Hammurabi!

Mischief managed!

It's been an action-packed morning, and now it's settled down. Woke up at 6, got to the DMV at 7, waited the obligatory hour, got my driver's license renewed, got a haircut, returned the library books, picked up the prescription for my face, and made it back in time for Cookie to eagerly beat her tail on the couch before she realized I wasn't wearing a bacon suit. (There's an idea for Halloween! Go as a giant strip of bacon... and tape a gnawing plush dog to the side. Or the top.)

Last night, I was doing the very occasional guilty pleasure of looking at the comments on the letters to the editor for the local newspaper. There's always a brief temptation to comment, but I know that most debates on an internet forum are venting, and especially with the tone of those people... I don't feel like being labeled a socialist for believing something that has nothing to do with socialism whatsoever.

But even though they didn't listen, they did say a few interesting things, which got me to thinking about punishment.

What is punishment for? We think a person broke the law. The law is enforced. They go in front of a judge, have their fair trial, and are either released or punished, depending on innocence or guilt. So we punish the guilty.

And of course punishment need not be only by the government. Society does it too. We disapprove of your actions. Your actions are bad. You are guilty of a bad thing. You are punished by our ostracizing you, by our thinking disapproving thoughts about you as we glower and refuse to accept you as one of us, our priveleged group of decent people.

That is the what. Why do that? An eye for an eye? Vengeance and retribution, another way of saying, "I've been wronged, and by doing this act, I'll feel right again?" What about punishment makes you feel right? "They're getting what they deserve." Do we deserve better? "Have we committed murder?" In those cases, point.

Why do they deserve it? "Because they've done wrong, and wrong acts should not be rewarded or let alone (and thus encouraged by silence), but rather deterred." Ah, deterred! And what better way to do that than to punish?

So we seek to deter crime. A punishment should both be a demonstration to the innocent that one should not commit this act and a prescription that would discourage an offender of repeating the offense.

On both fronts, there are problems with this model. For most crimes, no one could afford to do them if enforcement were absolute, even ones like speeding. (I'd hate to have to pay that much EVERY time the needle went over the line.) Just because you dabble on the other side of the law doesn't mean you will be punished for it, and in cases of particularly immoral crimes (like murder and theft), this is regrettable.

Second, we are human beings, whether we've committed a crime or not. Ideally, this means that we are kept in a diverse civil order by more than threat. If a person becomes comfortable with a gun constantly to their head and nothing else holding them back, they can do anything. Punishment is one way to deter and discourage, but it shouldn't be the only one employed. We should teach morals and ethics, and in teaching be careful not to coerce by brainwashing, for a coerced mind is simply the same person with the gun inside their head. For those that are already being punished, they should have some recourse to counseling, if they seem to require it. They didn't start out as criminals. One person last night said that we shouldn't spend so much time trying to understand why criminals act out, but I disagree. If we can learn why, we can better help them potentially reform themselves, and if it's a problem that can be addressed by society, then efforts may be made in that direction as well.

Punishment alone just doesn't cut it. It works for some, perhaps, but not for others. If preventing crimes from occuring again were our only goal, and human life weren't important, we could just kill every offender. But we are blessed with better sense than that, and hopefully we're bursting with so much sense that we can see that talking down isn't enough, that we must also encourage the good.


While I was writing this, I realized another thing that was influencing my thoughts on this. It's at an anti-legalized abortion rally, and they were being asked what the woman's punishment would be, and whether it would be the same as murder (as they claim in rhetoric). They gave intriguing answers, often not having really thought about the part of making abortion illegal where the people who still do it have to have something happen to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

(Needless to say, I am pro-choice, in that I believe the woman is best able of deciding for herself what pregnancy means for her, when life begins, and whether she should have a baby, and she should have the option of a safe place should she decide it is necessary.)