I've heard it said that there are three reasons for sending people to prison: deterrence, rehabilitation, and retribution. In the previous post, I commented on the specifics of the Polanski case. Now, I want to consider the way these factors work in his case, and on society in general.
Deterrence, I believe, works in general: I'd guess that many people thought about committing crimes but didn't because of the danger of being caught and punished. Since many criminals are not caught, of course, this purpose is hardly perfect. Criminals are therefore either rational people who think they won't be caught and punished, or irrational people who don't sufficiently think through the notion of evading punishment. I'm sure this has been done, but I'd be interested to see research showing how many people want to commit crimes but were deterred because of the prospect of punishment. I certainly think we need to consider whether prison is a good deterrent for certain crimes, for example, child molestation. Do those who are attracted to children control their impulses because they know taking action will do great harm, or because of the possibility of punishment? I hope it's the former, but it's hard to say. I'd think that deterrence works better for economic crimes than violent ones, since our conscience is more likely to stop the latter than the former. In Polanski's case in particular, his going to prison may be a good idea, more for the bail-jumping than for the rape. (I don't think his going to prison is going to deter any rapists.)
Rehabilitation is a positive goal, and I'm sure it happens sometimes, but as is well known, the problem is that many people find themselves in situations that foster crime, and it's hard to escape those situations. They know they shouldn't hang out with old criminal buddies, but who should they hang out with? The pull of friendship is strong. A lot of social change needs to happen before rehabilitation on a wide scale can occur. Full employment would really help. But as it is, I think rehabilitation gets lip service at best. For Polanski, it's probably unnecessary at his age, but I'd want psychologists to spend some time with him.
Now, the last reason for sending someone to prison: retribution. This is the one of the three reasons for imprisoning people that I'm very uncomfortable with. Of course I understand the desire for retribution, especially on the part of the victims and their families, but it's difficult for me to see how we get any social value out of it, and doing it for its own sake seems to me to be somewhere on the 'morally wrong' spectrum. Jesus is supposed to have said something about turning the other cheek, something which the people who most loudly proclaim themselves 'true' Christians tend to forget. Making someone suffer for no purpose other than that they seem to deserve it... certainly doesn't seem admirable. It's difficult to think of another way to say it than that it feels wrong. I suppose a counter-argument would be that it's a statement of our priorities, our determination that crime can't be tolerated. I can understand that argument, but I can't agree with it. I think a better statement of our priorities would be to do everything possible to see that crime is reduced, so people in the future don't have to suffer.
In addition, if we unproductively imprison someone just because we want them to suffer because they did something to us, it only escalates the cycle of harm and violence that started them on this path. In a way this is a practical argument, but it feels a little moral as well. But for me practicality is important, so I don't want to do anything to make the situation worse.
I've argued before in this blog that public opinion shapes policy in negative ways due to public ignorance, apathy, and emotion; this is another example. People who argue that prison should mainly be about rehabilitation tend to get tarred as squishy-headed liberals by conservative politicians, who use people's anger at criminals as a way to get political support. Attempts to understand the criminal's point of view, necessary for any attempt at rehabilitation, are condemned as 'coddling' criminals. (After 9/11, anyone who dared to consider Al Qaeda's grievances was accused of wanting to give Osama Bin Laden 'therapy' rather than justice.) These attacks are effective, so politicians back off any attempt at large-scale rehabilitation programs, especially those that cost large amounts of money. (Ironically, if they work, they could save money on prison costs in the long run, but it's easy for opponents to ignore this.) So, the situation as it is continues, largely through the support of the citizens for policies that are unproductive, indeed counterproductive, in the long run.
