As a caveat, I haven’t read the book, but I have a question.
Are these really the sorts of people you want to exile to some island without any supervision or checks on their behavior? I’d say that’s exactly what they would want: A chance to work in the dark making up whatever plots come their way.
Remember that criminal != stupid. There are some very smart very brutal fuckers whom people are willing to follow locked away in maximum security prisons. If you put those guys on an island, all you’re doing is giving them unlimited time to beat the system with unlimited manpower to help them do it. Sooner or later, human ingenuity is going to win out over whatever limits you could impose there. I’d say that society’s needs more or less require their incarceration under constant supervision.
The last thing I’d like is for someone like Moussanni exiled to some foreign island where no one knows what the hell he’s doing. I much prefer him and his kind relaxing in their warm cozy supermax cell.
The idea’s a pretty libertarian one, and has some appeal, at least as an abstract. Basically, in our current system, people are forced into abiding by the “social contract”. We are bound by laws, many of which were made long before we were born, that we never explictly agreed to be bound by.
But what if I don’t want to play by society’s rules? Is it fair that I’m forced to do so? The libertarian answer is no, it is not. Coventry isn’t a place of punisment so much as a place one can go to if they want to opt out of the laws of society. It’s segregated and guarded because society does have a right to protect itself, but not to punish people for breaching a contract they never signed.
Practically speaking, of course, it doesn’t work. Some form of a social contract (arguably a stricter one than civilization’s given the conditions) must be observed within Coventry if they hope to survive, so the purpose is defeated. And conditions within Coventry would be so bad compared to civilization that asking people to choose between it and conventional punsiment wouldn’t be a fair trade.
History gives us examples of prison camps, such as the Andersonville camp that held American POWs during the Civil War. The most common scenario is that you end up with a gang/tribe of toughs who rule the place by intimidation, stealing anything worth having from the other inmates. Thus, you generally don’t get a civilized society within the camp, but rather a semi-barbaric form of living. There’d be no chance for the inmates to build up a nation and put big plans into motion; they’d generally be too busy fighting for survival. Thus, much as I enjoy the thought of Kenneth Lay living off meager rations in the wilds of Montana, I’d have to give this plan a thumbs down.
Well, everyone opting for Coventry would have to be sterilized, as FriarTed mentioned.
The reason why this wouldn’t work is that we don’t have an impeniterable force shield. Dudes would have pistols, cell phones and the like dropped in, and then the perps in would break out.
What we’d need is a one way teleporter to another planet, then send volunteers & political disidents there- not violent criminals.
Actually, in Heinlein’s “Coventry”, there are two factors not mentioned in the OP:
The only people who go to Coventry are those who refuse the pyschological treatment that anyone can recieve in order to cure their “antisocialness”. So in other words, every person in Coventry had the opportunity of refusing to go- it was entirely voluntary.
Everyone entering “Coventry” gets to take anything they can buy or make in with them. The protagonist, for example, takes a jeep, rifle, food supplies and various other items.
Even with these, all that you are doing to the inmates (this is a prison, not a country) is just sentencing them either to a more painful death than that alloted by capital punishment, or to worse conditions than any prison in the world. Plus, there are problems with innocents who end up in the system- not least the children of inmates.
It’s been mentioned before, but what’s to stop the hardcore unrepentant criminal gangbangers from stealing all the jeeps, rifles, food, etc., building the baddest criminal underworld guild the world has ever known, and returning to wreak havoc on the oblivious law-abiding populace?
Heinlein’s writing strikes me as leaning toward imaginary futuristic societies and situations that have no hope of surviving in the real world, and this doesn’t sound any different.
Coventry assumed a society (reading between the lines) that was stable and fair where everyone had a reasonable chance to develop their human potential. People were not tempted into criminal activity because of lack of other opportunities. Minor and major crimes were dealt with by compensating the wronged individual. If the perpetrator refused to go along with what society demanded of them, they could choose to go to Coventry.
Forced sterlization would be completely against the concepts of coventry and not imposing on a citizen’s rights as defined by Heinlein.
One point that has not been mentioned is that Coventry was closely monitered by spies and other means to make sure that things did not get out of hand. Also people who showed that they had learned that they preferred to live in civilization and accept its rules where given a chance to leave Coventry.
I beleive the weakest part of this concept is the assumption that people who committed crimes could be rehabilitated by some sort of psychological process. We do not know if this will ever be possible and more importantly - desirable.
