Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) wrote the article featured on the cover of March 29th’s Parade magazine, “What’s Wrong With Our Prisons?” I usually ignore Parade, but having met Webb some years ago when I was stationed at the Naval Academy, I read the excerpt of his article emblazoned across the bottom of the cover: “America imprisons 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the world’s average. About one in every 31 adults in this country is in jail or on supervised release. Either we are the most evil people on earth or we are doing something very wrong.”
In fact, the United States, among all nations, imprisons the highest percentage of its residents. The US, according to Webb, also incarcerates a quarter of all reported prisoners in the world.
Does the United States have the most evil population or is the U.S. criminal justice system broken?
The first option, the U.S. has the most evil population, seems unlikely. In my travels, people, in spite of tremendous cultural differences, seem remarkably similar around the world. The common genome that humans share without components that are unique to particular nationalities, supports rejecting the first option.
Fixing the criminal justice system should begin with a comprehensive reassessment of what we want to define as criminal behavior. Senator Webb addresses this, raising the question of whether incarcerating those convicted of marijuana related offenses (about 1 out of 7 of those now in prison) conveys sufficient social benefit to outweigh the human and fiscal costs this imposes on U.S. society.
Next, fixing the criminal justice system should entail a review of the purpose and types of available punishment. Punishment can serve one or more of three functions: vengeance (making the criminal suffer for his or her misdeed), rehabilitation (changing the individual so that he or she will not commit future offenses), and deterrence (influencing others not to commit a similar offense). Vengeance belongs to God.
Collectively, the social sciences, medicine, and other relevant disciplines know little about effective rehabilitation. We probably have more knowledge about what does not work; unfortunately, the U.S. penal system incorporates few of these lessons. In the absence of effective rehabilitation, long-term incarceration of those who pose a physical threat to others may be the best option.
Deterrence of others, to be effective, requires that punishment must be swift, certain, and fair. Those objectives are elusive in spite of the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial by one’s peers.
Setting the agenda for public discourse – what should constitute a crime, what constitutes ethical punishment – is far easier than finding answers. I suspect the path to good answers lies in experimenting with a variety of approaches (one advantage of the federal system in which each state has its own criminal justice system) and in public discourse.
Webb is right. The system is broken. The moral imperative is clear: now is the time to engage in serious public discourse about criminal justice, committing to decades of work to arrive at a more just, more humane system of which the U.S. can rightly be proud.
6 comments:
You confuse retribution and vengeance. They are, distinctly, different, particularly when it comes to the criminal justice system in the US.
As side note, which may seem obvious (as retribution vs vengeance is),
God reserves vengeance for Himself, not because it is wrong, but because it is Holy.
How much suffering does imprisonment prevent?
Prisons are a bargain, by any measure
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/1996/0116crime_john-j--diiulio--jr.aspx
Of course there is a problem. The most difficult of which is to decide who we will not imprison and who would be released, early, and what impact that would have, both good and bad, on society.
Since the Oxford English Dictionary treats “retribution” and “vengeance” as synonyms, I’m unsure of the point you seek to make. Imprisoning someone to prevent that person from committing additional violent crimes against persons usually benefits all concerned. The benefits from imprisoning people who have not committed violent crimes against persons are less obvious and perhaps other, lower cost, more beneficial alternatives exist, e.g., insisting that Bernie Madoff perform community service for the remainder of his life rather than burdening the rest of with financially supporting him (imprisonment costs over $50,000 per year per healthy inmate).
I appreciate the OED, as most due.
But, possibly the OED doesn't distinguish between retribution in a criminal justice system, persoanl retribution and vengeance.
Below is testimony by Robert Blecker, a pro death penalty law professor at New York Law School.
Robert and I disagree on some death penalty issues but his statement, as I edited it, is representative of my support, as well. He just writes much better than I.
Prof. Robert Blecker’s Statement to accompany Testimony before the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission 10/11/06 (supplemented)
An emotive retributivist, I feel certain that:
Some crimes and criminals are objectively worse than others and deserve greater punishment. Some criminals deserve to die and we have an obligation to execute them.
Retribution is not simply revenge: Unlike revenge, retributive punishment must be appropriately directed and proportional to the crime of which it is a response. Retributivism is as much a limit on punishment as it is an affirmative justification for it.
Thus, we retributivists are as concerned with ensuring that criminals do NOT get punished beyond what they deserve as we are that they affirmatively get what they deserve.
