Feb 18, 2009
Registration Cards and Red Lights
I was thinking about the law here in Montenegro that tourists are
supposed to register with the police when they visit here. I was
wondering why this law was ever created. I wondered if it was to
help the society function more smoothly, like a traffic light, or
if it was to control people. I have been to around fifty
countries and I have never had to register with the police
before. So it would seem to me that this law is not necessary for
thing to function smoothly in a country.
Then I started thinking about why people do or don’t follow
a law. One of my first thoughts is that if a law makes sense,
people are more likely to follow it. When I say “making
sense” I mean does it serve an obvious purpose? Is the
reason for the law immediately clear to most people?
Several, even many, people have told me not to worry about the
law which says that I and my hostel guests have to register with
the police. This implies to me that they have come to a general
consensus that the law isn’t really necessary or important.
Evidently the police share this opinion because if they did not,
then they would be punishing people, fining them, deporting them
etc. Of course, deporting tourists is not a good way to attract
them, and now tourism is one of the brightest spots in the
Montenegrin ecomomy, so it could be that the police are using
their judgment in when to enforce this law.
This is actually one of the many things I like about Montenegro.
Things are not set in stone. You can even argue with the police
here and they will not immediately call ten squad cars or the
SWAT team.
I want to keep this short, but I feel a need to say something
about punishment and motivation. My question is this What
motivates a person to stop at a red light? (Assuming there are no
cars coming and it would not be dangerous to enter the
intersection.) Is it a voluntary action based on the
understanding that traffic lights serve a useful purpose? Or is
it out of fear for getting punished if they do not stop. I just
would like to say that I believe our social relations, actions
and interactions function more smoothly when people act based
more on the former kind of motivation and less on the latter. One
conclusion I have reached is that it is therefore better to
educate people so they understand the reason for laws or rules
than it is to simply threaten them with punishment. I would, by
the way, like to see more education of this sort in schools,
where education could logically be expected to be highly valued,
and less use of threats, fear and punishment as a means of
controlling students.
For more about registering with the police as a tourist in
Montenegro, click here.
Note:
I was told by several people that the reason you are required to
register with the police is so you won’t have any problems
when you leave the country. See note.
Now though I find this explanation unsatisfying. For one thing, a
Russian girl I met was asked about her registration card when she
was still in the country. After the exchange with the police
officer she felt threatened and intimidated. If he would have
been concerned about her having problems at the border when she
left the country
Apparently, in former times, foreigners and Balkan citizens who
visited other Balkan countries were required to show the border
police where they had stayed while in the country. For example,
if someone from Serbia visited Croatia, they might have been
asked by the Croatian border police where they had stayed. I
suspect this is because there were, let’s say, not the best
of relations between the countries.
In any case, my first thought about this is that it was some kind
of security or in other words, control, measure.
In a previous article I asked the question: What motivates a
person to stop at a stop light if there are no cars coming? Now I
would like people to think about what motivates a student to turn
to page 23 when a teacher tells them to? Or what motivates a
student to be quiet when they are told to?
I believe these questions are worth giving a lot of thought to,
especially in a country which is truly, or even, ideally based on
freedom and democracy.