Good locks make good neighbors

When I was a kid, I worked in a hardware store part-time. One of my jobs was making keys. One day, as I was training on the key machine, I asked my boss what good any of these locks really are, since, in my neighborhood, houses were being broken into all the time.

I’ll always remember what he told me: “Locks are only there to keep honest people honest.”

He said that only a small number of people are truly honest and would never consider stealing, and that another small number who are truly dishonest. All the locks in the world won’t keep you safe from them.

“The reason for locks,” he said, “is to protect you from the 98 percent of mostly honest people who might be tempted to try your door, just to see if it’s locked.”

For me, that story illustrates a larger portrait of human nature. Unsettling at it may seem, for whatever reason, chances are that someone is turning the knob on your front door, just to see if it’s locked. It’s not the act of stealing that concerns me — someone will always steal— but that many regular, normally trustworthy individuals can succumb to the temptation. Think about what would happen if an “innocent” turn of your door knob actually opened your door. If someone had easy access to your home when you weren’t there — babysitter, a plumber, even a friend or relative— what might they do?

Studies have shown that when a person makes the decision to steal, it is not based on the popular notion of cost/benefit analysis by the perpetrator. Ironically, we spend billions of dollars using this model as input in designing public policy. More police and harsher punishment equals less crime. But it doesn’t work that way. The 98 percent that steal the most as a group, will only steal a little as individuals. The reason is that many people like to think of themselves as honest, so they will limit themselves to taking “just a little.” Most of these people are not prosecuted for that very reason. It’s a small crime compared to the Enrons and Madoffs of the world — and not really a crime at all. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, published a book recently called The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. Using a cardboard box full of paper dollars, Ariely designed a controlled experiment to test his subjects’ degree of honesty. With a testing population of 30,000, at the conclusion of the experiment, they found that about a dozen “bad apples” had stolen around $150 each, while somewhere in the vicinity of 18,000 people stole “just a couple of bucks” each. Not much, individually. But as a group they had stolen $36,000 dollars.

In another experiment, Ariely used a college dormitory refrigerator. Inside he left 12 cans of coke and 12 dollar bills. Two days later, the coke was gone, but the bills were left untouched. For some reason, the students didn’t equate taking the Coke with stealing. Ariely’s conclusion? “I think it’s actually a good reflection of what happens in our society.”

So, while we spend billions of dollars on police, judges, courts, prisons, lawyers, and anti-crime efforts, the real corruption — the one that costs us the most — is looking us straight in the face. Do you cheat on your taxes? Just a little, right? Do you switch tags on sale items? Only that one time, you say. Well, while the blaring headlines about the transgressions of the Enrons and Bernie Madoffs of the world might help sell newspapers, the real news is hidden in boring statistics. For example, more than $13 billion dollars in merchandise is stolen from retail stores every year. That’s $35 million a day. There are approximately 27 million people who shoplift in America — that’s one in 11. Ten million have been caught over the last five years.

And what about those tax cheats? No one is happy about paying taxes, but expecting services without paying for them is stealing. Interestingly, a study found that only 7 percent of Americans will admit to cheating on their taxes. That same study found that 74 percent of tax cheats are male. “Behavioral patterns illustrate that tax cheats have an inflated sense of entitlement compared to those who pay their taxes in full,” according to Denise Kalfayan Delahorne, strategy director of DDB Chicago, a communications and marketing firm. “Tax cheats were more likely to consider themselves as ‘better’ and ‘more attractive’ than most people, and tend to value their own happiness ahead of others, including their own children.”

Let’s face it, people. We all do it. We’re all tempted, all the time. Though it’s understandable we might succumb to temptation on occasion, it’s still no excuse. We know better, or we should. The “everybody else does it” defense is juvenile. When our society says it’s OK to steal, as long as we steal just a little, we’re telling our kids that ethics and principles are flexible. They aren’t.

No offense to all my mostly good, honest friends and neighbors, but I’ll put my faith in a good, sturdy lock every time.

Dennis O’Connor is a native Long Islander. He dropped out of high school in 10th grade, worked as a roofer, precision sheet metal mechanic, and tractor-trailer driver before going back to school at age 42. He earned a B.A. magna cum laude at Southampton College in 2002 and a master’s degree at Stony Brook University in 2006. After a stint with the U.S. forest service in New Mexico, he returned to Long Island in 2009 and is currently completing his thesis for an MFA in writing and literature at Stony Brook/Southampton. Married 35 years to same beautiful, extremely tolerant woman, he is the father of an “almost too smart for her own good” daughter in her final year at Stony Brook University. He is a motorcyclist, musician, and eater of barbeque.

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