The Public Policy

...And who did not long for thoroughgoing penal reform when he read the words of the Rt...

...and while this may satisfy the great majority of American citizens, it is severely disappointing to those who would fain lead us along paths of greater enlightenment...

...An Elmer Wayne Henley, whose avocations include murder and homosexual rape, is portrayed in sensitive news features as a good but troubled lad who somehowwent wrong...

...For the failure of rehabilitation and the apparent effectiveness of punishment indicate that our criminals, too, are less exciting than our liberal friends had hoped...

...And that, quite simply, is that it does not work...

...The Commonwealth of Massachusetts responds with a pioneering program of conjugal visits and weekend furloughs for convicted felons (which has only marginally added to the crime problem in the great Bay State...

...but I think we may forgive the Attorney General for milking it just a little more on a slow news day...

...These are stirring words, and I hesitate to respond...

...Saxbe is, fittingly, perturbed by all this...

...More important, though, is the fact that crime statistics are indeed becominggenuinely distressing-and Saxbe's antics aside, the question of what can be done about crime is a serious public issue...

...rather, it is that one actually needs to spend time demonstrating it...

...Daniel Berrigan, S. J., exposing the character of his captors in the pages of Ramparts: "They troubled, uncertain, overkilling us with complacency, sloppy in execution of the law, potbellied, lazy of mind, angry with those of us who will not grow cabbage leaves about the ears, who protest reduction of men to sticks and stones...

...A National Commission on Civil Disorders speaks sorrowfully of the urban blight and "white racism" which "causes" riots and looting...

...Such indeed is the current learning, as the most casual observer of our times can gather...

...The Tullock article is outstanding, and I would recommend it highly...

...Gordon Tullock has recently documented this in an excellent article in the Summer 1974 Public Interest, entitled, appropriately enough, Does Punishment Deter Crime...

...And so it was not surprising to see him on the screen, doing his darndest to seem a crusty and irreverent old cuss (it's his best and only routine), while informing us that unless the country was willing to establish a national police force, dire and dismal days lay ahead...

...As Irving Kristol eloquently pointed out last year in Commentary, the reason so many liberal intellectuals are dissatisfied with America is that it fails to provide an adequate outlet for their soaring dreams of great moral conquest...

...Instead, the public life of the nation is dominated by a middle-class ethic which emphasizes things like individualism, self-improvement, and bourgeois civil liberties...

...I, for one, think that the dialogue should begin post haste...

...By this time, one would think, everyone should understand that only by rehabilitating the criminal, and by eradicating the unhealthy environment that produced him to begin with, can we hope to really solve our crime problem...

...But perhaps one comment about the whole "need for rehabilitation" thesis is in order...

...But one must remember that the A-G has an uphill fight in his battle to approach the levels of notoriety achieved by his immediate predecessors...

...Deterrence," after all, has a distinctly nineteenth century ring to it, and "punishment" sounds positively medieval...

...It seems then that we can communicate with much of our criminal element, and in a rather persuasive manner...

...all arrived at the same conclusion as a result of comparative analysis: punishment deters crime...

...America's rising crime rate, one must confess, has become a venerable and often tiresome topic in recent years...

...According to our chief law enforcement officer, an alarming number of citizens have taken up felonious pursuits, and their ranks are swelling every day...

...Now, this suggestion, I realize, would make any good, liberal, and self-respecting sociologist gag, should he be so foolhardy as to pick up The Alternative and glance at this column...

...Most of them, it seems, are not dark, mysterious creatures brooding about the sociological deficiencies of their early surroundings, striking out with ill-concealed rage at the crass materialistic society that rejects their kind...

...This is not to say, of course, that deterrence is the only or even the best justification for punishing criminals, On the contrary, punishment is considerably more important as a moral statement by our society—that those who violate its law deserve to be subjected to punitive measures...

...Granted, Saxbe's act is a bit difficult to take right after dinner...

...a National Commission on Crime chastises a prison system that "produces" high rates of recidivism...

...such ideas are surely outmoded, are they not...

...What is truly interesting about the piece, however, is not so much that punishment deters crime...

...Tullock first reviews the studies of a number of economists who sought to discover, to use the jargon of their field, whether increasing the cost of crime would decrease the amount of crime committed...

...Nor does it appear that many of them are the victims of uncontrollable passion on whom punishment has no effect, who are in factcrying out silently for psychological help, if only we would listen...

...On the contrary, it seems that they are by and large a rather calculating lot, attempting to make their way in a chosen profession, and quite as responsive to the various incentives and discentives provided for them as you or I. In short, save for their somewhat callous disregard for the dictates of the law, they are as pedestrian a group of fellows as the good burghers of Steubenville, Ohio—and this is something which the liberal mind would rather not accept...

...While deterrence apparently does...

...so it is hardly surprising that several sociologists took up the challenge implicit in the economists' results and decided that this was a question that deserved the attention of their discipline as well...

...Allow me to suggest, then, that instead of babbling on about a "United States Police Department" or equally silly ideas, we might profit by re-examining the fundamental notions of punishment and deterrence...

...Most of us, however, should not have this problem—and accordingly, the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrent to crime should cheer us greatly...

...One does not wish to appear, after all, as an advocate of growing cabbage leaves about the ears...

...What is surprising is that they, too, came up with the simple, common sense result that as punishment increases, crime decreases--even though all of them, according to Tullock, began their work hoping to find otherwise...

...Following his conviction, his mother informs the nation (courtesy of ABC) that her son has been railroaded by a vengeful system which cares little for the lad's welfare...

...The explanation, I submit, is that the simple logic of deterence represents a cruel challenge to the most fundamental desires of the publicproselytizers for rehabilitation...

...While these studies employed various measures of the punishment level in a given jurisdiction (using different balances of such factors as length of sentence, average amount of time actually served, probability of conviction, etc...

...Now Mr...

...Now economists, as Tullock points out, might well have a bias towards producing such findings...

...But if punishment also serves as an effective curb on crime, so be it...

...I believe that curiously enough, this same disappointment lies at the core of liberal resistance to the idea of deterrence...