I agree that in the real world Coventry would just be a brutal prison. But if anyone in Montana has 75 square miles of land they don’t know what to do with, I’ll take it:)
Hhmm, I was going from memory, but it looks like this part was wrong. There was no compensation, just psychological adjustment of anti-social behavior.
This ain’t about US law, which currently would not allow something like Coventry to exist. If RAH was right about his future history, grim times are coming.
Hopefully, nothing like Coventry could exist, then.
Regarding Menocchio’s point, about this idea being Libertarian (assuming we can agree that it is). Can’t the same Libertarian idea of not being responsible for laws that were created and enacted before our existence be the basis for wanting to “illegally” immigrate from Mexico to America?
Amazingly, a microcosm of this has happened already. Lurigancho Prison in Lima, Peru, is now de facto run by the inmates. The guards lost control years ago, so all rules ar set and enforced by the inmates. There are workshops, stores, drug labs, prostitutes - it’s a little city, run by criminals. I’m not sure of the details of release, but the cell distribution is determined by landlords, status and rent.
A buddy of mine visited it last year - they even have tour guides. He commissioned a ring from a silversmith, and went back the next day to pick it up. Great piece of work!
Sterilizing crimanals has a pretty ugly history. I doubt you’d be able to convince Americans to give it another try.
Also this plan seems to depend on our ability to classify someone as unrehabilitatable, which I doubt we could do beyond a vague statistical pronouncement.
I don’t have my copy on me, but I’m almost certain you’re incorrect- there are secret police inside, who offer a place in society to those in coventry who demonstrate themselves cured of their antisociality (like the protagonist), but I never got the impression that anyone in the society outside Coventry is unhappy with the status quo or that they need “individualists” for anything. Could you be thinking of something else?
I was interested by Coventry because, unlike most Heinlein books that deal with libertarianism, it basically denies that libertarianism in this case works. Indeed, the civiliastion inside is a kind of rough satire of the US (although less just, generally), and it came about due to absolute freedom. Meanwhile, the anarcho-communist-like Covenant society (all for the good of all) thrives. But maybe I’m misremembering.
No, it wasn’t, Tris. In Heinlein’s Coventry, the US Army had covert operatives inside Coventry to spy on the place. There were three separate countries inside the place, each claiming to be the sole legitimate government of the United States of America. One was the Free Republic (which, of course, was neither free nor a republic–it was a dictatorship). Another was the Angels of the Lord, diehard followers of Nehemiah Scudder’s successor. I forget the name of the third outfit.
As for children born in Coventry, the story has a line in it which answers that question: if the child so desires and requests, he or she will be accepted into the US (the government outside of Coventry) and granted citizenship.
Also mentioned in Heinlein’s story is a communication point which those in Coventry can use to request repatriation and treatment.
Also bear in mind that Coventry wasn’t 75 square miles in Montana. I got the impression that basically Coventry was roughly geographic Canada.
I don’t agree that “inside” was considered a failure while Coventry thrived. On the contrary, I always got the sense that this society was actually Heinlein’s ideal.
For those who haven’t read the story, the standard (non-Coventry) society has no laws. But any person who is accused of violating someone else’s rights (in the primary character’s case, he punched someone who pissed him off in the nose) is hauled in front of a court presided over by a psychologist, not a judge. The shrink decides if the events took place as the accuser suggests, and if so, whether this indicates a fundamental sense that “my rights are more important than that person’s” on the part of the accuser. If the shrink decides this to be the case, the accused is given a choice between psychological adjustment (which within the framework of this story is painless and 100% effective) or exile. Exile is Coventry.
The border between Coventry and the society is technologically impassable - going far into the sky and deep into the earth - another convenient technological plot element. However, there are infiltrators who are actually spies for the society (not to mention a few folks like a doctor who lives voluntarily there to provide medical care for folks who otherwise would have none) who keep an eye out to ensure that nothing is going on that might enable a successful attack on the society itself.
Since the entire premise depends on a legal system/society we don’t have and technological innovations we are nowhere near achieving, I don’t think we could realistically implement a system anything like it. That being said, I would not object to exile as an alternative to the death penalty, if there were somewhere that people could be exiled to that could not possibly be returned from (i.e. another planet). After all, to me the entire point of the death penalty is the concept that (presumably and hopefully) the convicted has demonstrated an inability to live within society’s rules, and in a particularly egregious way. Eliminating that person from the society seems to me to be the only viable option, whether you do it by execution, permanent imprisonment, or exile.
