Counting criminality rests on counting crime. Two obstacles impede the counting of crime even after measurements correct for class bias and political influences. One obstacle is that the most damaging and traumatizing crimes are the most deeply hidden and that the motives perceived to underlie behavior and not the behavior itself affect what people consider to be crime. Thus, displays of empathy are people’s greatest assurance that others are safe. The repression of the feelings of trauma rather than the trauma itself produces dissociation and violence, according to Miller’s explanation. The structure and process provided by approaches such as the Navajo peacemaking court offer a path by which people regain empathy and transcend the compulsion to do violence. The peacemaking court is a paradigm of what might also be called participatory democracy, the social process that promotes empathy over violence. Criminologists should use such a paradigm to study how to make participation in social life more democratic. This approach is more valid than the usual approaches for measuring progress toward the control of crime and personal violence. 31 references