A Punitive Society

Hi Baldur,

'Tis true that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and that prohibition and strong negative consequences for breaking the taboos, is a failed strategy. But, politicians being politicians, they will continue to pass punitive laws, usually aimed directly at one segment of society, in order to make them conform to their idea of morality. Whenever a media driven frenzy occurs due to some unspeakable crime, the response is always the same; pass more laws and up the consequences. This strategy has not, and cannot work.

Have we forgotten about positive reinforcement? In order to change behavior, we must engage the cooperation of the people whose behavior we want changed and this cannot be done by threats, prohibitive legislation, building more prisons, and passing more and more harsh and restrictive laws.

Switzerland has been experimenting on alternatives to punishment for drug addiction. Although "Needle Park" didn't work (too many people from other countries went to Switzerland to shoot up) it appears that a prescription program might be effective, at least more effective than prohibition and punsihment. Addicts can go to a sanitary room, use clean needles, and even opt to use methadone instead of heroin. This takes drugs out of the hands of the underground and allows society to try and help those who really need help and NOT punishment. It is more humane and in the end, it will likely prove more effective.

In the U.S. children are not allowed to legally have even a modest amount of an alchoholic beverage. It is prohibited. Parents who are discovered breaking this taboo are charged with "Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor" and dragged into court to be punished. In Bavaria (Germany) however, the attitude is different. According to the website "allaboutbeer.com", the beer gardens in Bavaria are family friendly and welcome children.

"Yes, do bring your family if you can. Everybody does. Makes them behave; dad does not really get drunk when the kids watch. And the kids experience what they call beer garden culture in Bavaria. Most kids sample their first sip of beer in a beer garden with their parents. It turns out that kids dont really like the taste of beer, so sampling a few drops of their parents' drink does them no harm. The experience teaches the children what responsible social life around beer is like before they reach the legal drinking age (which is 16 in most of the German-speaking world)."

What makes more sense, prohibition and criminalization, or giving children a taste of beer and letting them discover that it really IS an adult taste? The quickest way to make a child obsessed over something is to turn it into forbidden fruit. Yet, that is exactly what we do in the U.S.

And now, there is a war on child sexuality, not that we ever really lived in peace with it. This "war", like all the ones preceding it, is doomed to failure because it employs the exact same "Praise the lord and pass the ammunition" strategy that is being used in the war on drugs and was employed when alchohol was prohibited in the U.S. during the 1930's - criminalization and punishment. In any endeavor, using a failed strategy is the surest way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Instead of a punitive society, imagine one in which people with problems would be offered help and rehabilitation. Instead of prisons, designed to be rough, harsh, and punitive, a community, with secure areas for the dangerous, but with its stated mission to fix people, rather than to throw them away. Imagine actually solving problems instead of making them worse. Ah, "to sleep, perchance to dream"...

(Hamlet)

28