The form of punishment
On recidivism, blind justice, and the need to know what's most important about what prison takes away
The first reason to take care that our prisons are managed in safe and humane ways is one that an average 3rd-grader can understand. The justice system, no matter how hard we try to achieve fair and impartial results, remains a human institution, and humans make mistakes. That means we cannot ignore the reality that, from time to time, innocent people will be sent to prison. Even a child can understand that we owe a standard of treatment to them that rises far above cruel and unusual punishment.
■ The second reason can be understood by an ordinary 8th-grader: Of every 20 people who go to prison, 19 will end up leaving someday. Whether society uses the time they spend in prison to rehabilitate them or simply to produce hardened criminals is a choice of significant magnitude.
■ The third reason is abstract, but it is vital to understand -- and should be a concept within the understanding of most high-school graduates. The real punishment of imprisonment isn't the deprivation of physical comforts. The real punishment is the loss of freedom. Plenty of people endure conditions without a lot of creature comforts, but with their freedom intact: Deployed soldiers on the front lines of combat, oil-rig workers, even some dedicated campers.
■ A person could be put up under house arrest in a Four Seasons and the loss of liberty should sting far more than any attempt to make circumstances phsically unappealing. The freedom to choose how to live is a profoundly meaningful one.
■ Those who fixate on making the correctional experience seems as harsh as possible aren't really being "tough on crime". They merely reveal that they don't appreciate their own freedom and liberty enough to shudder at the thought of having them taken away.
