Hard Labour for Violent Criminals

The late Karl Menninger said in his book, The Crime of Punishment “The great secret, the deeply buried mystery of the apparent public apathy to crime and to proposals for better controlling crime, lies in the persistent wish for vengeance.” He recognized that we all have that natural desire to hurt back but that in our society, it simply isn't done openly.

When the reformers sold society their concepts of prison reform through rehabilitation of criminals, society went for it---only to later learn that rehabilitation in prison was a joke. When violent offenders and murderers were released because parole authorities presumed that they had been rehabilitated, and these same felons re-entered society again to maim and kill again and again, society lashed out at the reformers, calling them sob sisters and buffoons.

Imprisonment serves two useful purposes---the protection of society and as a deterrence; both general and specific. Punishment isn't meted out where the purpose of imprisonment alone is the protection of society. To do so, would be cruel. For example, if a person kills another as a direct result of mental illness, we may incarcerate him for life in order to protect society but we wouldn’t incarcerate him as a punishment notwithstanding being incarcerated is a form of punishment.

You cannot deter criminals without inflicting punishment. Incarceration by itself as a penalty is punishment which is awarded to wrongdoers and yet, mere incarceration alone is not a deterrent. I am speaking of losers who have no job, no family to support, no house to upkeep and no future. Their friends are for the most part, lowlife like themselves who don't care one iota for their fellow humans. These are the people to whom incarceration means three meals a day, a roof over their heads, a warm bed and friends of their own ilk to keep them company. If they serve one or ten years in prison, they have learned nothing from it because it costs them nothing. They had nothing when they went into prison and they have nothing when they re-enter society. To them, being sent to prison means little or nothing to them. They simply don't fear imprisonment; hence they commit more violent crimes. I remember meeting a middle-aged man who had spent years in prison and when he was released he immediately committed another burglary. When I asked him why, he said that it being winter, it was cold and he had no where to go and he was glad to be back into prison again. He is the kind of person we refer to as being institutionalized.

What about the 38-year-old woman in Toronto who was the victim of three teenage thugs who had nothing better to do? These thugs walked down the busy streets at the early hours of the morning, banging on the doors of cars that stopped at stop lights and assaulting anyone who protested. The 38-year-old woman who left her car to protest was stabbed by a 16-year-old punk in her abdomen and shoulder. The trial judge gave the 16-year-old youth a mere 18 months in a youth facility. With good time, he could be out in three months.

Can we expect a judge to give a slap on the wrist of the Toronto 16-year-old punk who stabbed a man who came to the assistance of this mother because his mother objected to drugs being sold in her neighbourhood? What penalty will some soft-hearted, soft-headed judge give to the criminal, who in the company of 20 youths, beat and stabbed a Rexdale man in the lobby of his own apartment building in the middle of the day after he had already given them his money?

Will the judge be anything like acting Justice Renee White in New York City, who after hearing evidence that an 18-year- old slashed a film actress across her cheek and ear for no apparent reason, promised the criminal who did it, that he wouldn't get any prison time if he behaved himself for a year? Is that what we call deterrence?

What is frightening is that a Canadian federal corrections report stated that 61% of all penitentiary inmates in Canada are psychopaths. Since such characteristics are formed in early life, it follows that young offender statistics are probably the same. A psychopath is anyone who has no feelings for anyone or anything and is incapable of really understanding the feelings of others. As an example of psychopathic behaviour, consider the two pre-teens in Toronto who poked the eyes out of a live kitten and then set the kitten on fire. It is these kinds of criminals that are in prison and young offender facilities for violent crimes and it is these kinds of criminals that eventually return to society with a vengeance. Admittedly, we have incarcerated them to protect ourselves from these beasts of prey but that protection is generally quite short in duration. The beasts are set free even while the victims continue to suffer.

What we need to do is to instill fear in the minds of violent criminals so that they know that if they commit an act of violence, they will pay not only the penalty involving their loss of freedom but also they will pay for their crimes with the pain of punishment.

