Maybe it's time to rethink the Eighth Amendment.
In light of some particularly horrifying recent events, I was thinking that there might be a way to deter the potential sociopaths of the world from killing their children or gunning down innocent people in the middle of the street: Get rid of the amendment banning "cruel and unusual punishment."
Before you think, "Whoa! This guy must be some gun-toting, NRA-card-carrying fascist psycho from hell," let me elucidate.
It seems that people in America have simply lost their respect for the law. Why? Because the penalties for breaking it have lost their deterrent effect. Jail time is a joke--prisons are so overcrowded that convicted killers are getting out early for "good behavior." The death penalty serves little if any deterrent function, since the nigh-infinite appeals process keeps people on death row until they die of natural causes.
People just don't seem to care anymore. America's inner cities are rife with kids who join gangs because, well, that's the cool thing to do and they wouldn't "make it" in America no matter how hard they tried.
I understand this attitude--at least in the most abstract way that an upper-middle-class, private-school-educated white kid can understand the concept of hopelessness. And, quite frankly, I think it sucks.
Ten-year-old kids shouldn't think that since they're going to die before they reach 20, they might as well just deal drugs and take their chances in life. Teenagers shouldn't have to rob liquor stores to pay the rent. And drive-by shootings shouldn't be the way that innocent people die on their way to work in the morning.
America needs a paradigm shift. Kids have to start believing that if they work hard--at something besides selling crack--that they actually might be able to pull themselves out of the ghetto and live a better life.
The problem is, how do we do this? What can be done to make kids see that crime, as the saying goes, doesn't pay--except maybe in time served.
I admit that I don't have all the answers; if I did, I'd be out there doing something about it, or at least watching Congress deliberate over my idea for the next 20 years until it finally comes out of subcommittee and gets implemented.
I do, however, have an idea that might just deter crime a little bit, at least enough to make people start thinking: Scrap the Eighth Amendment. Implement some sort of penal system based on Hammurabi's law code, which went a little something like this: If you steal, you lose a hand. If you do it again, you lose the other one. If you lie (or embezzle, defraud, etc.), you lose your tongue. If you rape, you... get the idea.
This may seem a bit harsh; after all, it kind of precludes the penchant for reform: If you steal, lose a hand and then turn over a new leaf, you still won't be juggling any time soon. To that extent, my modest proposal is somewhat permanent.
But think about what it will do for deterrence: If a kid really looks up to a neighborhood drug dealer, he might reconsider that opinion when his idol gets caught, loses a hand and has to get rid of that stick-shift BMW he just bought. Once word gets around that dealers and rapists and murderers are losing body parts faster than you can say "Frankenstein," you'll probably see a sharp drop in the crime rate by those who'd rather not run the risk of earning the nickname "Stumpy."
I understand that there are all sorts of legal and ethical questions at stake here; I'm sure that abolishing the Eighth Amendment probably isn't the most effective--or morally correct--thing to do, and of course I'm not serious.
But maybe I should be.
All I'm saying is that something has got to be done. How much longer will Congress wait before it decides to do something other than bicker about the finer points of welfare reform? What will it take for people to realize that crime isn't just an abstract idea to be bandied back and forth in sociology classes? Perhaps the first time Newt Gingrich or Ted Kennedy loses a kid in a drive-by, people might finally start waking up.
Until then, however, I'm sticking with Hammurabi--at the very least, it'll scare people enough to make them think about the problem.
Justin Dillon is a Trinity junior and editorial page editor of The Chronicle.
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