It’s very interesting to study the differences between legal systems in different parts of the world.
In the US, all crime — no matter what it was, or how minor, or whether anyone was injured or endangered, or even if anyone was actually responsible for it — must be punished. If no specific person is responsible for it, then someone is declared responsible anyway and punished for it. A kid ignores No Trespassing signs, climbs over a fence, and breaks his leg while trying to steal a lawnmower? The kid can actually sue the owner of the property! According to the legal system, the owner is responsible: he should have had a bigger fence, or provided safety netting to catch would-be thieves so they wouldn’t break any bones while stealing from him.
Someone must always pay, whether by money or by jail time. And jails are essentially warehouses, where a person is “put away” for a time. This does nothing to help him become a better person, so that he wouldn’t do whatever he was jailed for again; apparently the only idea is to appease the victims of his crime (or the government) by doing something that hurts him just as much.
In New Zealand, as I understand it, less serious crime is considered a social illness and treated as one would treat any illness: with a regime designed to cure the illness. Criminals are put in prison, but they’re taught a trade there, a way to make a living. The rate of recidivism there is, from what little I’ve read, very low.
I know I’m not the first to talk about this, and I know it will have all the effect of a drop of red food coloring in the Atlantic ocean. I just felt the need to say something.
I agree with what you wrote, but to be fair, many prison systems in the US do have (underfunded) rehabilitation programs. I recall parts of Virginia’s even had tiny branches of the community college system available to some inmates, literacy programs, GED, etc. Virginia also isn’t exactly the most liberal state with regards to prison conditions. Of course, many prisons have little more than shop labor and license-plate stamping, though I recall reading about one prison that had a call center (!) which I guess beats having someone from India answer your questions. 😉
It’s my blog — I don’t have to be fair. 🙂 But it’s nice to know that there’s some attempt at that kind of thing.