Are draconian measures called for?
A brilliant Black Conservative (among so many), Morgan Reynolds, says that current punishments lack credibility. They are ineffective because the criminal element simply does not believe in them. Well MAKE them believe, he says. Reynolds says: “Restore shaming sentences — degradation, the stocks, the pillory and flogging. I’m not kidding. Probability, immediacy and type of punishment are more important than the longer and longer sentences in air conditioned prisons currently favored to discourage crime. Corporal punishment is constitutional (the fifth amendment implies it), efficient, effective and egalitarian. ” Reynolds quotes the great Adam Smith as saying: Kindness toward the guilty is cruelty toward the innocent. (See his July 1996 essay.) Reynolds adds, “The social harm done by the criminal must be reflected back onto him so that he makes no mistake about the harm he is doing. Bad decision; bad consequences.” Matthew Iglesias makes the observation that, “in practice prison reall
