Crime Without Punishment

In the beginning of Plato’s Republic, Socrates is debating with Polemarchus whether justice means helping friends and hurting enemies. At the end of that discussion, Socrates says:

Then if someone asserts that it’s just to give what each is owed to each man – and he understands by this that harm is owed to enemies by the just man and help to friends – the man who said it is not wise. For he wasn’t telling the truth. For it has become apparent to us that it is never just to harm anyone (335 e).

I first read this passage when I was 18, a freshman in college, and it has stuck with me ever since. I’m certainly no Platonist, but this particular argument seems true to me. Before the quote, Plato says that harming a dog makes it less in the virtues of being a dog and, likewise, harming a human makes it less in the virtues of being human. Therefore, it is never just to harm anyone because the just person cannot make someone less virtuous or less just.

The Problem with Prisons

Based on Socrates’ reasoning, our carceral system is unjust because it harms people. The fact that it harms people should be obvious to almost everyone but let me rehash some of the statistics. About 1 in 5 inmates are assaulted while in prison. 21% of those are assaulted by prison staff. Official reports say less than 8,800 people were sexually abused in prison; “Yet between 3 percent and 9 percent of male inmates say they have been sexually assaulted behind bars, which suggests more than 180,000 current prisoners may have been victimized”.

Inmates are not the only ones harmed by incarceration. Their families and loved ones are hurt as well. They often suffer a heavy financial burden, because of both lawyers’ fees and a loss of income. Prison damages relationships. It’s just hard to stay connected when a partner is imprisoned. Plus, the stress of having a family member in prison often leads to mental health issues for those on the outside.

Even in ideal circumstances, if no one is assaulted in prison and there is no financial burden on the families, prison would still be very harmful. Putting people in prison is a kind of ostracism. Not in the ancient Athenian sense, of course. It’s actually much worse than that! We are social animals and prison necessarily cuts people off from society. The APA Dictionary of Psychology says that “Ostracism has powerful negative effects on psychological well-being and is detrimental to multiple domains of self-functioning”. The simple act of imprisonment makes the inmates worse. It removes at least some of their virtue.

What Does This Mean?

If we want to live in a just society, this line of reasoning leads to one place: we need to stop punishing people, even criminals. At least that’s true of any of the traditional modes of punishment. Many people will balk at the idea. How will anyone learn their lesson without punishment? How will we deter crime without the threat of punishment?

I’ll start with the second question. There are two flaws with punishment deterring crime. One is that it doesn’t work as a deterrent. People who commit crimes don’t weigh the risks and rewards before committing the crime. Often, they don’t believe they will be caught. The other problem with punishment as a deterrent is that it is retroactive. The crime has already happened when the punishment is administered. Our time is better spent actively trying to prevent crime.

In fact, the best way to deter crime is to increase the likelihood of getting caught. That means that more police and better security systems will go further to deter crime than prisons. Of course, there is a level of surveillance that becomes dystopian – the ‘telescreens’ in Orwell’s 1984 spring to mind – and of course we want to avoid that. However, the internet has shown us that most people are pretty comfortable being surveilled up to a point. And expanding surveillance would be more accepted by the public, if the threat of imprisonment wasn’t present.

As for how people will learn their lesson without hard punishment, there is a key point to consider. Most people don’t learn their lesson in prison. A study done comparing five-year rearrest rates from prisoners released in 2005 compared to prisoners released in 2012 found that over 70% are rearrested. It’s far from obvious that a criminal system without hard punishment would prevent people from learning their lesson – many criminals are remorseful before being punished. Those who are not remorseful would still benefit more after rehabilitation than incarceration. This is what will help them reintegrate back into society, after all.

What to Do Now?

For starters, every non-violent offender should be released from prison. That would cover almost half of the current prison population. This should be far less controversial than it is. With property crimes, theft, fraud and things like that, restitution is relatively easy. Slander and libel are harder as it’s difficult to assess reputational value; however, it isn’t impossible. So, restitution should still be the goal. Public order crimes, things like DUI and disorderly conduct, are different since there’s no restitution to be had. These are the perfect candidates for education and rehab. Lastly, drug crimes should not be crimes at all, they should fall under the purview of the health care system.

Next, we have to find a way to release all of the violent criminals from prison. This is where things get tricky as there are such a wide variety of violent crimes. There’s a distinction between lethal and non-lethal. There should also be a distinction between whether or not the victim will make a full recovery. That’s not only physical recovery. The mental trauma is part of that calculation. In order to deal with these divergent cases, we first need to determine why they committed the crime in the first place. If it was due to drunkenness, then rehab may be the answer. If it was a crime of passion, perhaps therapy. People can learn constructive ways to deal with strong emotions if they are treated with a little care.

The unrepentant criminals, serial killers and serial rapists, pose the biggest problem. We’ve already established that prison is tantamount to torture, so imprisonment still just isn’t a just option. Yet, we need to prevent them from committing future crimes. Perhaps increased surveillance could help. Perhaps education and therapy could help. In the most extreme cases, maybe psychiatric intervention is necessary. Unfortunately, I don’t have a comprehensive answer the problem of dangerous criminals, and more research in no-doubt needed in this area. The key is that we, as a society, must find a way to help these criminals instead of punishing them.

One other concern that needs to be addressed is how to prevent the impression that people are profiting from committing crimes – to uphold public confidence in law and order. I’m suggesting free education, free rehab, free medicine, etc. for criminals. This has a simple solution. We have to make these services freely available for everyone. That way, the criminals won’t be getting any kind of bonus. The difference is that others can choose whether to take advantage of these services, whereas the criminals will be forced to use them as tools to rehabilitate them back into society.

It’s the job of a just society to improve all of its citizens, including its criminals. Retribution has no place in the criminal justice system. The focus ought to be on restitution and rehabilitation. Since prison has no role in restitution or rehabilitation, it has to go. We need to move away from retroactive punishment (punishing after the crime is committed), to things that actually work to prevent crime. Only then will we be able to claim to live in a just society.