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Oh Pardon Me. There Goes My Silly Utopianism Again
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Oh Pardon Me. There Goes My Silly Utopianism Again
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by Sean Gonsalves
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"What about the victims? Criminals have more rights than the victims. Why should all this attention be given to the criminals and not those who get attacked or robbed?"
That type of demagoguery is common in the "debate" about the criminal justice system. Just the other day I heard someone on talk radio foaming at the mouth about how we're not hard enough on "criminals."
What a fraud being perpetrated on us by all these tough-talking politicians, armed with draconian  crime measures and alleged sympathy for crime victims, claiming to represent The People: "Instead of giving criminals all these rights, we need victims' rights." (In other words, to hell with the Constitution.)
The esteemed psychiatrist Karl Menninger provides the needed response: "This childish outcry has an appeal for the unthinking. Of course no victim should be neglected. But the individual victim has no more right to be protected than those of us who may become victims. We all want to be better protected. And we are not being protected by a system that attacks 'criminals' as if they were the embodiment of all evil."
It's well-known that most criminals are never caught. In fact, according to the U.S. Justice Department, only 37 percent of all crimes are even reported to the police (44 percent of all violent crimes, 31 percent of rapes and sexual attacks and 56 percent of robberies).
Those who think the debate has become inexcusably centered on the "criminal" are certainly confused. Clearly, they are talking about a sub-set of "criminals" - the accused offender (some of whom are truly legally innocent). Why rain down the fury of our fear-inspired moral outrage on the convicted offender - those criminals stupid, poor, unlucky or blatant enough to get caught?
There's one crime in which we all share guilt. And that is the crime we commit against criminals - a "common sense" error that only exacerbates, what should be called, the social safety problem.
Think about it. We systematically dehumanize and denigrate the minority of criminals who get caught. We wash our hands of the guilt and convince ourselves that we do it all to "correct" the "criminal."
Of course, if policy makers actually took into account discoveries of behavioral science we would be on the road to recovery. Menninger, a behavior scientist who spent years studying this stuff, puts it starkly: "We are busy pursuing and persecuting thousands of failures and blunderers in order to capture, confine or execute a few conspicuous monsters who set the pace for a code that has to do mainly with petty thieves, bungling burglars, pill peddlers and mugs. We neglect intelligent, scientific methods of effective law enforcement that would protect us from them and from the much larger group of professionals."
Our general talk about "justice" pretty much boils down to fairness and the Golden Rule. But when we turn specifically to the criminal justice system, you'll find that no one is satisfied until justice has been "served" or "meted out." And, of course, someone must see to it that justice is "done," as if crime fighting is about getting some tough good guys to corral and lock up all the rough bad guys.
So in practice, "justice" is something painful that someone else gets; something hurtful that is inflicted on "those people" we neither know nor like. Right now, we take a minority of criminals - all possessing a freedom-instinct but many of whom lack culture, education or maturity - and lock them up in overcrowded cages. We strip them of their rights as citizens, including the right to vote, treat them like wicked children, then turn them loose again, further stigmatized, and with no spiritual or material resources to survive; all but ensuring they resort to criminal activity again, if only to prove to themselves that an ounce of their self-autonomy still exists.
This is supposed to make us feel safe? This is compassion for victims? Are you really concerned about the social safety problem? Why are first-degree murderers sentenced to death instead of being studied as they spend the rest of their natural lives away from society without the possibility of re-entry?
Why are violent offenders, sex offenders and non-violent offenders locked up in the same facilities? Don't they need different types of attention? What if, as a condition of their tax-free status, every church that claims to follow Jesus (the One who commanded His followers to care for the imprisoned) be required to "adopt" a released convict; not for the purposes of converting "the sinner" but for meeting his or her basic needs?
Oh pardon me. There goes my silly utopianism again.
Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columinist. He can be reached via email: sgonsalves@capecodonline.com
Copyright © 2000 Cape Cod Times
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