by Matt Barr

Ron Artest and theories of punishment

Many years ago when I was a hockey fan (and when there was hockey), I was involved in a heated Compuserve Sports Forum debate over what punishment Dale Hunter deserved for knocking Pierre Turgeon into next week after Turgeon had scored a goal and was celebrating (and therefore, of course, not the least bit expecting a bodycheck). I reached into my 1L law school training to explain the four reasons you punish people for wrongdoing and found that one of them, retribution, got a raw deal those days, and does still, I think.

So when Ron Artest is suspended for the season for attacking several Detroit pistons fans in the stands, I still reach into that 1L bag and consider on what theory the punishment is justified.

Specific deterrence. That works; if Artest isn't playing he himself can't go into the stands and attack any more fans. But that is usually subservient to

Rehabilitation. Does Artest's punishment dissuade him from going into the stands ever again? It would me, sure, but one assumes, and NBA Commissioner David Stern has said, that additional mesaures will be taken apart from the punishment of the offenders to ensure players don't go into the stands again. And when I say above that specific deterrence is subservient to rehabilitation, I mean that once (if ever) Artest is rehabilitated, he no longer needs to be specifically deterred.

General deterrence. This is the favorite straw man of death penalty opponents: There is no evidence that the death penalty deters others from committing capital crimes, so general deterrence doesn't work. I think though that whatever the merits of that position, in the closed universe of NBA players, a season-long, 70+ game suspension without pay will be a powerful force to dissuade others from venturing off the court and into the audience.

Which brings us to the fourth reason you punish, and the one that gets short shrift: Retribution. This is pooh-poohed as an unseemly bloodlust, of which we should aspire to be free. Retribution, in context of the death penalty, is the kind of argument that figuratively leads death penalty opponents either to put their fingers in their ears and hum lest they be sullied by the barbarism of the argument, or leads them to dismiss you outright as ruled by emotion instead of logic.

But to my mind it's entirely proper for a society -- the big, broad one we all live in or the NBA -- to make a statement to its members, the law abiding ones as well as those inclined not to obey the law, that certain behavior disgusts us and is inappropriate. Libertarians are hesitant to buy into that because what disgusts me or someone else shouldn't have any influence on the criminal law. But it's healthy, both cathartically and practically, insofar as it serves to define what is acceptable and what isn't, what gets people charged up and what doesn't, in the society.

The fact Artest is a punk makes the retribution theory easier to swallow, too, I would think.

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