crime and punishment

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."- Proverbs 31:8-9

I don't usually like to say that I am conservative or liberal because, depending on the issue, I can be all over the map. It is probably true that there are a lot more issues where I take a politically conservative position than a liberal one. Perhaps the issue where I am the least politically conservative, though, is as it relates to the criminal justice system. What's odd is that this is probably one of the issues where the conservative position is far more mainstream, what with the popularity of three strikes laws, sex offender registries, and even the death penalty for the most egregious of crimes.

The first reason I tend to be a bit more lax on my views of punishing crime is that I am always hearing stories about people who were wrongly convicted of a crime. One example from the past few months was a man convicted thirty-five years ago for raping a boy only to have DNA evidence exonerate him very recently. Another potential example that showed up in the news today is of a man who was driving his family home from church and his car accelerated into another vehicle, killing three people. He claimed the car accelerated on its own and he could not control it, but the jury did not believe him, so he was convicted in the wrongful death of those three individuals and sentenced to eight years in prison. Now the case is being reviewed because the man was driving a Camry that may have had similar electrical problems that other Toyotas have been having.

I do not know what percentage of people are wrongly incarcerated, but I personally believe it could be as high as ten percent. If that is anywhere near the case, even those who believe crime should be punished harshly have to give pause to the large number of innocents who are likewise going to be punished harshly. It is very easy for me to imagine situations where I would be wrongly accused of some crime and I cannot imagine the devastation that would wreak on my family, so people in prison should be provided dignity and not be punished beyond the level their crime demands if only for the sake of the wrongly convicted. Just as an addendum, if I were elected to high office (not going to happen) I expect that one of my first priorities would be to address the priority issues of the Innocence Project to reduce wrongful convictions.

Let's forget about the people who were wrongfully convicted for a moment, and focus on the 90%-95% (I'm speculating on the percentages) who are rightly convicted and look at the three policies that I mentioned earlier as being popular and a fourth policy that has wavering popularity.

Three Strikes Laws

In the nineties it was en vogue to pass three strikes laws to prove that we as a nation are tough on crime, and looking at a graph of violent crimes over time does imply that something that happened in the early nineties caused the violent crime rate to go down. I would speculate that it is much more related to a reversal of whatever was causing the rate to go up until that point, though, and that such a reversal may have been inevitable. This could be rationalizing in the face of good evidence, so take that with a grain of salt.

Furthermore, I have to believe that three strikes laws are contributing significantly to America's problem of overcrowded prisons. The United States actually has by far the largest per capita prison population in the world. This implies that we either have a more criminal population as a whole or a broken, inefficient, and ineffective system.

Sex Offender Registries

I have young kids, so I understand the appeal of a sex offender registry, but think it must be implemented properly to do good rather than harm. Only sex offenders who, by their crimes, offer a real threat to their neighbors should be included in a registry. An eighteen-year-old who has to register because he got his sixteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant probably is just adding clutter and administrative hurdles to actually protecting kids. Also, I have yet to hear anyone properly address what I think of as the nuclear waste issue of sex offender registries. No one wants them in their back yard, so they have nowhere to go and may be forced into a life of crime again. Either that, or they are forced to become concentrated into low-income areas so that, if they actually do present a threat, the threat is now greatly magnified for kids in poor families.

I am not going to pretend that I have a better way of handling sex offenders to present, but I do think that there is a better way out there that I simply have not discovered.

The Death Penalty

I have always favored the death penalty, largely because it figured strongly in the Old Testament. If the death penalty was fine for Israel it is fine for the United States. While I still favor the death penalty in extreme cases where the criminal's guilt is unquestioned, I believe those specific cases are rare. As one executioner I read about stated, "If you let the [jury] foreman be the executioner, then I think they'd give a second thought about execution. If you let the judge be the executioner, I think he would give a second thought about sending somebody to be executed." It is easy to support the death penalty in all violent murder convictions when you aren't the one to flip the switch and end the person's life.

Pardons

Specifically, I do not think that Mike Huckabee (or any other governor in a similar situation) was in the wrong to pardon a man who would later commit a violent crime. For all of the due diligence in the world some people who are going to commit more crimes are going to slip through the cracks. That should not handcuff executive leaders' ability to release people who appear to have been given too harsh a sentence.

