by Lev Tsitrin
I did not know that criminals are put in jail so they could “pay their debt to society;” I learned about it from the New York Times‘ article “N.Y. Lawmakers Pass Clean Slate Act” — “Democrats approved legislation that would automatically seal the criminal records of people who have stayed out of trouble for a set period of time: eight years for felonies, three for misdemeanors … the bill is aimed at helping people who have paid their debt to society access the opportunities that will allow them to meaningfully rebuild their lives” — and I am more than a little puzzled.
Of course, like everyone who got emotional when watching the heart-wrenching story of Jean Valjean that was set to wonderful music in Les Misérables, I welcome the idea of redemption — but the notion of jail time being a “payment of debt to society” stumps me.
Every aspect of it: that crime results in a “debt,” that this “debt” is against “society,” and that time spent in jail pays it off — seems to defy reason. I thought people landed in jail because commission of crime proved them capable of further crime — and no one wants to be next to someone who is a threat; such people need to be isolated — and jail is the place where that isolation happens. Plus, the example serves as a deterrent for those who may entertain a thought of committing a crime. Hence, jailing people is essentially a preventive measure.
And it is strange to think of crime as a “debt.” A debt is something that can be payed off, resulting in a zero balance — but there is no zero balance when it comes to crime. As a rule, the damage it causes is permanent — and cannot be erased by incarceration of the perpetrator. Nor is the “society” being hurt by it — it hurts specific individuals, and those around them.
Which does not mean that the idea of redemption is wrong — but I think repentance has to be the key part of it. In fact, the system in which a person is released upon serving preset time irrespective of whether [s]he repented or not strikes me as absurd. I’d say that a release from jail should be conditioned on acknowledging by the perpetrator the wrongness of what was done, and of taking an oath to never again violate other people’s rights.
Of course, such oath would produce its own dynamic: recidivists would have to stay in jail for life — because an offense committed after taking the oath proves that one’s oath is not reliable — and cannot be administered; and if the oath be made a prerequisite for release, such people can no longer be released. An oath really amounting to “two strikes, and you are out.” And then, it would impact what inmates do while in jail — a portion of their time would have to be spent on studying basic civics and learning why crime is wrong — both to induce repentance and to make them ready to take an oath before release, and to preclude recidivism.
Taking an oath to abide by law as precondition to a release from jail seems to me to make a lot of sense. As to “clean slate” bill, I am not so sure. New York Governor Hochul “has previously expressed support for some version of the bill, but has not said publicly whether she intends to sign or veto it,” we are informed. She — and the sponsors of the law — should think a bit more of how to make the redemption permanent. Having an oath as genuine sign of redemption — and stressing that it is the only chance to live as a free person — would go a long way in helping to achieve that goal.
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2 Responses
Well, the phrase seems so ancient in Anglo-North American usage at least that I’ve been hearing it all my life, and I’m 52, so it’s not new either in phrasing or concept. I have no idea who first framed it that way. It DOES have the ring of some 19th century British or American progressive penal reformer, but then the exact scope and scale of the debt and the means of discharge are left open and the reformers of that age were still pretty harsh by our standards, so I might be OK with it.
Also, it actually sounds like a pretty natural outgrowth of the Anglo-Germanic legal traditions. These long preserved some of their concepts from before the rediscovery of Roman law in the Middle Ages, and one of those was that pretty much every crime was defined as a debt. Importantly, more to the victim than to society, so the victim would have more say over when and how the debt was discharged. But also importantly, even more literally understood as a debt than today, and the ruler would apply a culturally fixed scale of values for the payment. Fixed monetary values for crimes and for types of persons based on their worth, often even for murder. Though in some cases the victim could also have the perp killed, so there’s that.
