Gordaen’s Blog

Or don’t, whatever works. If you are trying to stop something from happening in the future, what do you do? I would try to find out the motivation for the action(s) and eliminate that motivation. For instance, if I knew that a car would crash into a tree, I would do something beforehand to prevent that from happening. I could put new brake pads on the car. Another option is to put up a concrete wall and let the car slam into that instead. The tree would be fine and the driver would probably be splinter-free—at least, free of splinters made of wood, no guarantees on bone.

What if the driver did not pay much for his car? Should I still put new brake pads on his car? You might say so, because it is the humane thing to do, or you might be more capitalist and say no. Perhaps the better answer then is to provide him with the proper drivers’ education to make the roads safer for everyone. Chances are that he has had some basic education, but didn’t grasp certain concepts (reasonable speed?) so his abilities were limited.

Now take those two paragraphs as an analogy for dealing with crime. Rather than a guy crashing into a tree, it’s a guy who is going to steal some bread. We could give him food (new brake pads) but that’s not the capitalist answer. We could provide him with a solid education, so he could earn money and buy his own food. What we actually do is the equivalent of putting up several smaller concrete barriers. Maybe he’ll get caught by one (hit one) or maybe not. We’ve been told that punishments are deterrents, and they are. They’re just not very good ones. We need to address the motivation for the crime directly rather than trying to just discourage a particular behavior. If the abstinence-only policy is taught as “Don’t have sex or society will shun you,” then it does absolutely nothing to address the reason for the behavior. Do you think that’s a successful strategy?

You might argue that we do provide schools, but we do not provide everything necessary to allow all students to attend school. Some children are taking care of their siblings. Some teens are having their own children. Some don’t have regular meals. The question is, how much do we provide (food, day care, housing, etc.) to give everyone a solid chance and how do we prevent abuse of the system? Somehow, asking “How badly can we punish people to force them to go to school?” doesn’t sound like a good question/answer.