Happy reading!

What strikes me as remarkable about the reaction to this post (including my own!) is the way that people look at offenders’ rights in isolation from victims’ rights (and vice versa). I would be much more impressed with the calls for prison reform presented in this thread if they were presented in the context of a concern for reducing the impact on victims of crime and increasing the personal accountability of offenders.

Without addressing intent, this sounds like a rationale for bringing back insane asylums.

My view of incarceration is more pragmatic than punitive or rehabilitative: some people are more prone than others to causing damaging incidents in other people’s lives and sometimes need to be separated from society for that reason. This does not mean that they mean well, that they are bad people, or that they should be treated inhumanely.

Bringing this to the original poster, nothing he has written has made me doubt that he is someone who may have needed to be separated from society for a time.

* Sex offender registries, as you suggest, are indeed applied overbroadly. While narrowing their scope would help the issue somewhat, the harm that this practice would still do, not just to the former offenders themselves but to the offenders’ families as well, is not justified by the benefit rendered to society — a benefit that is dubious and, at best, small. For more information on this topic, I would encourage you to look at “No Easy Answers” (available at [link]), an exhaustive report on the inefficacy of and grave harm caused by U.S. sex offender registration laws. The report was prepared by Human Rights Watch in 2007 and includes a summary of their findings in the “Acknowledgements” section. For additional background reading, I would also recommend Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.”

* If one is legally a minor at 17.9 years of age, then the laws that apply to minors apply to this individual as well, regardless of the severity of the crime. I do not believe that arbitrarily relaxing these laws for some individuals and not for others is an acceptable practice in a country governed by the rule of law. I do understand very much where you’re coming from, however, and would argue that our laws should be more nuanced in this regard so that they reflect individuals’ changing levels of maturity and accountability as they age, i.e., that we not have a random cut-off age at which a person is magically considered accountable when they were theoretically not accountable the day before. I’m thinking here in particular of cases where 18-year-olds, for instance, have been convicted of consensual sex with a slightly younger partner and, as a consequence, had their lives devastated and future livelihoods destroyed by being forced to register as sex-offenders.

* I do not doubt that a privately run prison could potentially be safer or “better run” than a public facility (although a definition of quality would certainly be helpful here). The problem, however, is that the interests of a private, for-profit institution could not truly be served by rehabilitating offenders, when these very offenders are a source of revenue. In a similar vein, it would also be in the best interests of such an institution to fight meaningful alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders, as these alternatives would threaten the prison’s bottom line. Whereas rehabilitation and reintegration would at least theoretically be in the best interests of a publicly run institution that is chartered to serve the good of the people and responsible to the voting public, the interests of a profit-driven institution would best be served simply by drumming up more business. A related issue here is the practice (which, yes, I feel is unconscionable as well) of having prison medical care run by private organizations. If you would like to discuss this more, I could refer you to some worthwhile articles where these topics are discussed in greater detail.

* Even if a crime is truly an “absolute liability” crime, it is still the job of the judge/jury to determine the final sentence based on the sentencing guidelines and the facts of the case. Mandatory minimum sentences tie judges’ hands and do not allow an individual’s situation, prior criminal record or other mitigating circumstances to be taken into account. They are a simplistic, one-size-fits-all answer to difficult, highly individualized situations.

* Guilt or innocence of a capital crime, however well established a person’s guilt may be, is not the issue here. Surveys of police chiefs throughout the United States consistently reveal that the very people who deal with crime every day do not feel the death penalty actually deters crime. (Again, I could refer you to more detailed information here if you would like.) Also, the fact that many Western, industrialized nations abandoned the practice many years ago with no ill effect serves (at least to my mind) as compelling evidence that the practice is of no practical value. This begs the question as to why we continue the practice at all. What exactly is our motivation for the death penalty if it both fails as a practical deterrent and can demonstrably be replaced by other forms of sentencing? Satisfying our primal desires for retribution is not justification enough. Michigan, incidentally, abolished the death penalty in the 19th century.

* sex offender registries that take proper account of the actual risk of reoffense;
* adult trial for a 17.9 year old convicted of a brutal murder;
* a privately run prison that is safer and better operated than a poorly managed public prison;
* mandatory minimum sentences for a select few “absolute liability” crimes;
* death penalty for mass murderers whose guilt is established not just beyond a reasonable doubt but by an even higher standard (let’s call it “irrefutable video evidence”)?

The problem with the practices you criticize is that they have been poorly (and usually overbroadly) implemented, not that they are inherently bad ideas.

What does this inmate’s account–and the horrifying sign outside medical staff office in Cripes’ comment–say about our society? Should any of us really be surprised by the horrors of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib? When we view those in prison — regardless of what they’ve done — as somehow subhuman, it’s hardly any wonder that we continue to support such unconscionable practices as the death penalty, mandatory minimum sentencing, sex offender registries, trying minors as adults, turning over our prisons to private, for-profit organizations, etc. Justice for all, my ass.

Thank you, AA Chronicle, for publishing this series; I only wish more people would read it (and, of course, give a damn).