|
|
Voice |
|
|
|
Building more prisons as a cure for crime is like creating more cemeteries as a remedy for cancer. Constructing more hospices to stoop Aids is the same as executing every suspect to stop murders. All are dead end streets. Politicians beat the drums of public fears of
violence and crime. They
shout slogans of Lock ‘em Up and Throw Away the Key, Three Strikes and
You’re Out, mandatory sentences.
One man recently got a life sentence for spitting on a police
officer. Their only
mentality is for Law and Order without any reason, just words to appease
a weary and frightened public. Mach
bravado is meant to make up for lack of a logical solution, perhaps
because a solution for crime and punishment is as elusive as a cure for
the common cold. There was a time when the mentally disturbed
were locked away in an asylum and at times put on display for the
amusement of the public. People
would pay to see the irrational behavior of inmates.
Civilization has moved a bit past that.
Medicine has advanced greatly since leeches were used to drain
the blood of those already sick and weak.
Instead of clearing ground for more cemeteries, medicine has
worked to keep people alive and healthy, with prevention a large part of
the crusade. The same can’t be said for crime and
punishment. People are
still stoned to death for infractions of the law in some countries.
Maiming the guilty by cutting off hands or tongues is not too
rare. Even some of the
supposedly most advanced nations execute people in the name of justice. Since Cain slew Abel there has been no easy
answer on how to punish the guilty.
He was banished to another country for killing his brother.
In today’s system, he would have either been killed himself by
the law or spent life or a part of it in a prison at taxpayer’s
expense. While Louis Pasteur was developing weapons
against disease, the courts were digging deeper dungeons and the
guillotine. While Jonas
Salk was working on a cure for polio, society built prisons with higher
walls and paid the power bills for an electric chair.
Little has changed since Cain and Abel.
A crime is committed. Punishment
is enacted, the harsher and swifter the better. Medical science learned that bacteria breeds in
filth. Cleanliness destroys
it. Prevention was
stressed. No one seems to
have looked for the causes of crime.
When Jean Valjean stole a loaf of bread to feed his family
in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, he spent most of his life in the
galleys. Some dreamers worked for prison reform.
They felt any man or woman who digresses from the straight and
narrow can be rehabilitated. There are still some of those around. Mostly our governments have come to look at prisons as
warehouses for lawbreakers. Lock
‘em up and keep ‘em as long as possible.
Unfortunately, to their way of thinking, these people will see
the light of freedom one day. Chain or cage an animal and abuse him.
You have a vicious, dangerous brute.
People are the same way. Put
the most upright person who has broken a law in the company of career
criminals and he must adjust to their world.
Lock a man in a dank dungeon, cut off from the world, mistreat
him and you have a uncontrolled beast. But—what would happen if some magic wand waved
over America and there was no more crime?
There would be an economic collapse of major proportions.
Crime is big business. Consider
what theft, embezzlement and other broken laws cost.
Consider what governments pay for police, attorneys, judges,
jailers and prisons. A
conservative estimate is that it costs the taxpayers $50,000 per year
for each person incarcerated. Thirty
years ago a conservative estimate put crime at costing society
$78-billion a year. There always has been crime and punishment.
And, unfortunately, it seems there always will be.
Until we can destroy crime at its roots, we need enlightenment on
punishment. Take a mandatory sentencing which destroys common sense.
Give the power back to the judges to let the punishment fit the
crime. Prisons should be
for those beyond control, either through violence or uncontrolled,
continuous lawbreaking. Halfway
houses, home custody with obligations to repay victims makes more sense
that lock downs at tax cost. Someday someone will treat crime with the attention a disease gets. Voltaire said to give him a child for the first six years and he would shape his life. Causes for crime should begin early in the environment. Symptoms to look for would be poverty, ignorance and prejudice.
|
