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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Alternatives to the Death Penalty
Feed Title: Richard Demers Blog
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The governor of Minnesota is pushing for a referendum to reinstate the death penalty for murderers and high-profile sex criminals. Other people are pushing for throw-away-the-key life terms. All of this is in response to the highly publicized kidnapping of Dru Sjodin, and in spite of declining crime rates. It would be hard-hearted to be unsympathetic with the victim's families, but clear thinking needs to triumph over politically motivated emotional grandstanding.
Minnesota abolished the death penalty in 1911 in revulsion after a particularly gruesome botched hanging. I suppose this too could be called the results of emotional grandstanding, but irreversible mistakes are not being made with people's lives, as they are in 38 other states.
Is "throwing-away-the-key" any better? I suppose someone who has been in prison for 30 years would think that is pretty unreversible too, but at least that person has the chance to redeem himself in some way. At $30K/year to house such people, that is a big burden for society to bear, but so are the costs of all the appeals of a death sentence.
The death penalty or life imprisonment; those are the only choices that are being discussed. No one wants to just let murderers and sex-fiends go free, but are there no alternatives?
Historically, no, but today there are other possibilities. Today we can put criminals into electronic prisons that intensively monitor and control every move they make. A combination of GPS, wireless, sensor-based, micro-miniaturization and embedded computing technologies can be used to give some (not all!) convicts enough freedom to earn a living and support their families while ensuring public safety. Of course, there would also have to be a beefed-up probation system.
What about punishment? Prison is prison, electronic or otherwise. The real punishment is lack of freedom and the humiliation of being known as someone who needs to be controlled.
There has been considerable progress over the last decade in electronic monitoring systems, but a lot more can be done with them and they can be applied to a much broader range of cases. The point is that we don't have to limit our thinking to the choices that were available in the past. We have alternatives other than reinstatement of the death penalty or life sentences.
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