Newsletter from Jay Wilcox - June 2019: On Justice, Wrath
Good morning/afternoon/evening!
After my night class, I was talking with another person* on campus, and he told me about a child molester who had been caught two towns over. "If I was in charge," this guy told me, "there would be no jury, no trial, no nothing. We would just take this guy out back and shoot him."
The building had cleared out, leaving just the two of us in the doorway to my classroom.
"We've gotten too soft with our laws, as a country," this guy went on. "If you knew you were going to get your hand cut off for stealing, there'd be a whole lot less stealing going on. I can tell you that right now."
These opinions are not controversial here. I live in a blue state but a red county, and I couldn't count the number of people that have boasted to me about what they would do to the worst criminals. A common sentiment, paraphrased: "My tax dollars pay to house these guys in some luxury-hotel prison, when really they should just be killed immediately--or at least tortured endlessly forever."
What if the punishment for every crime was death? My girlfriend and I discuss things like this all the time. Consider the person who commits a small offense--maybe a robbery, or some light treason against the U.S. Federal Government. If this person knows they're then damned to die, what deters them from more serious crimes? Muggings might as well become murders, because, in the words of comedian and legal scholar Joey Diaz: "If you're walking on thin ice, you might as well dance."
Maybe the road to fascism is littered with executed jaywalkers.
I absolutely will not go to bat for sex criminals and child molesters. Who would? Still, consider the fact that many an aspiring dictator knows this: that extra-legally slaughtering indefensible criminals could rally even the most reluctant supporters. Slaughter the indefensible first and then circle back for political rivals and academics. We all hate child molesters. Too many of us would delight in the erosion of certain legal norms if it meant faster "justice."
Certain types might get in my face and cry about how I would feel differently if I knew someone in my life had been raped or killed. And the odds are good that, in such a situation, I would give myself over to wrath. There's a reason fascism occurs in the wild. Anyone can be made very angry.
But in the meantime, how can we make absolutely sure a punishment fits a crime?
Here's something I hear many people say about undocumented immigrants: "If they didn't want to have their kids taken away, they shouldn't have tried crossing the border illegally." Set aside for a moment the fact that coming into the US illegally is only a misdemeanor. This kind of thinking speaks to ugly comparisons: making the punishment for border-crossing severe enough to rival whatever dangers the migrants fled. For such a strategy to actually deter migrants, the US government would have to be scarier and more brutal than poverty and gangs combined.
Should the punishment for every crime be a bigger crime?
Whoops, just insinuated that undocumented immigration was a crime. I guess let the atrocity fit the misdemeanor just doesn't have a ring to it.
Look, of course there should be a punishment for trying to bypass the legal immigration process. But in the meantime, all we're doing is cutting off hands. How bad a situation are some migrants escaping, to risk life and limb? And how much longer before our own wrath finally turns our country into something that isn't worth the risk?
Righteous anger can be awesome and intoxicating. But consider the possibility that if you're mad--about undocumented immigrants, especially--there's a good chance it's because someone in power wants you to be mad.
Anywho, still writing my novel. Will send updates.
Infinite Regards,
Jay
*I'm withholding this guy's details. It's what he would he would want. By the way, I realize how odd it might look, putting an asterisk on "person"--almost like this guy is actually some kind of cyborg or something. Of course, if he were a cyborg, I would respect his right to privacy and withhold that information, too.