Public Punishment

[Kitsune]

I've heard of the judges that force the shoplifter to stand outside the victim's store, holding a sign that reads, "I stole from this place of business and got caught." The humiliation the criminal feels, it is thought, is both a deterrant to the convicted as well as a visible warning to other potential thieves. In a short documentary on the return and popularity of public punishment, a camera revealed that few (if any) people passing by do anything to ridicule or make a scene, but that everyone takes notice. Other states have recently tried to pass laws requiring people convicted of DUI to have a special license plate that brands them as such, usually all-red and very visible. A lot of people feel that this serves all of the above purposes and then some: it warns other drivers, urging them to keep their distance, and permits officers to take better notice of a driver that might be a repeat offender. In the case of sex offenders, new online databases warn local residents of possible child molesters and where they live, better helping the community to protect their families.

Or, perhaps, to make it easier for the punished to be tracked down so others may commit crimes against them.

Lawrence Trant is, by many, hailed as a hero because of his attempt to correct what they view as a failure of the judicial system through his own actions by trying to put criminals who committed crimes against children to death. Do these virtual red letter "A"s act as a deterrant or create more problems? Are the convicted to be further punished after serving their time, or is the ridicule and harrassment part of the sentence?

[glatt]

I went online to see if any sex offenders were in my community. I was horrified to see dozens. Then I noticed they all had the same address as the county jail.

[Troubleshooter]

Strictly speaking, once someone has served their sentence they are supposed to have paid their price to society. Unfortunately, recidivism makes that an unrealistic belief, but it still means that all of those lists and web sites and such make it so that they're being punished for a crime they have yet to commit. I don't believe that to be just.

[404Error]

Originally Posted by Troubleshooter

Strictly speaking, once someone has served their sentence they are supposed to have paid their price to society. Unfortunately, recidivism makes that an unrealistic belief, but it still means that all of those lists and web sites and such make it so that they're being punished for a crime they have yet to commit. I don't believe that to be just.

Somehow I think you'd feel differently if one of those sex offenders lived next door to you, TS. You're right about recidivism though, there is no cure for pedophilia in my opinion. The offender web sites merely serve as a warning to the law abiding public. Most of the time registering as a sex offender for a determined period of time after release is part of the sentence one receives in court, like a form of probation.

[BigV]

What about the opposite?!

The news today is filled with stories about the US government's newest dilema, what to do with the prisoners it has that it feels it cannot try or free.

Good grief!! How can someone feel worried and upset enough to capture and imprison a person, hold them without charge, bail, trial, any of the AMERICAN STANDARDS OF JUSTICE, and still be hung up on not just executing them?

Really, why keep them around? Are they some golden goose of "intelligence" that you wish to keep around? How in touch are these people after being continuously locked up for years already anyway? Wouldn't their contributions decline in quality at some point?

The ideas tossed around include building prisons in other countries and paying for the construction maintenance and operation in return for a pledge to have the prisoners held indefinitely.

This shifting around of the people and places has a name:

Extraordinary Rendition.

Great, now I have something else to worry about.

Extraordinary rendition: Try to guess, as a start, what this pretzel phrase, right out of the murky but ever better funded world of "intelligence," could possibly mean.

It's actually an extraordinary rendition of and euphemism for torture -- and not just any kind of torture either. I found the term in Christopher Pyle's Torture by Proxy, a piece in last Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle Insight section, that lays out how immigration officials seized a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, as he changed planes at New York's Kennedy International Airport, after he turned up on one of our murky watch-lists for possible terrorists. In a bleak odyssey of imprisonment, he then passed through the none-too-gentle hands of the New York City Police, the FBI, and finally ("presumably") the CIA -- or some unidentified Americans anyway -- who flew him from Washington to Jordan where he was turned over to the Syrians for interrogation as a possible terrorist. Pyle writes:

"This covert operation was legal, our Justice Department later claimed, because Arar is also a citizen of Syria by birth. The fact that he was a Canadian traveling on a Canadian passport, with a wife, two children and job in Canada, and had not lived in Syria for 16 years, was ignored. The Justice Department wanted him to be questioned by Syrian military intelligence, whose interrogation methods our government has repeatedly condemned."

He was put in a cell the size of a grave and "interrogated" -- tortured -- for ten months before being released when it became apparent that his ties to terrorism were nonexistent. And so to our term:

"Our intelligence agencies have a name for this torture-by-proxy. They call it 'extraordinary rendition.' As one intelligence official explained: 'We don't kick the s -- out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s -- out of them.' This secret program for torturing suspects has been authorized, if that is the right word for it, by a secret presidential finding. Where the president gets the authority to have anyone tortured has never been explained."

All in all, not just an extraordinary rendition of torture but a verbal reflection of a new reality -- that we have created a global mini-gulag that ranges from Guantanamo to Afghanistan and whose extralegal rules include the turning of "suspects" over to "friendly" -- or even, it seems, in the case of Syria, less than friendly -- regimes ready to apply kinds of the pressure we may prefer not to apply ourselves.

cite: http://www.tomdispatch.com/indexprint.mhtml?pid=1164

[xoxoxoBruce]

Well now, that ought to keep those foreigners from clogging up our airports.

[jaguar]

Also worth noting lots of people end up on there for things like statuatory rape - like an 18y.o screwing her 17y.o boyfriend, public urination etc.

[garnet]

I think the shoplifting thing is a good idea. I know I would certainly rather go to jail for a couple days than have to stand out in front of a store like that--major embarrassment. Plus, it probably serves as a deterrent since the people entering the store know that the store is on the lookout for shoplifters, and will prosecute them if they are caught.

As for the license plates, I'm not so sure I agree with that. If a person gets caught, pays their debt to society and behaves responsibly, why should they be "branded" that way? And what if a family has only one car? Other family members would be forced to drive with that license plate when they aren't guilty of anything.

I don't have much sympathy for child molesters or drunk drivers, but I think they should be able to get on with their lives. But we do, however, have to protect people from predators. It's a tough call.

[jaguar]

I think just start handing out proper sentences for drunk drivers who kill people - the same length as murder, what they get today, at least in the UK is a joke.

[BigV]

I have worked in retail and I know that shrinkage (loss through theft) has a major impact on profit. I also know that advertising is another large expense. Have you seen some foolish looking advertising schemes? Like people wearing sandwich boards or dressed as gorillas standing on the corner pointing to the store and waving to passers-by?

Well, what about combining these two ideas? Why would a store owner wait for someone to steal from them, be caught, arrested, tried, found guilty, and then sentenced to this strange punishment? Why not offer to hire someone to "advertise" in this way?

The store owner would certainly get the attention of many potential customers, due to the unusual nature of the advertising. And there would be the additional deterrent benefit of warning away any shoplifters.

[Happy Monkey]

Just think of how much stuff you could hide under that board!