutional failure has always been that this is caused by a 'few bad apples' (with the obvious consequence that the rest of that saying gets brought up and the discussion can become focused on bad individual behavior rather than systemic issues.
I would tend to describe it the way that @Nick Tamen did above, but would also say that there isn't really a hard break between 'structural' and 'systemic' failures.
Wait, so you would say that "structural" and "systemic" mean different things then?
Or are we saying that the culture is corrupt - are we saying that there is nothing wrong with the structure per se but that the norms that exist within the system are bad?
It would seem to make quite a difference to the solution whether we mean the first or the second of these.
I think what people usually mean by "systemic" are the (bad) traits which, for whatever reason, have become deeply endemic and widely embedded within an organisation. They need first to be recognnised, then their causes need to be identified and rooted out.
Which suggests that they don't see the problem as "systemic" in my sense at all!
I would suggest that one systemic problem is that the expectation on the police, and what they are judged on, is essentially to keep a lid on what the public perceives as "bad people" by any means necessary. That is, we the public want not to bother our heads about crime and the causes of crime, and we would rather not know exactly how the police go about suppressing this. As a result the systemic pressure on police is to say nicey-nicey things in public, while actually doing some most unpleasant things in practice.
I'm sure there are other systemic problems too.
In the particular case of the Met there are two overlapping problems. First there are systemic and structural issues (I wouldn't cavil too much about how people have described these separately above). Secondly there's clearly the problem with bad actors within the Met itself.
On the systemic issue; no institution can be designed on the assumption that it is going to be able to weed out all the bad apples at intake because, some of them will inevitably make it through and some good apples will turn rotten over time. As every process is subject to error, an important measure of institutional health is its ability to course correct over time (this includes the ability to cope with well intentioned but badly directed/incentivized people)
Now onto the issue of bad actors; there are two indicators that this isn't merely a case of 'a few bad apples', firstly you don't get a 'locker room culture' at the level of a local branch of an institution unless those bad apples are able to set the culture. Secondly, there are just too many instances of evidence from major inquiries going missing after the fact for there not to be a culture of secrecy to which senior members of the Met either collude or turn a blind eye.
Overall crime has been falling for a while and seems completely unrelated to police activity (a good indication is that it's been falling across the Western World), in terms of actually clearing up crime that most people experience their record is abysmal. Organised crime tends to keep a lid on itself, because a good way of attracting attention is going about things too loudly.
OTOH, a requirement, say, that no-one can be promoted to sergeant without five years continuous service would disproportionately have a negative impact on women’s promotion opportunities. This wouldn’t be about the organisation’s disposition towards women, but it would amount to a structural discrimination against them.
‘Institutional’ can embrace either or both of these. The point of institutional is to say that it has gone beyond ‘a few bad apples’, and one way or another the whole institution is implicated, beyond being remedied simply by ejecting or disciplining the said ‘bad apples’
(source)
The problem, is those structural factors make the acting out of discrimination by individuals both very easy and very hard to tackle.
An example I’ve been given in the past of systemic discrimination is, hairstyle and uniform regulations that specify no head coverings for anyone (for example). These look like they are treating everyone fairly on a superficial level, but immediately disadvantage some groups of Muslim women and Sikh men. The reason why such things happen tends to be either good faith but normative assumptions. I.e so used to assuming everyone is white CofE it doesn’t occur to the rule setter to think about other needs - this is racist, but it is unintentional. The second reason it happens, is when people want to act in a discriminatory manner but disguise the fact. Part of the problem, is when people call out unintentional systemic discrimination - the people concerned often get very offended and will not change their behaviour.
If you look at the situation of safeguarding, institutional abuse - it is defined as:
You could see the current conviction rate for rape as an example of the institutional abuse of women by the criminal justice system.
[crossposted with @BroJames ]
A complicating factor is that the personnel are part of the system. The police, for example, are not a cross-section of the community, as they often describe themselves when charged with bad behaviour and criminality. Methods of recruitment are very important to any system and tend to reflect a desire to sustain a prevailing ethos for obvious reasons. Change, however, can take place arising from a variety of internal and external causes.
I would say if a structure is build on a systemic fault, the structure is being used to reinforce the fault. They feed off each other.
So clearly in that case the diagnosis of the systemic problem turned out to be WRONG. So what was/is the systemic problem in that case, that made the OGPU and the KGB (and no doubt whatever Putin now calls his equivalent) even worse than the Okhrana?
FSB
If we defined public safety first in terms of meeting basic needs (primary prevention, in public health language); second crisis intervention and conflict resolution (secondary prevention); and only third enforcement, when all other options have failed, we would be on the way to a system focused on actual safety rather than social control.
How, other than the basic element of treating everyone equally according to the law which should be happening right now anyway, would the two differ?
I guess it depends on what you think are the dangers and threats that people need to be protected against.
So at the moment, I think police would prioritise one crime with property stolen valued 1 million pounds more highly than a fraud valued at £20 pounds - even if there is only one victim of the million pound fraud and thousands of victims of the £20 pound fraud (e.g. an email scam).
Also, sentencing of property crime seems out of proportion to the sentencing of crimes against the person.
Wage theft by employers is almost never investigated or prosecuted.
I don't see the problem. Aren't you instituting a process of cultural change that includes changing those motivations?
Pretend compliance is the first stage, I reckon.
Suppose officers were required to complete a two-year course in crisis intervention and conflict resolution before they were allowed on the street. It would do a good deal to weed out the adrenaline junkie bullies, and would in itself redefine the mission--that's systemic change. Not enough--if you look at how to prevent crime from happening in the first place, rather than assuming it's inevitable and focusing on what to do about it after the fact, you'll be led to examine higher-order systems, and that's a threat to existing structures of power and privilege.
I recommend The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale.
I guess that will depend on whether you think people commit crimes because they’re forced into them by adverse circumstances or because they’re bad people. The latter won’t be stopped by eliminating need.
That is, I think, a false dichotomy.
The degree of adversity that will drive a person into crime will vary from person to person - the gravity of the criminality in question, their personality and past experiences will feed into where that threshold sits.
For some the threshold is so low that the only degree of adversity required is "you'll be better off if you commit this offence" - e.g. tax fraud.
Here in the UK the 'inverse care law' describes how the poor, in spite of the NHS, often get inferior health care -but I'm not sure it's 'systemic'.
Separately, there is also evidence of systemic inequity in health care in the UK.
I am referring to the US, because my knowledge of the NHS is limited--but I would not be surprised to find systemic inequities there as well.
We've just had a report that afro-Caribbean people are four times more likely to die during or shortly after childbirth than white people, so yes, there are.
Is that because of anything the NHS has done (or not done) to them, or because of other factors outside the control of the NHS? And if it’s the latter then is it really fair to use it as an example of systemic racism in the NHS?
Also, is this one of those “four times more likely” headlines where it turns out the actual death rates are 0.004% versus 0.001%?
Going by the experiences described by some people in the wake of releasing this news, it is indeed in part down to the treatment influenced by unconscious bias received in the NHS.
And the death rates are indeed very low. No-one claimed otherwise. .034% for black women; .009% for white. I'm not sure why that makes it any less an example.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65300168