So the idea of crime as debt seems deeply rooted. Originally a debt to the victim settled by private feud. Later a debt to the victim settled by public justice [the Greeks believed Apollo had gifted them this concept], but still a debt to the victim with the societal role being to set rules and limits. Later yet, but perhaps a natural change, a debt to society because the chief violation was to disrupt the King’s Peace and public order. Only latest, at the end, reimagined in 19th century therapeutic terms, which is where I get off the train.
I’m a big fan of instead prioritizing criminal sanctions in the order Punishment, Deterrence, and only then Rehabilitation. I don’t really care that much about the latter for serious crimes, and would be happy to execute more and warehouse more of the rest for life, all uncaring, never to be free again. My only caveat would be that I already think some things are crimes that should not be, others penalized too harshly, and I fully expect that someday things I consider normal will be made crimes by the left. So I want to be cautious.
With that PDR framework in mind, the phrase “debt to society” does not exactly make sense to me. I’d prefer just saying that one is being punished for an offense, removed from circulation as a deterrent to yourself offending again if later released and to discourage others, and one might be rehabilitated both by the lesson of punishment and perhaps by some reasonable efforts at education and training while in.
The phrase “debt to society” is also problematic in that it implies that debt is discharged at some point, which is open to debate. On one hand, I understand this. I don’t think many crimes should result in bearing the mark of Cain for life necessarily. If we’re going to release people from prison at all we need to give them a chance. For many crimes a clean slate is fine. A lot of trivia seems to carry a jail sentence these days. Unlike some, I don’t think that necessarily requires a clean slate for all. It DOES, to me, mean that any remaining disabilities a person faces, for a term after release or for life, be explicit, clear to them and all, be mandated by law, and imposed at time of sentencing or as part of additional later proceedings by an equally competent court of law. No reliance on sinister reputations, innuendo, word of mouth, localized bigotry by sheriff’s deputies or bosses, no new or arbitrary restrictions imposed by administrators or cops or even executive officials, perhaps not even by a solo judge depending on how much we trust them. I may want harsher punishments for some things, but not all things, and not arbitrary.
On the other hand, some seem to think the debt is discharged by the prison sentence alone. I don’t agree. I don’t have a problem with lifelong deprivation of the franchise for some crimes, IF imposed openly by the original sentence. I’m not over wedded to that. I AM absolutely in favour of no vote for anyone in prison or still discharging parole from same. I am absolutely appalled that those in actual prison can vote anywhere. An insult to law and democracy.
I think that in recent times the use of the phrase has devolved into cant and has lent itself to the more lenient interpretations in a way it once did not.
Per the earlier comment, I concede that I both sympathize and have enormous trouble with this bit:
“I thought people landed in jail because commission of crime proved them capable of further crime — and no one wants to be next to someone who is a threat; such people need to be isolated — and jail is the place where that isolation happens. Plus, the example serves as a deterrent for those who may entertain a thought of committing a crime. Hence, jailing people is essentially a preventive measure.”
Everybody is capable of crime. Some more likely than others, for many the necessary circumstances will vary a lot, some may be capable of worse crimes than others, some take more or less pleasure or have more or less difficulty with it, some will commit none in their life, some trivial, some victimless, some only financial, some worse. Maybe there are some for whom the least crime is truly impossible, but I’m not convinced. The more likely our society starts to redefine some things as criminal that once were not, the more true this all is. To use the old language, I think only a few things are malum in se, most things are malum prohibitum, the former is not always agreed by all and the latter changes often.
Even were that not true, we might always be in the presence of people who are a threat to us and not know. The person who is the threat might not be the person who we think is a threat just because we know they committed some crime in the past, not necessarily the crime someone else is going to commit against us next, which will be by someone who does not yet have a record.
I want people penalized for the crimes they commit, according to whatever scale we can all agree on, with a secondary isolation and deterrent function. The punishment more than the preventive function.
None of which means I don’t agree with the rest of the piece- I rather like the idea of a legally binding oath. It actually seems to echo the idea of parole, but making it lifelong in some cases, also to echo the strikes idea, and even more to echo the ancient idea of the peace bond.