"Look Out! Speed Bump!!"

 

The Autobahn between Frankfurt and Cologne in Germany has no speed limits posted. If you like to drive at a sedate 110 KPH, you need to stay in the right-hand lane, or better yet, in the ditch; at that speed, you’re a highway hazard. In Mexico, speed limit signs exist, as do stop signs (ALTO, meaning Stop or Tall, take your pick, language learners). But the speed limit is whatever your vehicle and your nerves can manage, except governed by whatever is ahead, like side-by-side trucks, or a series of suspension-jarring speed bumps.

In Canada, a highway  passing through a town has reduced speed limits posted, and a flashing display will tell you your speed, will sometimes even flash you a happy face if you’re under the limit. In Mexico and in Panama (incidentally the only two Latin American countries I’ve visited) speed bumps are assigned the job of slowing down traffic. The sign warning of an upcoming speed bump, though, is too long to be read at 140 KPH (“obstaculo de volocidad por delante”) so the first indication for the novice driver in Mexico might well be a passenger or driver launched through the sunroof. An abrupt education in paying closer attention!

For me, The interesting question in all this lies in deciding how best to gain public cooperation for anything, anything as seemingly benign as not littering or as consequential as driving slowly through a village where a child might be running out into traffic at any time. Every strategy has, of course been tried historically, from persuasion, to punishment, to rewards, to sheer force.

I’m sure that if the penalty for making a U-turn at a controlled corner were legislated to be a minimum of two years in prison, and for exceeding a speed limit, a thousand dollar fine for each KPH over what’s posted, I would sell my car and stay at home … problem solved; cooperation secured. Many, however, might see this as a challenge to offend without getting caught, or just as a colossal infringement on their personal freedom, an impertinence in need of defiance.

I’m betting technology will see us all becoming law abiding citizens, at least on the roads and highways. Each car will be embedded with a chip that transmits the driving speed and sundry possible driving choices to a central computer, which also automatically adds pluses for good driving and minuses for bad driving and sends you a bill or a cheque at the end of each month based on a legislated formula. Just making up the formula could be a hoot

Road-use Statement for Rhoda Dendron for March, 2027

Driving 100 Km without once exceeding the posted speed limit …………………+10

Changing lanes without proper signalling ………………………………………….-10

Swearing at another driver………………………………………………………….-10

Using a cellphone while driving……………………………………………………..-20

Zipper-merging properly…………………………………………………………….+10

Total………………………………………………………………………………….-20

Credit/Debit………………………………………………………………………….-$40

Payable online at www.bigbrotheriswatching.com

 Take that, Mister “No one tells ME what to do!” 

Probably wouldn’t work, though; tech-savvy people would very soon figure out how to hack into their own cars.

But that’s pretty pessimistic, I admit. We don’t have to breathe tobacco smoke when in a restaurant anymore, and peeing in the public street is rare. Something works, even though it’s not been that long since, for instance, people assumed a right to light up a smoke wherever they wished.

I don’t think shaming would be acceptable as the key to cooperation either. That choice could mean bringing back some variation of that ancient humiliation device; Big Mac Donalson gets caught speeding through town and by way of a corrective measure, he’s tied to a post (or stocks) in the centre of town for an afternoon wearing only his jockeys. 

Speed bumps work. It doesn’t matter if you’re a private citizen commuting to work, or the Minister of Highways being transported by security to a high-level meeting, or a passenger in a fifty-seat luxury bus, or a bank robber in a getaway car; in Mexico everybody slows down for towns, intersections, construction like good little missionary kids. You might say that speed bumps have you administering your own punishment for your own offense … ingenious!

How to apply the principle elsewhere? Now that would take some thinking/planning beyond my inchworm imagination.

Comments to gg.epp41@gmail.com welcomed. 

Jails, Gaols and Healing Lodges

Sky, sea, land - nature's lesson in harmony

Harmony in small things

A visit to the Willow Cree Healing Lodge on the Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation got me thinking again about the three legs of sentencing: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence. Typically, these are given as the three primary goals of punishment for crime.

·        Retribution: “You do the crime, you’ll do the time.” “An eye for an eye . . . “

·        Rehabilitation: “We’ll make a better, law-abiding person of you.”

·        Deterrence: “We’re making an example of you so others won’t make the same mistakes.”

Of course, we use other terms as well.

·        Penitentiary is one whose root—penitent—Oxford defines as “feeling or showing sorrow and regret for having done wrong.” Ostensibly, this could align with rehabilitation, particularly under the Christian concept that penitence must precede rebirth.

