In Defense of Flogging Read Free Page B

offer the lash in exchange for sentence years, after the approval of some parole board designed to keep the truly dangerous behind bars. As a result, our prison population would plummet. This would not only save money but save prisons for those who truly deserve to be there: the uncontrollably dangerous. Let us not confuse a need
to incapacitate—because someone will commit a crime—with the concept of punishment—because someone has committed a crime.
    Certainly mere drug offenders should not be kept in prison, nor should white-collar criminals. Bernard Madoff, famously convicted in 2009 for running a massive Ponzi scheme, is being incarcerated and costing the public even more money. Why? He’s no threat to society. Nobody would give him a penny to invest. But Madoff did wrong and deserves to be punished. Better to cane him and let him go. Punishment is, after all, a vital goal of the criminal justice system. Even if the successful rehabilitation of criminals were always possible, it wouldn’t be enough. When people commit a crime, they should be punished.
    To understand how important punishment is to the notion of justice, imagine being the victim of a violent mugging. The last thing you remember before slipping into unconsciousness is the mugger pissing on you and laughing. Such things happen. Luckily, police catch the bastard, and he is quickly convicted. What should happen next?
    What if there were some way to reform this violent criminal without punishing him ? In Sleeper ,
Woody Allen’s futuristic movie from the 1970s, there’s a device like a small walk-in closet called the “orgasmatron.” A person goes in and closes the door, lights flash, and three seconds later, well . . . that’s why they call it the orgasmatron. Now imagine, if you will, a device similar to the orgasmatron called the “reformatron.” It’s the perfect rehabilitation machine for criminals. Upon conviction, felons enter this box and close the door. Three seconds later they come out slightly disheveled and “cured” of all their criminal tendencies. Your mugger, therefore, would be ushered into the reformatron, which is conveniently located right in the courtroom. In he goes: The door closes, the lights flash, and three seconds later . . . success! The cured criminal thanks God, kisses his baby’s mother, and walks out of the courtroom a free man to go home, relax, and think about job possibilities.
    For many reformers in the criminal justice system, the reformatron is the ideal. But along with being fiction, the concept is disturbingly lacking in justice. If you were the victim of a violent mugging—if you had been beaten, pissed on, and robbed of your money, health, and dignity—would the reformatron
satisfy your sense of justice? The fact that the criminal wouldn’t commit another crime is nice, but shouldn’t a criminal be punished—not only for his sake but also for ours?
    Retributive justice is part of every society and deeply rooted in American culture. Consider the death penalty, which has always had strong public support in America. There is almost no evidence, despite what many Americans want to believe, that the death penalty deters crime. Yet even among those who know the death penalty does not deter crime, support for the death penalty still runs three to one. Deterrence and punishment are separate issues. Punishment is about retribution. Reformers have a tough time grasping this.
    The problem—and our shame—is that prisons, though never designed for this purpose, have become the only way we punish. In an ironic twist, we designed the prison system to replace flogging. The penitentiary was supposed to be a kinder and gentler sentence, one geared to personal salvation, less crime, and a better life for all. It was, in short, intended to serve the function of a reformatron. Needless to say, it didn’t work.

    Before we had prisons, those who