Whipping went by the way years ago as a punishment for violent offenders (and rightly so because it was counter productive) so we are left with the only alternative suitable punishment that is acceptable---and that is, hard labour.

One thinks of the Gulag and Mississippi chain gangs when thinking of hard labour. That is hard labour in the extreme. What I envision as hard labour is a highly restrictive regimen of freedom and work in which the work hours are long and tedious.

I envision a section of each prison or young offender facility being set aside for violent offenders who are sentenced to hard labour. Such a section of each institution is a prison within a prison. Visits from family members are restricted to one two-hour visits per month. The prisoner (if over 15) works six days a week with one day being set aside (Sunday) as a day of rest and recreation. Smoking is absolutely forbidden---which in the long run, will be a blessing to the prisoner.

Each work day begins at five in the morning. The prisoner has one hour to get up, get washed and have breakfast. By six, he is at work. Between six and twelve noon, he has two 15-minute breaks. Between twelve and one, he has his lunch and a rest until one in the afternoon. Then he's back at work. He quits work at five with two 15-minute breaks in between. Between five and six, he has his supper and rest. At six, he is back to work again until eight. Between eight and nine, he has a shower, reads or writes and at nine, the lights go out.

The work is not light work. It entails loading and unloading heavy sacks of sand (the weight of each sack is dependant on the size of the offender which means that each sack can be half the weight of the offender) or digging holes, wheel-barrowing the dirt to another site and then returning to the original pile and filling the wheel barrows again. The work is monotonous and is not varied. The accomplishments are meaningless. The idea is to instill a hatred for their crime by instilling in them a hatred for the hard labour they are doing. It will certainly make legitimate work look like an outing in the summer.

For those who do their work without any trouble, they are given the privilege of enjoying their Sundays to the fullest. On Sundays, there will be TV to watch, a film, a concert by visiting performers and four-hour visits. They can play sports in the yards or simply lie in their beds. It's their day.

If they don't toe the line, they will spend their Sundays in solitary confinement with no privileges for that day. If they refuse to work, they will serve their time in solitary confinement with no books, no radio or TV. They will have no communication with anyone other than guards or by correspondence and their two meals a day will be so bland and repetitious that the desire to eat simply won’t be there other than to break the monotony. They will sleep on two blankets on the floor with a third blanket to cover them or use as a pillow when rolled up.

There are many who will say that young offenders should be taught a trade instead of doing meaningless hard labour. I disagree. Teaching violent offenders a trade isn't going to change their attitudes about committing violent crimes against innocent citizens. Many violent criminals learned a trade in prison and upon their release; they still committed violent crimes. If they are to be taught a trade, let them be taught a trade when they are on parole while living in a halfway house.

I am suggesting this kind of punishment for periods of between one year (for young offenders) and three years (for adult offenders) as an alternative to sending violent offenders to prison for periods of three to six years of ordinary imprisonment. The purpose is two-fold. The first being that this short and hard imprisonment will deter violent criminals far more than long and soft imprisonment ever will. Secondly, the cost of keeping a prisoner in a federal penitentiary for two years for example, is only $100,000 whereas keeping him in prison for six years is three times as much.

This proposal is not in my opinion, cruel and unusual punishment. If imprisonment is to be effective, it must deter and there is nothing like hard labour that will deter a violent offender. When violent punks serve between one and three years in a correctional institution at hard labour for wounding by shooting, slashing or kicking innocent victims who refuse to hand over their purses or shoes, the next time they see a victim with a purse or something they want for themselves, they will think of the thousands upon thousands of gunnysacks of sand they hoisted over their shoulders, or the tons of dirt they moved across the yard, hour after hour, day after day, month after month until the thought of pulling a gun or knife or using their boots on a prospective victim, will make them want to vomit.

I am so sick of reading about violent offenders who attack anyone that is still breathing and then getting either a slap or a kiss from a soft-hearted, soft-headed judge who has no idea whatsoever as to what it is really like to suffer pain and injury at the hands of a violent offender, an offender who doesn’t give a damn what he or she does to other people.