by Matt Barr

Rehabilitation? Deterrence?

In fact, I can prove we punish in part to exact vengeance, or at least to make a cathartic statement that certain conduct is unacceptable.

A 50-year-old person with no prior criminal history, established in society, family man, good job, kills another man in a provoked rage. Let's say he found his wife in bed with the victim. 25 years with possibility of parole after 12 and a half seem about right?

30-year-old prior offender convicted of auto theft, his second such conviction, fourth for theft of some kind and seventh overall. Five years with possibility he's out in 18 months. Reasonable?

Our murderer probably doesn't need to be rehabilitated at all. Let's imagine a realisitic scenario. His children have left his life, he's lost his job and friends, and he's going to find Jesus after about a day and a half in prison.

Our car thief clearly needs rehabilitation. It's clearly going to take far longer. His recidivism tells us it probably won't even work, unless we keep at it vigorously, for as long as it might take.

No one who was going to anyway is going to be deterred from flying into a violent rage upon catching his wife cheating by the 25-year sentence given our murderer. Not one. Our murderer himself is unlikely to commit the crime of murder again. (He's a bachelor, for one thing.) On the other hand, if we were of a mind to pass it, a law making auto theft punishable by 50 years in prison would deter nearly all auto theft.

But we sentence the rehabilitated murderer, whose example will deter nobody and whose incarceration is not necessary to keep him from committing his crime again, to far longer a stay in prison than our recidivist auto thief.

Why?

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