How Advocates Became ‘Crime’s Silent Enablers’

• What if the greatest accelerant of crime is not poverty, unemployment, or social inequality — but the very institution that claims to defend justice?
   
•  What if the modern advocate, far from being society’s moral firewall, has become its most efficient loophole?
   
• What if crime today survives not because the State is weak, but because cleverness has replaced conscience?
   
• And what if a society without professional advocates is, paradoxically, a safer and more just society?

These questions are uncomfortable. That is precisely why they deserve to be asked.

The Advocate as an Accelerator, Not a Brake

In theory, advocates exist to protect liberty and ensure fairness. In practice, many have become strategic consultants for wrongdoing — specialists in delay, dilution, and denial.

A criminal today does not fear punishment; he budgets for it. Bail becomes a procedural pit stop. Adjournments become a strategy. Technicalities become weapons. The advocate, fully aware of his client’s guilt, often does not ask whether justice will be served, only how long it can be postponed.

The criminal justice system increasingly resembles a game of chess where the guilty are grandmasters and victims are mere pawns — sacrificed early and forgotten quickly.

The metaphor is simple: if crime is a fire, the advocate often supplies the oxygen while claiming to manage the smoke.

Bail as a Signal, Not a Safeguard

Consider bail. Originally a humane safeguard, it has morphed into a psychological green signal. When repeat offenders walk out smiling within hours — sometimes days after heinous crimes — the message to society is unambiguous: the risk is manageable.

This phenomenon is not confined to criminal law. Corporate fraudsters, environmental violators, financial manipulators — all rely on elite legal teams to convert moral culpability into procedural ambiguity. The courtroom becomes less a forum for truth and more a theatre for technical gymnastics.

In business, we call this moral hazard — when protection from consequences incentivizes reckless behavior. The modern legal system has institutionalized moral hazard.

The King–Minister Model: Justice Without Theatre

Contrast this with older governance systems — the King–Minister model rooted in accountability, speed, and moral clarity.

Under systems inspired by thinkers like Chanakya, justice was not outsourced to adversarial cleverness. The king ruled, the minister advised, facts were investigated swiftly, and judgments were pronounced without theatrical delay.

In the Mauryan period under Chandragupta Maurya, crime rates were lower not because humans were morally superior, but because consequences were immediate, visible, and unavoidable. Justice was not a career — it was a sovereign duty.

There were no endless appeals. No procedural labyrinths. No decades-long litigation where both victim and accused aged into irrelevance.

Justice then functioned like a surgeon’s knife — decisive, precise, and swift. Today, it resembles a committee meeting.

Speed Is Not Cruelty; Delay is

A common rebuttal is that old systems were harsh and error-prone. This is a convenient myth. Delay is far more cruel than decisiveness.

When cases drag on for 10, 20, or 30 years, justice is denied to everyone — victims, accused, witnesses, and society itself. Evidence decays. Memories fade. Accountability dissolves.

A delayed acquittal is not justice. A delayed conviction is not deterrence. Both are institutional failures.

The advocate thrives in this delay economy. Time is his currency. Complexity is his moat.

Victims: The Forgotten Stakeholders

Modern legal discourse speaks endlessly about the rights of the accused and almost never about the rights of the victim. In older systems, justice was victim-centric. Resolution mattered more than rhetoric.

Today, victims become collateral damage — emotionally exhausted, financially drained, and morally disillusioned. Many withdraw, settle, or surrender. Not because truth is unclear, but because endurance is finite.

A system that rewards the stamina of the guilty over the suffering of the innocent is not a justice system. It is a bureaucratic ritual.

A Society ‘Without Advocates’? A Provocation Worth Considering

The idea of a society without advocates sounds radical only because we have normalized dependency on intermediaries. What if investigation, adjudication, and punishment were streamlined under accountable state officers? What if truth mattered more than technique?

Advocates would argue they protect against tyranny. Yet history shows that procedural excess often protects wrongdoing more effectively than it restrains power.

When cleverness replaces conscience, the law ceases to be a moral instrument and becomes a tactical one.

Final Thoughts: Justice Must ‘Terrify the Guilty’ Again

Crime does not fear morality. It fears certainty.

As long as advocates can convert guilt into gamesmanship, crime will flourish. As long as justice remains slow, fragmented, and negotiable, society will remain unsafe.

The old systems were not perfect — but they understood one timeless truth: justice delayed is disorder institutionalized.

Perhaps the real reform is not better laws, better courts, or more judges — but fewer excuses, fewer intermediaries, and far less tolerance for clever dishonesty masquerading as legal brilliance.

If that means questioning the very role of advocates, so be it.

Civilizations survive not by comforting their institutions, but by interrogating them. And justice, above all, must be interrogated without fear.