Now, I'm far from an expert, and I haven't read any books by those who are. But it seems obvious that if our country has the highest incarceration rate in the world, we're doing something wrong. The Polanski case would seem to have little to do with the criminal justice system on a macro level, but the first step towards reforming the system is to consider what we hope to accomplish by incarcerating people in the first place. But what we really need is to have people, not only experts but especially voters, look at the situation with rationality rather than emotion. And the first step in that direction is for people to look at those who've broken the law not as scum to sweep away into the nearest pit and forget about, but as fellow humans who have had difficult lives, emotional problems, economic insecurity, or all of the above. (And for God's sake, we could free up a lot of prison space by having a drug policy that focused on public health rather than punishment.)
The last thing I want to mention, and the thing that may be the most crucial, is the trend towards privatizing prisons and the increasing political influence of the "correctional officers'" unions. (The finger quotes are because I don't think they're correcting a whole lot.) Especially in California, those unions have spent a lot of money trying to pass laws to keep prisoners in prison for a longer time: not because it improves public safety, but because it means increased job security for them. It's hard for me to think of a worse way to run a prison system than for those who control the inmates' lives to have an interest in keeping the prison population high. Rehabilitation would be bad for them! We should want fewer people in prison, but they want more. A lot of people vote for ballot initiatives supported (usually, originated) by the guards' union because it's advertised as 'tough on crime'. What I'm saying is not that we should let out dangerous criminals quickly, but that time and money should be spent on trying to see to it that they can get by without crime when they get out, and building a society that has less crime for structural and socioeconomic reasons. That could be done, but only if a lot of people supported the idea, and opposed those who wish to keep people (some of whom, such as drug offenders, have harmed no one) locked up for long stretches so they can have job security. As with any objective that requires thoughtful consideration of large numbers of people, it's hard for me to be optimistic.
Showing posts with label collective responsibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collective responsibility. Show all posts
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
The News You Want, Not the News You Need
I can easily imagine the above phrase being used one day to promote a news organization. Okay, maybe they wouldn't phrase it quite like that, especially the second part. Maybe they would try to convince you that 'The News You Want Is the News You Need.' As technology has expanded our potential sources of information, the way we get the news has fragmented, and continues to do so.
The general consensus that I've seen out there is that this is a bad thing; it gives us the news from a narrow perspective, through a worldview that we agree with. Viewers of Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC, it can be assumed, feel that Bush 43 was the worst president ever, and that Obama's main failing is that he's too conciliatory to Republicans. Viewers of Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity no doubt are already persuaded that Obama is a true danger to the Republic. And the more we watch these shows, the more strongly we believe this, because the programs present information to support our preconceptions. Now, media analyst Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and CNN tends to separate the 'news' and 'opinion' portions of those channels; he'll say that while Fox's opinion shows are conservative, the news programs are straight and factual. I can't watch Fox News or MSNBC in Japan, so I don't know how true that is, but it would very much surprise me if, for example, Fox News didn't run more stories that while being straight news didn't have an inherent right-wing lean (that is, more stories like "Obama Misses July Deadline For Senate Health Care Vote" than "Overflow Crowd Watches Obama Pitch Health Care Plan"). It would be in the interests of their ratings to do so. Fox's audience can be said to inhabit a certain portion of the ideological spectrum, as does MSNBC's on the other side.
But it seems to me that this is not so different from the way the news has been presented all along; the difference is just a matter of type and degree. From the Sixties to the Eighties, when the TV news came from ABC, NBC, and CBS and the print news was led by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, the news was directed toward a particular portion of the ideological spectrum as well; it just happened to be the middle ninety percent. Anything that the Republicans and Democrats agreed on was simply accepted as common wisdom, and rarely questioned or analyzed. The leader of the Libertarian Party, for example, would have had a hard time getting on TV. No doubt some TV producer would have defended this as the way it should be. "Only one percent of the American people subscribe to his views," this imaginary producer might say. "If we give him airtime, do we then have to give it to someone else whose beliefs are accepted by one-tenth of a percent of the population? Where does it end?" This does seem like a reasonable argument on its face, but at the same time, it has the effect of not exposing Americans to points of view that they might not be familiar with, but might agree with if they heard.
