“Let’s debunk the notion that the drop in crime is due to incarceration. In truth, there is very little correlation between incarceration and the crime rate. Between 1970 and 1990 the total prison population in the U.S. rose by a million, and crime rose, too. Since then we’ve locked up another million, and crime has gone down. Is there something special about that second million? Were they the only ones who were “real criminals”? Did we simply get it wrong with the first 1.3 million we locked up? If so, can we let them out?”
—Peter Moskos“The New York Times editorial staff recently felt compelled to come out against "young people being battered and raped in juvenile corrections facilities all across the country." One would hope such things go without saying, but apparently they don't. Twelve percent of youths in juvie homes reported being sexually victimized in the past year. In some juvenile facilities more than 30 percent of the boys say they're raped, mainly by staff members. Not surprisingly, self-inflicted injuries and suicide attempts are routine. We are warehousing our problem children in kiddie jail before they learn enough to graduate to adult prison.”
—Peter Moskos, In Defense of Flogging, pg. 87 (2011).Warnings and beatings
Kim Rossmo, criminologist and former Vancouver cop, tried to warn the public about a serial killer targeting sex workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside back in 1998. Rossmo’s lawyer has told the commission looking into the case that if senior police officials had listened to Rossmo, they would have caught Robert Pickton sooner.
Interestingly, at least to me, The Atlantic spoke to criminologist and former Baltimore cop about corporal punishment. Peter Moskos, an assistant professor of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, argues that flogging is more humane than the current criminal justice system.
“America now has more prisoners, 2.3 million, than any other country in the world. Ever. Our rate of incarceration is roughly seven times that of Canada or any Western European country. Stalin, at the height of the Soviet gulag, had fewer prisoners than America does now...We deem it necessary to incarcerate more of our people—in rate as well as absolute numbers—than the world's most draconian authoritarian regimes. Think about that. Despite our "land of the free" motto, we have more prisoners than China, and they have a billion more people than we do.”
—Peter Moskos, “In Defense of Flogging”, The Chronicle ReviewFaced with the choice between hard time and the lash, the lash is better. What does that say about prison?
chronicle.com
Peter Moskos, Assist. Professor at John Jay College, has a new book contemplating this question that really examines an even more brutal issue at the core: the American punishment system.
My defense of flogging—whipping, caning, lashing, call it what you will—is meant to be provocative, but only because something extreme is needed to shatter the status quo. We are in denial about the brutality of the uniquely American invention of mass incarceration.
For those who believe corporal punishment is cruel and savage, and that we - in our shiny modern, progressive society have moved on from such archaic forms of punishments only have to consider:
Exile was a punishment of last resort, and a severe one at that. To be banished from the community was in some ways the ultimate punishment. And prisons, whether or not this was our intention, brought back banishment and exile, effectively creating a disposable class of people to be locked away and discarded. True evil happens in secret, when the masses of “decent” folks can’t or don’t want to see it happen.
So moving his “bleeding liberal heart” argument forward, he asks the reader which would you rather have if given the choice, a quick proverbial conservative flogging or a prison term? He concludes:
Of course most people would choose the rattan cane over the prison cell. And that’s my point. Faced with the choice between hard time and the lash, the lash is better. What does that say about prison?
This is may seem controversial to some, but we are just looking at the same ‘ol elephant I always talk about, just describing/comparing parts of in a way where it sounds like an beast we don’t want to be familiar with. It may not seem totally comfortable, but with a topic like this…should it be?
Via. His book In Defense of Flogging. Image: A public flogging in Delaware in the early 1900s. Credit: Ullstein Bild, The Granger Collection