·        Then there’s jail, or gaol, whose origin is given by Oxford as “Middle English: based on L. cavea (see cage); the word came into Engl. in two forms, jaiole from OFr. and gayole from Anglo-Norman Fr. gaole (surviving in the spelling gaol).” If you drive Highway 1 to Winnipeg from Regina, you’ll pass a sign that points to “Headingly Gaol.” The word is related to cage; an interesting association very much in line with retribution.

·        Correctional Facility is a euphemism, a term that softens impact, like “passing away” serves as a euphemism for “dying.” The term also serves to emphasize the rehabilitation goal of incarceration.There's a mile of semantic difference, though, between correction and healing.

·        Prison conjures images of cages, like jail or gaol.

·        There is any number of pejoratives, some harking back to the Wild, Wild West, Like hoosegow. Slammer, Big House and a host of others spring to mind.

·        And then there’s Healing Lodge, a term that diverges radically from the traditional and the typical, and leads us to see the rehabilitation goal most emphatically.

I find the interplay between cultural practices and values and the words we use to talk about them fascinating. What major change in cultural values would have to take place before we would begin calling the Prince Albert Penitentiary the Prince Albert Healing Lodge?

As I understand it, the concept of the healing lodge emanates from the First Nations value of harmony among all aspects of being. Defined in one study, “healing is ultimately about the reparation of damaged and disordered social relations. The individual, through outwardly and self-destructive behaviours, has become disconnected from family, friends, community, and even his or her heritage. The reason for undertaking healing is often found in the clients’ desire to make amends and to be accepted back into the web of relationships. Healing, then, speaks to a form of Aboriginal sociality that reduces the degree of self-indulgence and self-pity and frames one’s problems and the solutions in broader, collective terms.” (http://www.ahf.ca/downloads/aboriginal-healing-in-canada.pdf)

               Victims of crime can hardly be faulted if, in their bitterness, they can only visualize justice as served if the perpetrator is made to feel suffering to a similar degree that they are suffering. But surely the goal for a national justice system can’t be focused just on making sure retribution happens. Prevention, rehabilitation and reintegration have been undervalued and I would hope that all the efforts made by those who work at restorative justice will eventually produce a vibrant cultural value affecting how our justice system sets goals.

               May all our gaols finally have healing lodges attached.

              

Crime, Punishment and the "Occupy Movement"

 Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true . . .

 John Cabot - Cape Bonavista

 I must go down to the sea today . . .

During the 1860s, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky worked on and published material that would later be collected into the novel called Crime and Punishment.  By today’s standards, it’s a flawed novel that would have to be heavily edited to become publishable; speeches that go on for page after page, for instance, along with the tendency to wander off into plot tangents and to give near-irrelevancies as much weight as the crucial.

               Rereading it this week, however, I was impressed by the parallels in its dominant motifs to events of the present. Simplified, Crime and Punishment revolves around the central theme of the nature and boundaries of human morality.  Its central characters fall into three categories: evil reprobates (Luzhin), the morally upright (Razumikhin) and, thirdly, the key characters who by choice or necessity, are caught between the two poles (Raskalnikov, Sonya, Dounia).

Central to this latter group, of course, is Raskalnikov, who as a student contemplated the nature of crime, and tentatively concluded that laws relating to moral actions are applied only to “ordinary” people, while a layer of “extraordinary” people are exempt. In conjunction with this “theory,” he postulated in an essay he wrote that morality is relative, i.e. that to murder can be justified by the good it achieves.

There existed a number of protest movements in Russia in the mid to late 1800s, including a Utopian Socialist movement (that undoubtedly became the germ of Soviet socialism),  anarchist gangs and nihilist groups to name a few. All were expressions of discontent with the state of affairs in the country, a country of extreme wealth alongside abject poverty, of the “poor man’s nihilism”—drunkenness.

The “Occupy” movement as we are witnessing it is a protest against the state of affairs in North America today. Unfocussed and ad hoc as it may be, politicians and corporations may well ignore or dismiss it at their peril. The rage felt by many as a result of economic collapse and the resulting loss of jobs, foreclosures, etc. hasn’t found clear goals yet, but the anger is not gone just because the tents are.

Although they may not have discovered it yet, participants in the Occupy movement are protesting a morality that condones crimes in the “extraordinary” while punishing the “ordinary,” and perpetrates the notion that the end justifies the means, even when the means requires that thousands will die in phony wars, that millions will be reduced to poverty because the “extraordinary” have been greedy beyond what countries’ economies will bear.  They’re protesting the fact that the “ordinary” must pay for the immoral acts of the “extraordinary.” They’re protesting that a petty thief can be thrown in jail while Bush and Cheney and the oil barons are excused.

Canada is preparing itself for the onslaught by building more jails to house the rebelling “ordinary.” 

We are led by an extraordinary prime minister; his foresight is amazing.

It’s, in part, what Crime and Punishment is about.

