Punitive Justice: From Butt Cheeks to Barracks to Prison Yards
Joel and I will be recording an episode in the next few days on the American penal system. One of the intriguing and possible through lines is how corporal punishment (hereafter referred to less politically correct as “spanking”) might derive from and feed into a system of retribution. You do something wrong; you must pay the price/face the punishment.
Spanking kids may be a time-honored tradition. It may provide short-term, positive results. But is it the best way to treat children? Is it moral? Does it actually produce the kinds of behavior in the short and long term that we want? For more on the topic of whether or not to spank, I refer you to a great website with tons of helpful, educational resources. It’s Home - End Corporal Punishment of Children.
The desire to punish a wrongdoer, particularly one who has wronged us or our loved ones, is human. It is visceral. The question Joel and I want to pursue in this episode will be: how do we get the results that we want when dealing with the harm that is done from crime? If spanking a child produces short-term compliance but long-term anger and physiological pathologies, is it worth it? Similarly, if we punish severely those who have committed crimes, will we get to the result we want?
James Conway, retired superintendent of Attica Correctional Facility in New York, visited Norway’s seemingly luxurious Halden Prison in 2014. I watched a YouTube clip of parts of his tour. The look on his face was not one of amusement. He described what he saw during the tour as “prison utopia.” “I don’t think you can go any more liberal—other than giving inmates the keys,” said Conway.
Well, Mr. Conway, how do you feel about the quite liberal recidivism rates in the US: about two-thirds of released inmates get rearrested? In Norway, it’s at 20%. Wow, American prisons are doing a bang-up job of preparing inmates for their return to society.
We have two options. Number one: when someone commits a crime, we can imprison them for life, or we can off them. This is irrespective of what crime they’ve committed. Or, number two: we can get serious and as smart as we’re able to create places where at least some offenders can prepare to eventually go back to society and be productive and pleasant. Personally, I don’t want to be the victim of a criminal who didn’t learn a damn thing in prison, because the prison system was too good at retribution and not quite good enough at rehabilitation.
If Norway’s prison ethos seems indulgent or not punitive enough, okay. That’s not nothing. But they are getting the one thing that American exceptionalism champions above just about any other virtue: RESULTS. What works? I always thought that was what we had over other countries: pragmatism. But our prisons suck. They don’t work. We might ditch our mid-pubescent, adolescent national arrogance on this topic and seek to learn from countries that are getting better results than us.