... In lieu of prison, bring back the lash - The Washington Post.
Whipping a person is cruel. It is an infliction of pain. If I saw someone flogging somebody, I'd rip the whip out of his hand and beat the shit out of him. But that's just me. (Oh, and if you think that's just bluster, well, you're wrong, because you don't know me.)
Is Mr. Moskos serious?
ReplyDeleteHe misses the point of prison, from my point of view. The state locks up criminals, which prevents them from victimizing further victims.
Crime is down now because the prisons are overcrowded.
Many people are not robbed, cheated, raped, beaten and murdered because many career criminals are behind bars.
Once a criminal recovers from the lash, he or she would be back to committing crime.
I'd like to see low level drug dealers and drug users seperated from the state prison systems and placed in "boot camps," which will solve the overcrowding issue.
I've visited a good number of jails and state and federal prisons - and many of them were awful places - but I'm glad the criminals are housed there, rather than out in public robbing, stealing, raping and murdering further victims.
The theory of rehabilitation is based on the assumption that the offender (deviant, one who has broken the social rules) WANTS to rejoin the social contract. Some do, some don't. The genuine psychopath, and the genuine sociopath, are not subject to rehab, because social rules aren't even real to them. But for lots of others, rejoining the social contract IS something they want to do. The problem with the prison system is in part that it's created a parallel reality, of "career criminals" on the inside, and like the gangs, it's hard to leave once you're joined. Sometimes they kill you for wanting to leave that social order for the larger social order.
ReplyDeleteThese ideas are fundamentally political. The "law and order" types don't believe that even the mildest of "career criminals" can really be rehabilitated and rejoin society after paying their debt. Which is just as simplistic as many other theories that ignore context, the influence various subcultures have, peer pressure, etc.
Having said all that, I agree that public lashing is not the way to go. I've heard those arguments before. They are based on the idea that public humiliation breeds conformity. Not sure that it does.
I would simply return to my original point: Inflicting grievous pain is not socially acceptable -- and I say that as someone who would be willing to inflict a certain measure of grievous pain on someone who, say, knew where my kidnapped daughter was. But I don't see that as good social policy.
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