There really is nothing new under the sun.

Crime and Punishment

 Erst muss Ordnung sein

Speaking of Bark . . .

I’m sure that the set of motive/opportunity circumstances for pretty much every crime is unique, so it’s somewhat foolish to talk about crime as if it were one thing. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskalnikov—a student who has had to quit lessons because he has no money—lives in a garret and while feverishly ill, is tortured by the injustice of his situation and resentful of the old woman who holds all his former valuables in pawn. In this condition, he first dreams about and then premeditates her brutal murder and robbery, which he then carries out methodically.

               Except for one thing. The old woman’s daughter walks in on his crime and he sees no way out but to crack open her skull with his axe. So confused, guilty and agitated is he by this time that he botches the robbery in his attempt to flee and ends up with little except his guilt to take home with him.

               That, in short, is the anatomy of one crime, albeit fictitious.

               I see no authentic way to equate Raskalnikov’s crime to those of Clifford Olsen, Robert Pickton . . .  or Osama Bin Laden, for that matter, except that all four knew that the consequences for their crimes—if apprehended—would be enormous. None of the above, it seems, were deterred either by the prospect of a life of remorse and guilt or the possibility that they might well be executed or imprisoned-for-life for what they had done.

               Slowly but surely, Canada is allowing the Harper government to pull us back to medieval concepts of crime and punishment, namely, if thirty lashes won’t deter criminals from committing crimes, then let’s see how they like sixty lashes! I can only assume that both Stephen Harper and Vic Toews are aware that the crime bill they’re championing will be both futile and expensive. The obvious conclusion is that they have also discovered that 39% of the population is enough to win a majority and that with law and order, jet fighter and economy-before-environment policies, they can be assured of 39% of the vote, no problem.

               If there is a key to solving problems of crime, terrorism and environmental degradation, it is surely in the area of prevention, not retribution.

               Mind you, prevention wouldn’t be cheap either. For instance, we know that a combination of poverty-amidst-wealth alongside exclusion breeds high crime rates, relatively speaking. Raskalnikov’s crime was hatched in the futility of poverty without prospects. Bullying in schools is symptomatic of the competitive and exploitative, them-and-us  environment in which our children are raised. Tackling realities like those makes building pipelines to Texas child’s play. It won’t be cheap.

               An imaginative approach to poverty in Canada is way overdue; it’s time to take down the “Stop Bullying” placards and put up the “Prevent Bullying” signs; it’s time for a serious, communal rethinking of our child rearing, community institution and educational objectives.  

               Every crime involves a unique set of circumstances and it’s likely that degenerates like Olsen and Pickton will appear again, a new, sterner crime bill or better preventative programs notwithstanding.  But heaven help us if we don’t even give prevention a good try.

It’s time for informed, sincere leadership. I’m guessing that 100% of the population could rally behind it.

                  

On Law and Order

Athabasca Falls celebrates its ten millionth birthday, possibly.

Our federal government is taking “law and order” steps in the interest of public safety that will probably require the construction of new--and the expansion of older--prisons and penitentiaries. No doubt, they’re responding to that impulse with which most of us grow up, namely that the way to deal with deviance is to make the consequences severe enough to deter potential offenders.

There’s some logic to that; if the penalty for speeding were to be changed from a fine to a prison term, I would probably keep a closer eye on my speedometer. On the other hand, states that maintain the death penalty are still obliged to execute people regularly and California with its “three strikes, you’re out” policy has jails bursting at the seams and little else to show for it’s get-tough stance. At least that’s what one study shows. Another shows that it has made a remarkable difference in safety, largely because fewer repeat offenders are on the streets.

In the Ancient Middle East, harsh penalties were the rule. A creditor, for instance, could enslave the child of a debtor, but if he abused that child to the point of death, his own son would be executed. Adultery was punishable by stoning the adulterers to death. In parts of the world today, amputations and executions are still the prescribed penalty for transgressions like homosexuality, theft or apostasy.

What teacher or parent hasn’t wrestled with the question of discipline through punishment? A large segment of the population lamented the discontinuance of “the strap” in schools, maintaining that it had a place in the correction of deviant behaviour. To a teacher or parent at wit’s end over the unruly behaviour of students or offspring, the application of corporal punishment will undoubtedly always spring to mind. Lashing out is a visceral consequence of rage and frustration.

There is, of course, a vast range of possibilities in the application of punishment as a corrective measure with the deliberate inflicting of pain and suffering at the one end and the curtailment of privileges at the other. There’s an enormous difference between enduring a public lashing and being obliged to observe a curfew for a certain period of time. Even if we believe that sparing the rod spoils the child, our thinking about the subject shouldn’t end there.

