The Outlandish Expense of Justice

Here's a routine story, unfortunately, from the local news about a home invasion robbery that took place ten days ago in Yucaipa. The assailants barged through the homeowners' door, at gunpoint, and duct-taped their victims mouths and eyes. One of the victims was kicked and struck--as their home was being ransacked. After 30 minutes of hearing their belongings removed from their home, and perhaps not knowing whether they would be killed, the home-invaders made off with the victims' car.

Apparently, in this case, the car had a tracking device, and they were captured in a relatively short span of time, but the real injustice is about to begin. The court and jail system will begin to move on this, and they will receive a trial, or perhaps a plea-bargain, as, of course they should. Due process is critical in any nation of laws, but whether you believe in deterrence or not, the sort of human scum that are found guilty of this kind of cruelty are just too expensive to house--and too expensive to let free once the existing jail system has turned them into even more thorough-going monsters than they were before they entered it. The most merciful thing that can be done for criminals of this sort, and for society, is to execute them--publicly, or at the very least, whip them, set them in the pillory, brand them, and cut off their ears--all punishments that were not considered "cruel and unusual" by the very men who wrote the words "cruel and unusual" into our constitution.

Of course, those familiar with our present system will respond, "wait; a death penalty would take forever and be far more expensive than a plea bargain and a few years in prison," but that of course makes the assumption that we should honor our existing body of legal precedent. It assumes we have actually made progress in criminal justice over the last century. We haven't. Lawyers tend to create work for other lawyers, and in the modern era, they make work for prison wardens, correctional officers, social workers, private detectives, police departments, and nurses, doctors, and psychologists. There's a whole constituency getting paid very well to make sure final justice is never rendered. Moreover, the prison system we currently maintain for violent offenders is far more "cruel and unusual" than anything an 18th century mind could possibly have conceived. Can anyone really doubt that a firing squad would be infinitely more merciful to a convicted murderer than a lifetime in solitary confinement? Can anyone really argue that 39 lashes across the bare back and a "Thief" branded on the right hand wouldn't be infinitely more merciful than sending a young lad into a maximum security prison?

It might even do something the monstrously expensive system we now maintain can't do: reform him.