Along with a major rewrite of our laws and judicial system - decriminalizing minor victimless offenses such as drugs, eliminating courtroom theatrics, anonymizing defendants, etc - my solution is public floggings. My system would eliminate prison for all but the most serious offenses.
Property crimes, Including burglary, theft, vandalism, arson, fraud, etc. :
For minor property crimes: Double restitution + 5 lashes.
For more serious property crimes: Double restitution + 10 lashes.
For major property crimes, Double restitution + 20 lashes, + imprisonment.
For crimes against people, including all violent and sex crimes:
Minor offenses: Fines and damages appropriate to the offense + 5 lashes
More serious offenses resulting in serious harm: 10-15 lashes + damages + imprisonment.
Serious offenses, including vicious battery, rape & murder: Execution. Period. Method of execution to be determined by the victim or the victim’s family. And done in a timely fashion. In particularly heinous crimes, lashes can be administered prior to the execution.
The bottom line, people, is that prison remains the best overall solution to a huge problem, crime. The issue isn’t fixing prisons because they already work about as well as can be expected under the circumstances. The issue needs to be fixing society so there is less need to send people to prison.
No, it’s not a good solution at all, let alone the best one.
Not only is it a huge drain of resouces, but it surrounds people with the worst element of society, more often than not turning them into bitter, worse criminals. And rather than giving people a chance to reform and teaching a lesson, it destroys lives.
A young man who commits an armed robbery under the current system will spend a number of years, including the prime of his life, in prison, or criminal finishing school. His life is ruined, and those years can never be gotten back. Under my system, he would have to repay double what he stole, receive 10 lashes (not something to sneer at), and return to society with a tangible reminder of the fact that crime is not a viable option. An added bonus is that the total cost to society after sentencing is almost nil: Only payroll time for the person administering the lashes, as opposed to the thousands upon thousands of dollars it would cost to imprison, feed, and clothe him for 5 to 10 years.
And if 10 stripes aren’t enough to convince him not to repeat his crime, then I’m sure that 20 more will, for the repeat offense.
No offense, Joe, but I think your solution would greatly increase the problem you’re trying to solve. It’s true that many criminals become embittered in prison and leave worse than they started. But would corporal punishment be any different? If you take a typical armed robber like you describe, take his money (and where is he going to get the money to pay a double fine in the first place?), publically flog him, and then release him back into society, what have you got? A man who was already a dangerous criminal and is now angry at the world. I wouldn’t want to be a customer in the next convenience store he robs. Prison does accomplish one undeniable goal; it seperates proven criminals from society. This may not make the criminals better, but it does improve society.
Personally I’m all for forced re-education camps and mindwipes for capital offenders. The ethical constraints of today prevent us from doing such things of course, but I’m hoping that will change eventually.
The supermax prison idea (keeping the criminals away from each other) I think is a good one
But not for the hardened criminals, more for the younger criminals in their formative years.
So a new criminal goes to prison for whatever reason, but isn’t allowed to form gang affiliations and other nasty bits of business that serve as “training camp”
The prisoner is let out of the cell for daily group therapy (1-2 hours) exercise (1-2 hours) and that’s it.
Prison sentence terms would need to be much shorter.
Flogging people? Only if we want to create a society that believes that we should hit each other to solve our problems.
One major problem is our culture. We have a society that dictates that if one desires something, he should go out and get it. He should allow nothing to stand in his way.
We also subscribe to individualism. We recognize and validate people who act with little regard for the ideas, opinions and desires of others.
There are differences in group mindedness and individuality among the different ethnic groups (in the US at least), and the lack of a unified ethnic philosophy (i think) is what differentiates us from like a Sweden or a Norway. They have the luxury of ethnic similarity, they get to see each other as “the same as me” and can thus muster more empathy for their criminals (which in turn mitigates criminality). The problems caused by differences in values between ethnic groups, well, those also intervene quite a bit, the lack of cultural understanding is but one facet of the problem.
Another facet is that we just don’t want to pay to fund preventative social programs; and prevention is the only way to work at the root of the social disease, rather than just treating the symptoms.
I’ve always been partial to the Devil’s Island approach to incarceration. If people want to be anti-social, separate them from society and let them live like animals. Or let them learn to live like human beings. They will learn to be self-sufficient, they will create their own social order, and they can live by the rules they’ve tried to push onto mainstream society.