We “candy-assed liberals,” of course, preach prevention and rehabilitation as the primary defences against deviance. If we’re correct in saying that offences against society are bred in the unjust realities of discrimination, prejudice and poverty, then we should be taking a much greater exception to the government’s determination to change the world through harsher punishment. The voices of retribution are screaming out their message; the voices of reconciliation are silent, or at best, whimpering.

Where is the Plan B?

Seven deadly sins

(This barn has nothing to do with the material below; it just looks nice and speaks diligent conservation.)

Wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony: these are the sins that have been classified by the church as having the power to interrupt the state of grace and land us in perdition. These are the seven “deadly”, “cardinal”, or “mortal” sins, as opposed to the “venial” sins like (I’m guessing here) chewing your fingernails.

We’re reviewing them through a series of sermons by pastor AF, alongside their corresponding virtues (hard work is the antithesis of sloth, for instance). And, I suspect, most of us are being given another look at behaviours we’ve come over time to see as bad habits or addictions as opposed to “sins.” Whether this shift in thinking is a by-product of the advance of Psychological research and practice, an increasing scepticism about the literal existence of an evil god who tempts and entraps us, or just a natural consequence of post modernism is what I’m pondering these days when I should be mowing the lawn. (I don’t multitask very well.)

Call it what you will, there is something decidedly deadly about--for instance--wrath. We’ve seen the deadening effect of that fog of habitual rage in which many people walk their daily lives. We hear news daily about some lost soul killing, kidnapping, raping in an outburst of wrath that has probably been festering untreated for years. Deadly is definitely the right word.

One concern I have with calling wrath a sin is that it may be dismissive of the precursors and the treatment of it, whereas medical practice attempts to find root causes and prescribe treatment regimens. In the church, of course, the solution to rage is rebirth, however that is described: a miraculous reformation in other words. And yet, rage is as much a problem inside the church as outside, and to dismiss this phenomenon among Christians as “backsliding” or failing to embrace real salvation is problematic. At the same time, there are plenty of witnesses to the transforming power of a genuine, born again experience.

In any case, people come under the spell of one or more of the “seven deadly sins” developmentally. Children of abusers are statistically far more likely to be abusers themselves than are children of loving, conscientious parents, for instance. The key must lie in the nurturance or neglect of maturing human beings, and those who repeatedly tout the virtues of punishment as a means to a cure must be shouted down.

Maybe sloth is the greatest of the sins (or bad behaviours) in the end. Too lazy to do the harder work of nurturance and inspired education, we have too often seized on the strap as a quick, handy response to inappropriate actions in children. The prison system is little more than the same, old, slothful response to deviance that the very advocates of harsh punishment have been implicated in causing. An ounce of prevention is way cheaper than a ton of “cure.”

I’m appreciating the sermon series. The use of the word sin probably serves to underline the seriousness of the kind of cultural decay that allows wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony to flourish, while the tried and true virtues (humility, perseverance, moderation, forgiveness, love, generosity and tolerance) wither on the vine.

Another reader response - on incarceration vs restorative justice

Hi, George:

The John Howard Society is a world wide prisoner advocacy organization. After I retired from work, I chaired the Manitoba John Howard Society, and spent four years on its national body. The experience strongly affirmed what I already believed about our penal justice system, and it provided me with empirical evidence that I would otherwise not have.

Re prisons:

I've come to thoroughly disrespect the established practice of incarceration. Here are some reasons :

- Broadly speaking, punishment almost never achieves the goal of deterrence. Our usual punishment for offenders is incarceration and we find that most people in prison have been there before. (Remember school detentions? It could have been easily predictable that the same kids were always there.) Punishment, or its threat, works only as long as the punisher is present. "If prisons worked, the United State would be the most crime free country in the world".

- A study done a few years ago at Manitoba's Youth Centre (a lock-up) showed that for every gang member who spent time there, two new gang members came out. A recruiting station.

- About ten years ago the federal government did a study on the relationship between length of sentence and the likelihood of recidivism. It found that the longer the sentence the more likely it was that the offender would offend again. !

- The following example is anecdotal, has been told to me many times: It's easier to get drugs (including alcohol) in prison than out. (I heard of a guy who became an alcoholic in prison. When he was released, one item topped the list of things to buy, borrow, or steal.)

- If it's vengeance we want, I have little to say except that at least the lash is gone.

There are a few good alternatives to incarceration. Here's one: "Restorative Justice"

Restorative Justice is slowly getting government recognition -- if for no other reason, it's much cheaper. Restorative Justice is the one process I know of that regularly has measurable, positive results. The rate of recidivism, for example, improves with inmates who are given the choice of being active in its educational classes and individual counseling... I like it for lots of other reasons. Check it out. There's lots of info about Restorative Justice on the net.

HN, Winnipeg