Comments on: The Caging of America

By: Sconzey

Sconzey — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:21:30 +0000

Actually the argument Heinlein makes for corporal punishment in Starship Troopers is that corporal punishment is a kind of rehabilitation. You use a human's hard-wired lizard brain's dislike for pain to permanently alter their behavior, à la Pavalov, to ensure they can function in civilized society.

By: WillieMaize24

WillieMaize24 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:56:15 +0000

“You forgot, among your ‘solutions’, what other civilized first world countries do: try to rehabilitate”

He didn’t forget. It’s not a solution.

I’m not sure what countries you mean, but if they are the ones I’m thinking of they might have been civilized at one time, but whether they currently are is a matter for debate.
States and the feds have tried rehabilitation, and it doesn’t work.

Prisons already offer psych treatment, drug treatment and vocational education. What other kind of rehabilitation might you have had in mind?

How successful are these so called civilized countries at rehabilitating someone who likes the thrill of violence, or is too greedy for his own good, or is sexually attracted to 12 year olds? From what I’ve read those people can’t be “cured”, although some might grow out of it when they hit their 60′s and 70′s.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:53:31 +0000

The modern prison system was founded on the notion of rehabilitation rather than corporal or capital punishment. That's why prisons are called penitentiaries. No form of rehabilitation yet tried has worked — anywhere. I'm not sure how community service would qualify as rehabilitation, by the way. It's a light form of involuntary servitude with a dose of public shaming — which only works on middle-class "criminals" who feel ashamed.

By: Ivvenalis

Ivvenalis — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:14:35 +0000

So Gopnik prefers slavery to incarceration, at least for white-collar crime.

By: Juepucta

Juepucta — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:40:36 +0000

You forgot, among your “solutions”, what other civilized first world countries do: try to rehabilitate. Not punish, get revenge and decide convictions with a mind clouded by rage. Rehabilitate. Hell, Gopnik mentions community service for financial crimes in the article.

By: Faze

Faze — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:10:55 +0000

Gopnik’s a brilliant writer, and I’m sympathetic to the plight of prisoners, but this New Yorker article is rhetorical mish-mosh that conflates unrelated facts and trends to leave the emotional impression that pot smokers are being sentenced to solitary confinement and African Americans are being jailed for their race. The fact is that people in solitary range from bad to very bad people who have committed enormous crimes. If Gopnik wants to make the argument that solitary confinement is wrong, he should have the courage to say that its wrong even for — perhaps even especially for (since no one is strongly tempted to put decent people into solitary) — the baddest of the bad. It’s like the argument for free speech, which is meaningless unless we support freedom of speech we don’t agree with.