It has, of course, been pointed out that the mainstream media tend not only to broadcast from a worldview that their viewers will agree with, but also from a point of view that is acceptable to the government. This fact has been written about extensively by Noam Chomsky, possibly the most famous person that most people have never heard of. A brilliant intellectual, he has been an unsparing critic of U.S. foreign policy, especially during the Cold War. He has always held America accountable for the gap between its declared beliefs and its actions, pointed out its hypocrisy, and noted the sometimes destructive impact of its policies on ordinary people around the world. His arguments are often dismissed, but rarely convincingly refuted. They are dismissed not because they don't make sense, but because he isn't among the ninety percent in the center. He doesn't come from the same worldview as most Americans do, and that virtually all of the American politicians, industrialists, and media do. (To get a sense of why this is, I recommend this hour-long documentary on YouTube in nine parts. It's almost twenty years old, but still very relevant, and well worth watching.) He points out, for example, that in the late '70s it was much easier to find media coverage of Pol Pot's genocide in Cambodia than of Indonesia's genocide in East Timor, because the former was done by a pro-Soviet regime and the latter by a pro-U.S. regime. Obviously, you don't have to be anti-U.S. to disapprove of genocide; Chomsky argues that the media and the government are intertwined to the extent that the media, while not following the imperatives of one political party, buys into the general Establishment agenda and acts as a witting or unwitting propaganda arm. If the news were gathered and reported by an outside agency, one with no stake whatsoever in the U.S. government, Establishment, or popularity, dedicated to being scrupulously factual and avoiding any point of view, the news would look quite different, I'm sure Chomsky would argue.
Again, this could be defended as natural; after all, the government reflects the people, and this is what people want. If we wanted something different, we would elect different politicians, and the media would reflect a different Establishment status back to us. So, let's say that Fox's audience covers 20% of the U.S. ideological spectrum: the 20% that's the farthest to the right, except for the most extreme one or two percent. Let's say the same thing for MSNBC on the other side, leaving a little over 50% for CNN and the broadcast networks. (This doesn't translate into higher ratings for CNN, though, as the partisans tend to be more enthusiastic and watch the news more. As I've heard said somewhere before, there's no such thing as a raging moderate.) So, then, what's wrong with this? Or, more precisely, why is it all right for us to get our news from a source that's biased toward the Establishment, representing (let's say) 90% of us, but not one that's biased towards our political party, representing 20%? Aren't they both biased?
With the health care debate, we've seen some extreme results of this kind of fragmentation: the bogus 'death panels' claim was spread far and wide on Fox, reported as assertion on its news programs and asserted as fact on the opinion shows. But this seems to me to be not a problem of fragmentation, but one of poor reporting and insufficient analysis. It would be possible for an ideologically biased news operation to nonetheless report news accurately; it would simply be selective in what it reported. I don't mean to defend this fragmentation of news, but I do think it should be considered that at least in concept, it is the same as it ever was.
The general consensus that I've seen out there is that this is a bad thing; it gives us the news from a narrow perspective, through a worldview that we agree with. Viewers of Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC, it can be assumed, feel that Bush 43 was the worst president ever, and that Obama's main failing is that he's too conciliatory to Republicans. Viewers of Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity no doubt are already persuaded that Obama is a true danger to the Republic. And the more we watch these shows, the more strongly we believe this, because the programs present information to support our preconceptions. Now, media analyst Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and CNN tends to separate the 'news' and 'opinion' portions of those channels; he'll say that while Fox's opinion shows are conservative, the news programs are straight and factual. I can't watch Fox News or MSNBC in Japan, so I don't know how true that is, but it would very much surprise me if, for example, Fox News didn't run more stories that while being straight news didn't have an inherent right-wing lean (that is, more stories like "Obama Misses July Deadline For Senate Health Care Vote" than "Overflow Crowd Watches Obama Pitch Health Care Plan"). It would be in the interests of their ratings to do so. Fox's audience can be said to inhabit a certain portion of the ideological spectrum, as does MSNBC's on the other side.
