Crimes (Of The Young) And Punishment

October 4, 1994

A young man from Ohio was caned in Singapore for breaking the law. As administered there, caning is a bloody, scarring whipping of the bare buttocks with a thin, flexible bamboo cane wielded with all the strength of the assigned punisher.

In Alaska, two young men of the Tlingit tribe were sentenced to be banished for a year for beating and robbing a pizza delivery man in Washington State. The State court referred punishment to the tribe. Simon Roberts and Adrian Guthrie were ordered by the tribal court to spend a year to eighteen months on separate, isolated islands.

In Florida, there is political push, particularly led by some county sheriffs, to establish “boot camps” for juvenile offenders. Supervisors trained in tough drill sergeant methods would enforce hard-line disciplines: hours, daily, of marching drills, obstacle courses, rigid behavior, and dress standards for all hours of the working day.

Will such varieties of punishment and rehabilitation be effective? No one knows. The young man who was caned in Asia returned to his father's home in Ohio; and, I read, is now in a drug rehab program.

The two young men of the Tlingit tribe are going to be exiled on separate islands in Alaska, although there seem to be hitches. The tribal elders were apparently confused about enforcement. There are no tribal precedents; these are first cases, which makes one speculate why the Washington State judge turned the case over to the Tlingits. Each of the offenders will be given help in building a one-room house and be supplied with a wood-stove, sleeping bag, tools, fishing poles and some basic food stuffs such as rice and beans. They will be taught Tlingit skills for survival. Whether such teaching and supplies will be sufficient to enable each to survive an Alaskan winter alone, remains to be seen; as well as the question whether they will be reformed or changed if they do survive.

“Boot camps” in Florida are few and have not existed long enough to acquire statistics establishing whether the “graduates” choose a crime-free life or are just physically tougher lawless boys and men. Furthermore, there is the reluctance on the part of the Florida populace (taxes!) to vote to support any crime prevention program except the building of more and more prison cells (the costliest way in construction, maintenance and inmate costs).

Dealing with young offenders is not a new problem. The Massachusetts law in 1648 called for the DEATH PENALTY for rebellious sons over the age of sixteen who refused to obey their mother or father; or if they struck or cursed a parent. How about that!! There is no record of any executions under this law, but as the historian notes, “but several were fined or whipped for being rude or abusive to parents, some of these ‘children’ were in their forties and parents were of an advanced age.” (David Hackett Fischer, ALBION’S SEED.)

Are there proposed solutions that have authentic promise? I don't know, but I hope there will be continuing, realistic discussion and appropriate testing of suggested ways to deal with the immense problems of juvenile crimes crimes and misdemeanors.

Years ago I heard a story, not guaranteed to be true; it is illustrative: “After reading a letter from the camp director stating her son needed discipline, a mother replied, ‘Please don’t slap Irvin; he is very sensitive. It would be much better to slap the boy next to him; that will scare Irvin.’” Well, are parents too willing to seek easy ways to overlook, to tolerate, to excuse their reluctance to exert “tough love?” But I guess no easy generalizations will fit the abundant varied circumstances.

Contrasted to that doting mother, is the “melancholy Dane”, who when scolding his mother for her marriage to Claudius, Hamlet says to her he “must be cruel only to be kind.”

How tough, even cruel, must society be to juvenile offenders? There are some who are murderers before their mid-teens. Even pre-teens are bringing guns to school. Many kids who commit crimes or misdemeanors are arrested and released immediately because there is no place to keep them. So there is the attitude among some teen-agers: Go ahead – rob, steal, mug, deal drugs. Even if arrested you'll be back on the street within 24 hours. Is that an exaggeration? Not according to what I read, almost almost daily.

On this, my 83rd birthday, I am wary of being naively autobiographical. Times have changed too much and there has been a large increase in population and the inner cities are even more densely populated. I could go on at length – the cop on the corner kept us kids in line; no parent objected to his manhandling us a bit to teach us lawful ways. (It did). Whatever the teacher said in a note sent home was reinforced unquestioningly by the parents.

What happened? Talking recently with my older son, for whose intelligence and experience I have great respect, he said the big change happened in the 1960s. (Would you believe that in the early 1950s, when taking some evening graduate courses at Teachers College, Columbia University, after the second class, about 10 PM, I would walk through Harlem to get to the 125th St. railroad station; and I was never bothered. Try that today!)

Beyond doubt many things have worsened – the large number of one-parent families (for reasons sometimes good as well as bad), the failure of densely-grouped public housing; the strange attitude on the part of so many parents that the teacher in the public school is responsible for the learning, discipline, values, hygiene, morals, not the parents. There are other cultural factors too, which I am not qualified to assess the effect on children and young people:

The insatiable thirst for consumer goods of all kinds, cultivated by the skilled and subtle ads on TV, in the news supplements, all media. We have “bought” a cultural norm that it is better “to have” than “to be”. So, get the goods, the TV, the car stereo, rip them off if you lack the money to buy. There is also huge distrust of government, both elected and appointed, which must have some effect on attitudes toward the law. How does one cope with the belief held by so many young people that there are no “good” jobs for them, now or in the future? How much ruin is the consequence of “hard” drugs, along with the chance of getting rich by dealing in drugs?

Have all the “liberal” (so-called) programs of the last sixty years or so had as an unintended consequence of fixing in stone an extensive “underclass” who have few hopes for survival except for entitlements or illegal activities? That’s a difficult question for a life-long New Deal Democrat to raise, even with himself. But I hear of no alternatives that are realistic, feasible, or humane.

What can sustain us? There is no sense in blinking away the nature and depth of our problems and unease. Perhaps there soon will be some answers that will address the issues with some authenticity. Otherwise, the troubles accumulate, until, to use a metaphor from physics, there is a “critical mass.” Then there will be an explosion, perhaps a 21st century variety of “New Deal”; or the worst case would be violent, bloody uprisings. I won’t be around, but I predict it will be a series of catastrophic events for some persons, but possibly a beacon of hope for many others. Send me a fax, I’d sure like to know.