Recidivism

What do you expect is going to happen to the guy who can't make ends meet because he can't get a job because he has a criminal record? If you want to reduce crime, you have to make it possible for former criminals to make a living so that they have the choice to not go back to their old habits.

Virtues and Vices

It took me long enough to get to it. I see much more in Scripture that would lead me to believe that we should take a more compassionate perspective on those convicted of crimes than that we should punish criminals as heavily as possible. Even the desire for revenge that drives so much of the crime legislation is specifically opposed by Scripture (Rom 12:17-21). I could go on, but I think I have said enough already.

heroes or villains

I have seen most of the episodes of Survivor. The main appeal to me is that it is like people watching on steroids. One thing that doesn't appeal to me, though, is that the show is designed to bring out the worst in people.

This season the gimmick is that people who have been on the show in past seasons have been brought back to play either on a heroes team or a villains team. People who have done darker things when they played before are on the villains team and people who have been more likable are on the heroes team. While I understand the compelling narrative this will create for this season of the show, all I think it will do is prove that heroic, or even altruistic, behavior is not rewarded in the game and the people who have been edited to look heroic really aren't.

Even avoiding the fact that this use of the word "Hero" dilutes its true meaning (which is actually the topic of another post I have been mulling), most of the people who look like good people on the show and who do well can either thank the way the show was edited or thank the fact that people will usually forgive behavior they can see themselves committing. It is next to impossible to get far in the game, let alone win it, without lying or stabbing someone in the back. Most of the people who look like they kept their morals intact only appear that way because they allowed others to do the dirty work. By my personal standard that makes them complicit in the behavior.

While in my less sane moments I have wondered what it would be like to be on the show, I could never actually be on it. At some point I would have to make a moral choice about how dishonest or even malicious I would be willing to be to win the million dollars. I think that I would retain my morals, but part of me is scared I wouldn't. In Survivor: Fiji one of the contestants who was known as "Dreamz" famously went back on his word on a major deal with another player and later claimed it was a part of strategy. My impression of the situation is that Dreamz started with honorable intentions but eventually rationalized that the chance at $1 million was worth backstabbing. That one incident in particular is the one that most makes me believe that the show really is about compromising one's morals to win the game.

Some people will argue that Survivor is only a game, so being less than noble is a valid and acceptable strategy, but I believe that is a slippery slope at best. Where is the line of acceptable behavior? If lying is acceptable because it's a game is becoming physically involved with another player with the sole intent of moving forward in the game? Is physically harming another player acceptable? You could say that physically harming someone impacts their life outside the game, but I have to believe that getting stabbed in the back by someone he or she trusted also impacts a person's life outside the game. Honestly, if it really is true that morals don't apply because it is only a game, then the better player really is the one who does do the sketchier things if those things get him or her further in the game.

It is for this reason that Survivor is my second favorite reality show rather than my first. I like my favorite, The Amazing Race, because playing dirty is less of a benefit, and actually frequently a detriment, to the player or team involved. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy seeing how the different social situations and the narrative of the show work in Survivor. I just enjoy a show more when I can feel like an honest person doesn't automatically have the deck stacked against him or her.

sexism in commercials

I have been considering a post on feminism, reactions to feminism, and it's impacts on men and women in the church world and the culture at large at some point in the future. My thinking is that people's views on gender impact their impressions of just about everything. I think that most contentious issues owe some contentiousness on some level to conflicting gender views, even if the contentious issue does not appear at first glance to be a gender-sensitive issue. That is something that I will probably put together in a few months though, and I only mention that because I was reminded that I had been thinking about it recently when I saw some of the commercials during the Super Bowl.

To this point I have heard more than one observation that some of the commercials during this past Super Bowl were sexist. Interestingly, I heard people complain both directions that the commercials were either slanted against men or women. I thought I would share a few of the commercials and my opinions of them in regard to how they portray the genders.

Also, something that I would like to note is that I am analyzing these things to death. I am not really offended by any of the commercials mentioned below, but I am very interested by the reactions some of them draw, and I get quite a bit of pleasure working through whether I agree with those reactions.

Since it seems to be the most prevalent type of commercial, I have to note the commercials that imply that men only have one thing on their minds. I am in the camp that thinks this type of commercial is mildly sexist as it pushes a specific stereotype on men. Since many men have found ways to benefit from this sexism, I think I am in the minority who are irritated by it. The Megan Fox commercial and the GoDaddy commercials define this category. Instead of posting them below, though, I decided to go with the more subtle and funny Doritos commercial that only implies that one specific man has less than honorable intentions.