But it seems to me that this is not so different from the way the news has been presented all along; the difference is just a matter of type and degree. From the Sixties to the Eighties, when the TV news came from ABC, NBC, and CBS and the print news was led by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, the news was directed toward a particular portion of the ideological spectrum as well; it just happened to be the middle ninety percent. Anything that the Republicans and Democrats agreed on was simply accepted as common wisdom, and rarely questioned or analyzed. The leader of the Libertarian Party, for example, would have had a hard time getting on TV. No doubt some TV producer would have defended this as the way it should be. "Only one percent of the American people subscribe to his views," this imaginary producer might say. "If we give him airtime, do we then have to give it to someone else whose beliefs are accepted by one-tenth of a percent of the population? Where does it end?" This does seem like a reasonable argument on its face, but at the same time, it has the effect of not exposing Americans to points of view that they might not be familiar with, but might agree with if they heard.
It has, of course, been pointed out that the mainstream media tend not only to broadcast from a worldview that their viewers will agree with, but also from a point of view that is acceptable to the government. This fact has been written about extensively by Noam Chomsky, possibly the most famous person that most people have never heard of. A brilliant intellectual, he has been an unsparing critic of U.S. foreign policy, especially during the Cold War. He has always held America accountable for the gap between its declared beliefs and its actions, pointed out its hypocrisy, and noted the sometimes destructive impact of its policies on ordinary people around the world. His arguments are often dismissed, but rarely convincingly refuted. They are dismissed not because they don't make sense, but because he isn't among the ninety percent in the center. He doesn't come from the same worldview as most Americans do, and that virtually all of the American politicians, industrialists, and media do. (To get a sense of why this is, I recommend this hour-long documentary on YouTube in nine parts. It's almost twenty years old, but still very relevant, and well worth watching.) He points out, for example, that in the late '70s it was much easier to find media coverage of Pol Pot's genocide in Cambodia than of Indonesia's genocide in East Timor, because the former was done by a pro-Soviet regime and the latter by a pro-U.S. regime. Obviously, you don't have to be anti-U.S. to disapprove of genocide; Chomsky argues that the media and the government are intertwined to the extent that the media, while not following the imperatives of one political party, buys into the general Establishment agenda and acts as a witting or unwitting propaganda arm. If the news were gathered and reported by an outside agency, one with no stake whatsoever in the U.S. government, Establishment, or popularity, dedicated to being scrupulously factual and avoiding any point of view, the news would look quite different, I'm sure Chomsky would argue.
Again, this could be defended as natural; after all, the government reflects the people, and this is what people want. If we wanted something different, we would elect different politicians, and the media would reflect a different Establishment status back to us. So, let's say that Fox's audience covers 20% of the U.S. ideological spectrum: the 20% that's the farthest to the right, except for the most extreme one or two percent. Let's say the same thing for MSNBC on the other side, leaving a little over 50% for CNN and the broadcast networks. (This doesn't translate into higher ratings for CNN, though, as the partisans tend to be more enthusiastic and watch the news more. As I've heard said somewhere before, there's no such thing as a raging moderate.) So, then, what's wrong with this? Or, more precisely, why is it all right for us to get our news from a source that's biased toward the Establishment, representing (let's say) 90% of us, but not one that's biased towards our political party, representing 20%? Aren't they both biased?
With the health care debate, we've seen some extreme results of this kind of fragmentation: the bogus 'death panels' claim was spread far and wide on Fox, reported as assertion on its news programs and asserted as fact on the opinion shows. But this seems to me to be not a problem of fragmentation, but one of poor reporting and insufficient analysis. It would be possible for an ideologically biased news operation to nonetheless report news accurately; it would simply be selective in what it reported. I don't mean to defend this fragmentation of news, but I do think it should be considered that at least in concept, it is the same as it ever was.
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