Prisons

-- By LeylaHadi - 08 Apr 2013

Deterrence

There is a running theme this semester, it seems, that is, the purpose of the law. But that is too broad a concept; the purpose of a law depends on the particular law. For example, I suppose the law against operating a vehicle while under the influence exists to establish that the state officially condemns the act, in hopes of preventing drunk driving. But a part of this law is the punishment, the axe that compels us to adhere to the rule. What is the purpose of this punishment for this law? To deter others from driving under the influence? As a form of retribution to the particular driver? But retribution for what exactly? What real evil has the drunk driver committed when he's tailed and stopped by a police officer? He drank and drove, which doesn't necessarily show that he is evil or in need of retribution. Is it, then, to prevent a possible harm from occurring if he is allowed to continue drinking and driving? Well, no, because a police officer need only put him in the back of his car and take him home.

So, continuing with this particular situation, the purpose of punishing a drunk driver who has yet to actually harm anybody should not be retributive, if retribution is based on the moral right, and what is deserved. It must be, then, to make an example out of this particular drunk. Society has been warned that if they drink and drive (and are caught), they will pay. If they do it more than once, they will pay in more ways than one.

If you don't punish the drunk driver who is caught before there is an accident, for what will you punish the one whose conduct results in an accident claiming lives? Is he punished for being unlucky?

Is preventing those who drive drunk from driving punishment? Or is it prevention with negative personal consequences?

Perhaps the problem with the conversation is the analytical categories, which prevent us from addressing clearly enough the range of social motivations and the nature of the collective behaviors we adopt.

Eviction

Take a different criminal law though: larceny.

This sentence doesn't do the job of explaining to the reader the structure of the argument she is following.

The purpose of the rule against stealing from others is, again, to establish that the state condemns taking another person's property without consent, to prevent theft from happening. But if the law did not exist, and the government did not condemn larceny in some overtly dog-eat-dog world, I don't think it is clear that people would steal more, or that more people would steal.

Why is that not clear? Is the evidence inconclusive? What we observe about looting, banditry, "ethnic cleansing" and so on in times of civil disturbance, cross-culturally, seems pretty suggestive. Events occurring in Indian history (to take one possible locale among many) in 1857 and 1947 seem also to confirm the principle.

Society would have some sort of unwritten understanding not to take other people's things, thus pretty much having the same people steal for the same reasons, regardless of the nonexistence of the law. They would still suffer condemnation from society, they would still become outcasts, except they would not be behind bars. So here, then, is the purpose of the punishment for larceny to rid society of thieves? And why is that ok, and why is it that the people who get to decide get to decide, and does it actually accomplish anything?

Surely it would be right to say that societies that have satisfactorily subjected themselves to the rule of law achieve on the whole very much higher levels of protection of property from force and fraud, private and public, than those that haven't. The property of the rich is always better protected than the property of the poor, but it is hard to name a society with weak commitment to the rule of law in which the property of the poor is as well protected as it is in the most oppressive and grasping society performing the rule of law, which is probably our own. Making theft illegal is what makes public corruption illegal, which restrains the power that most pitilessly plunders the poor.

Cages

During my third year at Cornell, a string of suicides occurred on campus; notably, the kids jumped off bridges. The last suicide that took place before the administration decided it needed to erect fences across all the bridges, was of an acquaintance of mine. In hindsight, there were many signs, despite his very tight group of friends, his stellar grades, the job he had lined up, his very sweet girlfriend. One night a few of us were drinking together, and he burnt each of his knuckles with a cigarette. Since Matt, no students have jumped into the gorges; and three years later, the fences are now removed, replaced with heat-detecting nets under the bridges. The student body has successfully finished its time in prison, and is now only on probation.

Matt's actions brought about the first time I contemplated the multiplicity of our person. This young man who appeared to have everything going for him literally threw it all away. The people close to him knew about his struggle with depression and that he had even attempted to kill himself before. But he was so scared of what would happen to him if he asked for help, that he'd be locked up, or anesthetized. He felt there was no safety net, and so he didn't look for safety, even though I'm sure there were conflicting forces within him that yearned for help. His friends didn't think he would ever reach that point, and couldn't look through the facade of unity to see that there was one part of him that could reach that point, which tragically took over that one afternoon. If only the idea of oneness seen as a given, and instead a position we reach through deep study and acknowledgement of the many.

The criminal justice system puts people inside cages, rather than spending more energy and money on preventing the need for the cages, fences, in the first place. Like suicide, there is a fearful perplexity surrounding the causes of some of our worst crimes, from rape to murder. Watching a documentary about Jeffrey Dahmer recently left The school has made efforts to improve its mental health facilities. This is a small representation of how society deals with society's most difficult and seemingly impenetrable problems. Throwing them inside a cage instead of dealing with the source. Throw a kid into prison for possessing marijuana, taking away his opportunity for education, for livelihood, for freedom; for harming nobody, except possibly themselves. If the point is to prevent the kid from being harmed, then throwing him into jail sure as hell isn't going to help that goal.

Which everybody understands. Would it not be right to say, however, that the motive for arresting is making the numbers, while the motive for searching was to check for weapons, incidental to which the drugs turned up, allowing the arresting officer to make a number? That in fact this, like other decisions about what to charge and how to dispose, are affected by a variety of "incidental" factors, arising themselves in sequences of quite separate social actions, that can't be accounted for on the basis of any specific social policy towards particular offenders or offenses? Modeling what happens on the basis of what we expect to happen is a particular failure of lawyers, whose interest is in power rather than public administration.

But what exactly do these realizations accomplish? Punishment is the institution, rehabilitation the naive dream. What can I do to change that? Do I want to do something to change that? Either way, once I decide, I should be able to pursue it, be able to have the knowledge, skills, and network to shake up the system. Otherwise, I am just putting myself in another form of prison.

It does not follow, analytically, that not to be shaking up the system is to be in another form of prison. Indeed, perhaps shaking up the system is another form of prison, less easily escaped once entered. In any event, I'm not sure that the conclusion has anything much to do with the preceding ideas. Perhaps another look at the outline, to define clearly what you want the essay to do, is the first step in improving the draft. I think the present three stages are less well integrated than the could be, because the strategy of explication is unclear. You want to say something about the logic of punishment as a part of social order-keeping, I think. This is indeed a tricky subject, right at the heart of matters, where justice and injustice are both forged. It's necessary to be very precise. I think you need to state your own ideas clearly, through explicit statement followed by illustration.

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