Next, there were two commercials that I saw as remarkably similar. They are the Dove and Charger ads below. I actually really appreciated the ads, though I didn't find them overly funny. The dove one is probably the less controversial of the two as it just goes through the things that pressure men through life, but that also establish his manhood in our culture, so that he does not have to feel feminine for using Dove body wash. Of course, an easier strategy for Dove could have been to re-brand the body wash to a more masculine name, but that's just me.



I understand why someone might think that the following ad has a tinge of sexism against women because the commercial implies that the man's role in a relationship is a chore, so that is why he should be able to purchase a Charger for himself. At the worst, this is only mildly sexist, though, and it really is a good strategy to sell a very masculine car that is anything but practical.



The Bridgestone commercial was certainly mildly sexist, but it is also a joke that has been done to death. Seriously, this is basically the equivalent of the, "Take my wife... please," joke that is as cliched a cliche as I have ever seen.



The commercial that always seems to get mentioned in regard to sexism against women is the following one. No doubt, this is a dysfunctional relationship being portrayed. While I am on the fence about how I feel about this, I am leaning toward the position that it is anti-relationship enough to be a problem. I do see how this would appeal to a lot of men and sell a lot of FloTVs, though.



I have saved the best for last. The following E*Trade commercial again shows a dysfunctional relationship and implies that men can't be trusted. It is still rather funny, though.



In short, I understand how some of the commercials can be viewed as having sexist implications, but at the same time most of them are relatively mild. I see more of attacks on relationships in general in these than attacks on one specific gender, though that is not necessarily any better.

So, what do you think? Were the Super Bowl commercials sexist in some way or were they more benign?

intelligence

These are just a few random thoughts I have about intelligence. Some is a rehash of what I have already said. That will happen on occasion, though.

For the longest time I thought I was naturally intelligent. I remember the first time my arrogance subsided and I realized that this wasn't the case. The summer I turned fifteen I was at a church youth camp where different cabins competed in a Bible quiz tournament throughout the week. While I was undoubtedly the geekiest in the cabin (most of the other guys were skaters), I was actually the intellectual liability on our team. That was a difficult thing for me to swallow. It only occurred to me later that whatever academic strength I have is not natural intelligence. My one real intellectual strength is that there are some things that I happen to care about more than other people do so I think through them a lot. In those fields where I do not have enough interest to expend much thought I am dumber than the screws holding a doorknob in place.

Another epiphany I had about intelligence was in college. I realized that many of the people who, by participation in class or by GPA or by whatever other outward measure, appeared smart were actually putting on a show, and this was a very large percentage of the "smart" people. While most people who get good grades and participate in class are intelligent, that intelligence has a limit and a lot of people have found ways to keep from inadvertently looking stupid. This does not describe every intellectual person I know, but it is pretty prevalent. It is assisted by the fact that people are more likely to equate shows of confidence with intelligence than they are to equate much anything else with intelligence. Confidently use a lot of words that people think they should know but don't and your reputation is made. Any "average" person can get a brainy reputation without too much real effort.

My latest revelation has been that there really are not many things that are difficult to understand if you have enough time to learn them. Math isn't hard. Mathematical notation is just intimidating and is usually poorly explained. English and grammar aren't hard. They are just mind-numbing for most people to try to study. None of the sciences are all that difficult to understand once you're past all of the vast rote memorization that is required. The field I chose was no different. Computer Science has some key concepts that must be understood, but the notation is what makes the field seem hard.

To sum all of this up, throughout my life I have been struck more by how similar supposedly stupid people and supposedly intelligent people are than by their differences. In many cases they follow the same logic in life. They make the same mistakes. They have the same recreations. In fact, I believe that most differences in apparent intelligence can be traced back to a question of interest or learning style rather than natural intelligence. You will go far in the American education system if you happen to do well sitting at a desk with someone lecturing to you. If you do not do well with lectures and multiple-choice tests, the decision will be made that you are somehow inferior and you will be shut out of a lot of the options in life that require traditional education. I have already been fairly clear on my opinions about education, so I should end my rant here.

I say all of this as someone who has actually benefited from the system in place. I tend to get good grades because I tend to be academically minded, so in that setting I can appear smarter than I am. A system that uses bad methods to determine whether kids are smart, though, should be corrected.