Vermont is the deserving recipient (see Saturday's entry) of this blog's most recent Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate for conspicuous stupidity for its leftist approach to criminal justice (highlighted by the recent rape and murder of a 12 year old girl).
The story is still simmering, as it turns out a Vermont judge let the rapist of an 18 year old girl--who was paroled after only four years in prison, supposedly under parole supervision--off of probation because "treatment" (Vermont's treatment program) had worked. The man then raped and murdered. This idea of the criminal justice system as a "treatment" admitting system for people who are merely "sick" (not "bad") is actually a symptom of a true sickness: the LEFTIST mind.
I have previously described the idea that people are responsible for what they do, and need to be held accountable for what they do (without excusing it because of "society" or "sickness") as one of the FUNDAMENTEL foundations of being a conservative. You cannot be a conservative and fail to believe in this principle. I would argue that you can't be a truly rational person and fail to believe in this principle. Yes, I AM saying that leftists are irrational, not in the sense of having lost their reason but in the sense of letting their emotions (and emotional attachment to a leftist world view) completely overwhelm their reason.
This sickness/treatment, leftist "model" of a criminal justice system is IMMORAL in several respects, in additon to not being rational. Of course, it fails to show true respect for human beings--BOTH criminal and victim--by suggesting that crimes against human beings should be EXCUSED, and that the criminal is not responsible for his or her own acts (therefore LESS than human). This is exactly the WRONG message/culture. You want people to BELIEVE, in the very core of their being, that they are responsible for their actions. The only way to do that is for society to hold them responsible for their actions.
It gets worse. Assume that you use the criminal justice system as a mental health admitting system--like Vermont, holding people in jail only until "treatment" "works" (even though, as a personal injury lawyer, including cases involving psychiatric malpractice,I KNOW that the psychiatric profession DENIES that it can actually "predict" dangerousness, or accurately determine when a person is likely to commit a crime). Logically, this would mean that ANY serious crime would result in an INDETERMINATE sentence, where the person is held in jail until the state is satisfied that the person is "cured" ("rehabilitated").
Problem: Is being in jail PUNISHMENT (whether you are "reating" someone or not). Of course it is. Under an "indeterminate" sentence, what are you "punishing" someone for who has bee in jail, for example, for 10 years? There is just no doubt. You are NOT "punishing" the person for what he DID. You are punishing the person for his CHARACTER, and for not conforming to whatever the state "treatment" program wants to conform him to. WORSE, is this not an invitation to DISCRIMINATION--on the basis of race or otherwise? Of course it is. Since you are NOT holding a person accountable for what he DID, but rather for what he IS, this "mental health" approach to criminal justice is automatically DISCRIMINATORY. It discriminates against the PERSON (not even in the sense of the person proving himself to be incorrigible by previous crimes, but in terms of the person CONFORMING to whatever standards are being consciously or unconsciously applied to evaluate the CHAARACTER of the person), rather than focusing on the ACT.
By the time I was in law school (1971-1973), the defects of "indeterminate" sentencing were already becoming obvious. It was becoming obvious that such sentencing INVITED racial and ethnic discrimination. Even more fundamentally, it was becoming obvious that the only MORAL basis for holding someone in jail was to PUNISH and/or to DETER others. In other words, just as the "sickness" theory of criminal justice was reaching its height, even leftists suddenly realized that they were creating a MONSTER.
Since I got out of law school, there has been a gradual approach to more DETERMINATE sentences based on OBJECTIVE standards relating to the individual CONDUCT involved (including prior CONDUCT, perhaps including indications of prior GOOD conduct, but NOT just unlimited discretion on what the sentencing person or persons THOUGHT of the criminal). The idea (never completely achievable in practice) was that an urban, poor black should receive the same sentence for the same crime as the white son of a millionaire.
Now anti-social characters who cannot get along at all in prison have to be PUNISHED, as well, such as by losing "good time", or not receiving parole. But the THEORY gradually evolved away from the "mental health" model, to a model of CONSISTENCY in punishing people for their ACTS in a rational manner.
However, the left has never quite bought into it. Thus, you have the Federal sentencing "guidelines" being declared unconstitutional to the extent they purported to remove the DISCRETION of judges to depart from the guidelines (which were supposed to reduce inequities in sentencing). The Supreme Court, of course, is mad up of judges, and judges are an INTEREST group jealously guarding their own priorities.
Beyond judges wanting to do what they want to do, however, there is something more fundamental going on heer. Leftists do NOT generally like "punishment" AT ALL, or holding people responsible for what they do. It does not matter that any other basis for a criminal justice system is IMMORAL. For example, logically, if we are not punishing people for their ACTS, but rather for their CHARACTER ("sickness"), then we should SCREEN people BEFORE they commit crimes, and FORCE them to be "treated" (even if confinement were necessary).
Leftists recoil at that "Brave New World", "1984" approach to criminal justice because it results in "punishment" not "ppropriate" to the actual ACTS that have been committed. It fails to truly bother leftists that it is not RATIONAL to sugest that there ARE "appropriate" punishments for acts, but then suggest that we should disregard the ACTS once the criminal is "rehabilitated". For leftists, this is all about the emotional reaction AGAINST "punishment" and responsibility, and NOT about logic and reason.
Thus, as in Vermont, leftists keep reverting to the "mental health" theory (really discredited) of criminal justice. But what they really want is to just NOT hold people responsible. Thus, the idea is to have as definite jail sentences as possible, or jail sentences at all, in favor of TREATMENT forever and ever. It is OUR failure if the "treatment" does not work. Even then, true leftists want the people undergoing COERCED treatment to be free of THAT as soon as possible. The idea is just to NOT "punish" ANYONE, or even engage in coerced "treatment" that might be regarded as "punishment" for any length of time.
THIS is the present Vermont culture, and the culture that the left is trying to bring to the whole country and the world. If the leftists succeed, it is a culture that will destroy us, as it has virtually destroyed the criminal justice system in Vermont.
Never doubt it. Vermont (despite the fact that there are surely many good, rational people living there--the old Sodom and Gomorrah question) was just about the MOST deserving recipient of "the Finger" to date--only the anti-American, despicable Associated Press deserving it more.
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