Justice is an end in itself. Just punishment must be a proportionate response to a murderer's past crimes. Justice -- specifying in advance those who deserve to die, and correctly applying those general criteria to specific instances requires more than mere rationality. It requires informed emotion - intuition.
An informed public would show an increased support for the death penalty, if they really understood the experience of LWOP.
This search for justice never ends. We retributivists seek just deserts. Retributivist advocates of the death penalty reject deterrence and incapacitation as a necessary or sufficient justification. As Kant said, Society should never use persons as a means to our ends, but must treat each individual as an end in him/herself.
Thus killing X solely to terrorize Y - to send a message and prevent someone else's future crimes -- violates human dignity. Prisons can be designed to minimize the risk of escape or murder inside. Thus neither incapacitation alone, nor deterrence justifies death as punishment.
Although we reject deterrence and incapacitation as primary justifications for punishment, they do provide ancillary benefits. Human nature being what it is, based upon history, and drawing from the collective wisdom as well as two decades of in-depth interviews with street killers, this retributivist firmly believes that the death penalty, on balance, is a marginally better deterrent overall than life without parole, as presently administered. Under present conditions, death row and of course the death penalty carried out, more effectively incapacitates vicious killers than a life in prison among general population.
We retributivist advocates of the death penalty feel certain that human beings can design and implement statutes and procedures that adequately define in advance those who may deserve to die, leaving it to well-informed and carefully selected juries, and appellate courts to apply those criteria. We acknowledge the possibility of human error, but insist that we can design and implement a system that, on balance, saves innocent lives, and most importantly, effectuates justice.
George: Here's mine, not a good as Roberts. It can be generalized to all criminal sanctions.
The Death Penalty: Neither Hatred nor Revenge
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
Death penalty opponents say that the death penalty has a foundation in hatred and revenge. Such is a false claim.
A death sentence requires pre existing statutes, trial and appeals, considerations of guilt and due process, extreme protections for defendants and those convicted. Revenge requires none of these and, in fact, does not even require guilt or a crime.
Unlike revenge, those directly affected by the murder are not allowed to be fact finders in a legal case.
The pre trial, trial. appellate and executive clemency/commutation processes offer much greater time and human resources to capital cases than they do to any other cases, meaning that the facts tell us that defendants and convicted murderers, subject to the death penalty, receive much greater care and concern than those not facing the death penalty - the opposite of a system marked with vengeance.
Calling executions a product of hatred and revenge is simply a way in which "some" death penalty opponents attempt to establish a sense of moral superiority. It can also be a transparent insult which results in additional hurt to those victim survivors who have already suffered so much and who believe that execution is the appropriate punishment for those who murdered their loved one(s).
Far from moral superiority, those who call capital punishment an expression of hatred and revenge are often exhibiting their contempt for those who believe differently than they do. Instead, they might reflect on why others believe it is a just and deserved sanction for the crimes committed.
The pro death penalty position is based upon those who find that punishment just and appropriate under specific circumstances. Retributive justice as opposed to revenge.
Those opposed to execution cannot prove a foundation of hatred and revenge for the death penalty any more than they can for any other punishment sought within a system such as that observed within the US - unless such opponents find all punishments a product of hatred and revenge - an unreasonable, unfounded position
Far from hatred and revenge, the death penalty represents our greatest condemnation for a crime of unequaled horror and consequence. Lesser punishments may suffice under some circumstances. A death sentence for certain heinous crimes is given in those special circumstances when a jury finds such is more just than a lesser sentence.
Less justice is not what we need.
A thorough review of the criminal justice system will often beg this question: Why have we chosen to be so generous to murderers and so contemptuous of the human rights and suffering of the victims and future victims?
The punishment of death is, in no way, a balancing between harm and punishment, because the innocent murder victim did not deserve or earn their fate, whereas the murderer has earned their own, deserved punishment by the free will action of violating societies laws and an individual's life and, thereby, voluntarily subjecting themselves to that jurisdiction's judgment.
Retribution is a form of revenge, satisfying the need of victims or society to “even the score.” Justice, from a Christian perspective, does not entail evening the score but restoring all parties to wholeness. Imprisoning a criminal rarely, and executing one never, restores the criminal, the victim(s), or society to wholeness. Thus, the Christian understanding of justice emphasizes preventing further crimes, healing the injured, and taking any restorative steps possible. Ultimately, justice belongs to God and not to people.
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