16. Another Problem with Prison Rehabilitation

I grew up with the idea that it was liberal to think that the purpose of prison is, or should be, rehabilitation.  But that idea leads to a very illiberal consequence: it makes incarceration for drug crimes halfway-plausible.

Another – and, I think, more realistic – way to think of prison is as exile.  Prison is a casting-out from society, a way to isolate those people who have demonstrated their inability to live in society without hurting others.  If you think of prison in those seemingly-primitive terms, then locking people up for using drugs makes no sense at all.  Addicts are dangerous to themselves, and to those unfortunate enough to love or trust them.  But the metaphorical knife to the heart is qualitatively different from the literal one.

The central goal of criminal law, and perhaps the only goal, should be to identify, as accurately and certainly as possible, dangerous violent people, the people described by Lonnie Athens, who was so memorably profiled by Richard Rhodes, and by Robert D. Hare, creator of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist.  There was a good reason for our ancestors to huddle together in the back of the cave.  And it remains the most important function of government.