In a non-capital punishment country the power of the State to deprive us of our liberty is one of the greatest concessions we the citizenry make to it.

It is a power that needs to be wielded with responsibility, compassion and a due recognition of the enormity of the act of incarceration.

It is why I view the use of private prisons as an abrogation of that responsibility.

However I have always seen a second, implied responsibility and that is to ensure policies are in place that strive to limit the number of people who require incarceration. These involve spending on social programs like a safety net, decent drug and prison rehabilitation, decent community housing, decent mental health facilities, programs for school retention, and a strong and adaptive justice system.

Whenever I hear ‘tough on crime’ messages around election time or the building of new private prisons, I know it is instead a ‘tough on criminals’ stance that is only half the picture. Both parties do it but the new government in my state of Victoria seems more than usually enthusiastic in fulfilling their election rhetoric.

I want to put forward the proposition that if the policies of a government taken as a whole result in a long-term increase in the proportion of us citizens behind bars then it should be seen as a failure. The difficulty in any proper assessment is the length of time many mitigation policies require to bear fruit. The question is how long should we wait before judging a government’s efforts?

As much as I admire America the obscenely high proportion of its population behind bars (nearly double the next contender) should really earn it the title of a failed state. Few should want our country to walk that path. What should we demand of government to ensure we don’t?

Csteele, I really don't care where criminals are sent, I just want then off the street, somewhere where they are no longer able to worry their betters.

I don't care if they are rehabilitated, so long as they are off the street. I have very grave doubts that any are rehabilitated, I believe the claims that they have not re-offended simply mean that they have not been caught again. There is fart too much unsolved crime to believe it is all committed by clean skins.

I think we should be making judges, & parole boards responsible for their decisions, by having then serve the same sentences as the people they allow out on suspended sentences, or parole, or bail, who then re-offend. If it was they, rather than the poor general public who suffered for their bleeding heart attitude, we would have better sentencing, & a lot less crime.

What we need is some Indonesian, & Malaysian prison governors down here running our prisons. They do know how to run a penal system.

Interesting post.

Remember that the critical difference between getting something done by means of policy, and getting something done by voluntary means, is that policy is enforceable and enforced. Policy always involves threats of force which would otherwise be illegal. If you don’t comply, action may start as a threatening letter, or an order to pay a fine. But ultimately, if you continue to insist on your liberty, a group of armed men will come and physically seize you. If you don’t resist, you’ll be locked in a cage. If you do resist, they’ll use an escalating range of force, up to and including handcuffing you, threatening to taser or shoot you, and if that doesn’t work and you continue to resist or to use weapons as they are do, they’ll shoot you.

It is this critical difference that makes policy solutions so attractive to those who advocate policy solutions: they don’t have to go to the bother of getting the *agreement* of people who disagree with them.

The fact that people recognize that resistance is futile, does *not* mean they agree, doesn't mean threats of of incarceration don't underly *all* policy, and does not mean the use of force is necessarily ethically justified.

So the first thing we can do to limit the number of people who require incarceration, is to recognize that policy always involves the ethical question, whether the problem, which policy is advocated to solve, justifies the use or threat of violence as a means to an end.

The second thing we can do is to limit the definition of “requiring” incarceration. The ethical argument is this. In general, aggressive violence should *not* be the basis of social co-operation. Freedom and consent should be. The use of force or threats is justified to repel or constrain aggressive violence; but not otherwise.

For example, the war on drugs is *not* a justifiable use of policy because using drugs or selling them does not amount to aggressive violence. The repeal of these laws would greatly reduce the numbers incarcerated both in the USA and here.

Peter will put.

R0bert

Dear Peter,

Thank you for the response. An argument about the 'evils' of Statism is probably relevant but possibly distracting. I feel most of us see it entirely appropriate to give up some freedoms to have a functioning communities.

But your post did have me dwelling on the differences between the USA and Australia. I think it is evident that the safety nets we have in place in this country are a lot stronger than those in America and I see them as having a bearing on incarceration rates.

Sustaining hyper-capitalism comes at a cost since the inevitable creation of winners and losers is more extreme than here.

But one gets the sense that the cult of individualism and personal freedom is a huge factor.

It is almost as if freedom is a 'capital', or a finite resource, there is only so much to go around and the more some people grab for themselves the less there is for others.

I find it staggering to think the US has over six times the rates of imprisonment to Australia and we have three times the rate of Denmark. Wealth distribution has to play a significant role.

But back to the original question, is the of its citizens behind bars a fair measure by which to judge the success or otherwise of a government?

I would argue it is. For instance a government that wanted to crack down on fraud without a decent policy addressing problem gambling is to me failing us.

“A study of offenders on community corrections orders in the Australian Capital Territory found that, of those who reported problem gambling, 26 percent admitted that it contributed to their offending, and 46 percent said they had obtained money illegally to pay for gambling or related debts” (Lahn 2005)

Looks like you’re in favour of a most expansive definition of who requires incarceration after all.

“But back to the original question, is the of its citizens behind bars a fair measure by which to judge the success or otherwise of a government? I would argue it is.”

This question is unclear, both because it’s missing a word, and if “number”or "proportion" is supplied between “the” and “of its citizens”, then you would be arguing that the number or proportion of citizens behind bars is a fair measure by which to judge the success or otherwise of a government.

I don’t think you meant to say that numbers incarcerated is a fair measure of the *success* of a government. But if you meant a fair measure of the *failure* of a government, obviously, it would depend on what is the criterion justifying imprisonment.

For example, you think everyone who disagrees with paying income tax should be imprisoned, don’t you, because you obviously
a) want to take the fruits of their labour without their consent so you can spend it on whatever you want, and
b) don’t think it should be voluntary i.e. people should be caged into submission, or threatened with being shot etc.

So let me ask you this. Are there any things that you believe *on principle* should not be decided by government and arbitrary political power? If so, what are they, and why?

The political controversies of the 16th and 17 centuries turned on religious issues and theological disputes, the how-many-angels-can-you-fit-on-the-head-of-a-pin?-type controversy. Similarly many political controversies of the 18th and 19th centuries were about nationalism, which simplifies history for its consumers into an ethnocentric-type us/them dichotomy. In their nature, these cannot be solved by reference to reason or evidence, and ultimately can only be resolved by appeal to arbitrary power.

But the political controversies of the 20th and 21st centuries resolve to issues of economics, and these propositions are amenable to rational proof or disproof. For example, your idea that somebody’s wealth must come from somebody else’s improverishment is the oldest fallacy in economic thought.