Crime and Punishment [View All]

[varkam]

"Everyone wants to punish criminals just a little more than the last person that spoke." - Anonymous DU Poster (Meaning I can't remember)

Oh, and apologies to Dostoevsky for the subject.

Retribution is, among other things, a primary justification for why we punish. I don't mean to state at the outset that there is no value to retribution, and I don't mean to stake my claim that those who clamor for retribution cannot be liberals. I mean, after all, it is little surprise that retribution and tough-on-crime political philosophies would be popular across the political spectrum in the country that incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other country on the face of the planet.

As I understand it, retribution is the notion that the offender "deserves" the pain and suffering that we inflict on him or her as a consequence of their infliction of pain and suffering onto others. I'm pretty sure that there are different flavors of retributivist philosophy, but I think that is the gist of it. It is also pretty popular. Take Sheriff Joe out in Arizona. He makes his inmates wear pink undies and houses them in 100+ degree heat. Voters love it. They eat it up.

It's not that I think retribution is just all wrong. I think that there is a lot to be said for certain aspects of it. But, like anything, if you take it out to the extreme I think you start getting some pretty bad (if not unintended) consequences.

It is not that I think that I have the answers - I don't. I have some ideas, but I also know that there are many things that I am ignorant about. I do, however, think I see a problem. My point in writing this is not to try to convince you to see things my way as it is to try to get you to think about this issue, as I know that reasonable people can differ.

But there is a problem in this country, in my opinion, with the way that our system of criminal justice conducts itself. The problem is multi-faceted, but the main points of my hypothesis is that (1) it makes our communities less safe and (2) that it is not financially or ethically tenable. What I am suggesting is not a radical reformation of the criminal justice system. Rather, I am merely suggesting that I think it is time we, as a society, sit down and ask ourselves what it is that we want from our criminal justice system.

I said that we are world leaders in incarceration, and most people in prisons are not there for violent offenses. The really scary folks - the reason why we want to have prisons - comprise a minority of inmates in both the state and federal systems. Property crimes and drug crimes make up a large chunk of the people serving time right now - and often they are not given insubstantial sentences.

The conditions in which sentences are served range from satisfactory to abhorrent. A law professor of mine recently went to a local county jail here in Kentucky to see the conditions there for a paper that he was writing for a journal. In one of the pods, there were just mats on the floor with various items such as toiletries strewn about. The mats were spaced such that there was not more than an inch or two of concrete visible between each of them. That is where the inmates slept, where they ate, where they lived. Toilet paper was rationed, and so when it ran out they had to use the showers or the sinks to clean themselves. Lest you think that since this is jail and most of those people will be released soon, the state of Kentucky houses long-term inmates in jails as well as prisons due to budgetary concerns as well as over-crowding. So do other states. One inmate at this facility wrote to Gov. Beshear begging to be transferred to a prison. I am not a gambling man, but I would feel comfortable in betting you that at least half of those inmates were not violent offenders.

The living conditions themselves are only a part of the equation. I have a friend, about twenty years old, serving a sentence in Terre Haute. I got word from him about how things are there, and he says there is little to no education, little to no job training, and little to no mental health counseling (he's bi-polar). He will be released in a few years, and I wonder how he will be able to re-adjust.

Now, at this point I'm sure that at least some of you are thinking "Tough. If they don't like it there then they shouldn't have committed crimes." True enough. I am not trying to say that we shouldn't punish, or that prison should be some sort of a vacation - but here's the issue. At some point, virtually all of these people are going to be released. They are going to be released into your cities and communities. Most of them won't stay. Depending on which figure you look at, recidivism rates are approximately 70% five-years post-release. In other words, seven out of ten inmates released on parole or serve-outs will return to prison within five years. There's not keeping them, either...well, unless you feel comfortable with handing out life-sentences for all but the most minor of crimes (or simply executing people). That would solve that problem, wouldn't it?

To sum up so far: we've got a lot of people incarcerated for a lot of non-violent stuff, and a lot of them will be committing more crimes once they get out (and they will get out). Now, I'm not laying it squarely at the feet of inhumane conditions and "warehousing" of inmates - but I don't think that it is a completely crazy idea to assert that such policies are at least partly responsible.

Like I said, I think that it is time that we ask ourselves what it is that we want. I think that it is time that we spend some time thinking about crime and punishment, and about how it is that we want to address those issues. I do not mean to say that there is no place for retribution. To the contrary, I think that retribution is a valuable rationale, but I also think that if you take it out to the extreme then it runs to the detriment of notions of rehabilitation. After all, when you treat people like animals, how exactly do you expect them to act?

It's not that I'm saying we should coddle them, or that we should pat them on the head and tell them that everything is okay. Mine is simply the outrageous position that we should treat people as such even in spite of the things that they have done.

That is, however, just my .02.