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.

Let's Hope Ideology Keeps Getting in the Way...

"California residents owe Cogdill a huge thank you for his willingness to set aside his political ideology..."

-- Merced Sun Star Editorial

Picture a candle-lit room above the Edes & Gill print shop of Boston, on a cold, clear Boston December night in 1773. A group of New England men are painting their faces soot-black and cranberry-red, in their version of Huron war paint. One of them pauses, and thinks out loud before sticking a trio of hawk feathers into his hair.

"Just wait," he says. "I know the British parliament is taxing us without our consent, but this protest we're taking tonight. Are we allowing ideology to trump a more practical solution?"

It isn't a likely scenario, and not just because the Sons of Liberty didn't care too much, by this point, about their conflict-resolution skills: the word 'ideology' had not yet come into use. Karl Marx used it to describe the way the ruling class justifies its assumptions about economics and culture. Napoleon used the term ideologues to ridicule anyone who disagreed with him politically. Its most pejorative use has been in describing someone who won't accept new facts, or new methods, because they don't fit a pre-conceived ideology. Michael Dukakis boldly declared his quest for the presidency would be about "competence, not ideology." President Obama has similarly warned that practical solutions must not be obstructed by ideology.

The trouble with such declarations is that it begs the question: what form will this competence or this practicality take? What will it cost? What surpassing truths will be violated just to meet the needs of the moment? Are we really criticizing narrow-mindedness, or are we looking for a way to outrun the truth?

I talked about Clint Eastwood's film "The Changeling" yesterday, but I didn't mention that the film graphically depicts the death by hanging of a remorseless killer. The families of his victims watch the murder climb the steps, receive the black hood, and suffer the noose.

Mary and I were talking about the movie, and she observed that Grandma Bea's 20th century life span has included a stretch of years that saw murderers go from being despicable villains, worthy of execution, to misunderstood victims of some childhood slight, and thus deserving of "rehabilitation." The rise of Freud and the social sciences and the endless clamor for state-sponsored study of the criminal mind--along with lifetime care of sociopaths--has created a political patronage system for everything from elementary school psychologists to social workers to paralegals to prison guards. The 20th century assumption--ideology in the negative sense--is that we simply must incarcerate and treat the violent. A former age would have simply executed them.

The whole criminal care superstructure is extremely expensive, but it came about because a "brave new world" of pseudo "social scientists" ridiculed old school "ideologues," who were merely affirming that the truths of ancient scripture were incontrovertible. We were told only "hide-bound ideology" could object to the untested notion that prisons could actually rehabilitate rapists and murderers. On another but arguably related front, the ancient truth was that care for the poor should be an individual or a village obligation--not the work of a monstrous state or federal monolith. Similarly, law enforcement was supposed to be an individual obligation, with every man armed and ready to conduct citizen's arrests, and even fight for timeless constitutional principles--as the tea party brigade did in 1773. Now, it's all replaced with a standing army of specialists in every conceivable branch of law enforcement, education, mental health, and criminal justice. The timeless ideology of "swift, local, and accountible" has been replaced by the new-fangled "competence" of "centralized, scientific, and professional."

So, how's that all working, people?



Is it "ideology" to keep the expensive incarceration and "rehabilitation" facilities at full-staff, or would it be "ideology" to return to ancient, and less expensive, truths?

What is "competence" and what is "ideology?"

I suppose it depends on who is getting paid for it--and who is doing the paying.