Josh the Aspie’s Blog

Recently, in a political sub forum I’ve posted in on and off for work, someone proposed the idea that the government should perform lobotomies on violent criminals in order to “protect society.” She preached the view that the rights of the many always outweigh the rights of the few, and that criminals take away people’s rights every day, so it’s acceptable to take away any and all of their rights we choose too.

I disagree strongly with this statement.

Rights are not taken away. That isn’t possible. That would imply that someone here on earth granted the rights to that individual, and thus has the authority to revoke them. No matter what someone or some government does a person still has their rights. It just might be that they are being violated or that their ability to exercise them is being restricted.

And no, the ‘rights of the many’ do not automatically trump the rights of the few because, quite simply, the rights of the many are based on the rights of the individuals that make up that many. Each person has a set of rights.

A government is formed, in part, to help protect people’s rights. In order to secure protection for some rights (not having our face bashed in) we give up certain other rights (the ability to flail our fists around as we please without punishment).

Yet in order for the rights of any individual to be protected, there must be a limitation placed upon the government to prevent them from restricting rights that the government was not given permission to restrict. One major part of this limitation, in the American system of government, is the Constitution, which clearly spells out certain limitations on the government by detailing rights that have been explicitly reserved by the individuals, and by the states that make up our nation.

In a true democracy, no one has any protection from rights. If 10 people form a purely democratic and binding group, and then 9 of them vote to equally distribute the lands of the 10th, they can legally do so. There is no protection for that 10th person’s rights. That’s why the founding fathers insisted upon America being a Republic, where the rights of the few are protected against the predations and demands of the majority. There are certain things that the government simply is not allowed to make law. If the minority has no protection of their rights from the government or from the majority then no one does, because at some point all of us will be the minority.

One of the rights reserved by individuals in the constitution, even if they have committed a crime and other rights may be restricted as punishment, is protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Even if the government decided to pass a law saying “Anyone who commits rape will be raped 10 times before released from prison” this would not be a law, because it would be unconstitutional, thus not a law, and thus void, because as satisfying as it may be to the victims of the rape, it is cruel and unusual punishment.

The purpose of the prison system is to prevent criminals from continuing their actions. It also serves a secondary function as a deterrent against crime, however that is a secondary effect. Another secondary effect, which some people seem to try to make the primary responsibility of the prison system, is that while their rights are restricted, sometimes a prisoner is reformed. However not all prisoners can be reformed, and trying to say that certain people should not be sent to prison because it will not reform them is forgetting the primary function of the prison system. If programs are instituted that make reform more likely, I find that to be a worthy end goal, however many such improvements in that area also serve to reduce the effectiveness of the secondary effect of making prison a deterrent. If a program makes redemption of the prisoners more likely, but makes it less likely that the average criminal will fear the outcome of their action, it’s a trade off. And such programs also cost money.

In my opinion programs that reduce the cost of the prison, while making some fear prison, and others more likely to be redeemed are the best program that can be instituted. A combination of forced and voluntary labor programs seem the best way to do this. Force back breaking manual labor on the general population to reduce the cost of the prison and the local government (road work comes to mind for medium or low security prisons comes to mind), while you can interview for, and gain, a better position in the less back breaking voluntary labor programs. Any given level of work provides a small amount of prison-cash, which can be used to purchase minor privileges. PS2s? Simply not available. Chunky peanut butter? Yeah. You’re normally on a water, cheep meat, cheep vegetables, and bread diet… but if you’re good enough and save up your money, you can buy peanut butter, maybe even some soda. If you don’t do a good job (or get sent to solitary, where you can’t work), you don’t get paid. And if you’ve gotten one of the better, volunteer jobs, they interview for new people, and if you don’t shape up before they find a better candidate than you (which is just about anyone if you’re in solitary), you loose your job, to be replaced by another inmate.

At one point the poster on my forum insisted on trying to get me to take a stand on the death penalty so that she could use that position to brow beat me. I did not take a stance on the death penalty in this thread either for, or against. My only stance was that changing who a person is by removing a part of their brain is a cruel and unusual punishment worse than the death sentence.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 1:44 am and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.