Nothing shows the problems with our penal system more clearly than the sex offender registries in many states. While it is an incredibly popular move politically, in this one case the civil libertarians have a point, though not the one they think.

Basically, the argument of the civil libertarians is that once someone has been released, he is assumed reformed and should be subjected to no additional punishment, including the requirement to register. And they are right, though for the wrong reasons.

I would not so much argue that we should assume that a person is rehabilitated on release, but instead argue that should someone be a continuing threat, he should not be on the streets. If someone is likely to molest children, rape women or otherwise cause harm, and is such a risk that we need to notify everyone in his vicinity, then why has he been released from jail? If he continues to be a threat, then obviously we have not imprisoned him long enough.

But, of course, that is the problem. While lawmakers like to take grandstanding positions about being tough on crime, supporting such half-measures as sex offender registries, none are willing to undertake the tedious, and less than glamorous work, of reforming our penal code, of fighting judges who go light on criminals, and of standing up to civil liberties groups. There are votes to be won with registry votes, not through instituting mandatory minimum sentences.

Then again, while it is easy to blame the politicians, they are hardly the only ones at fault. From prosecutors who allow lenient plea bargains to parole boards too willing to release offenders to community activists who oppose new jail construction to race baiters who fight stricter sentences for all criminals to civil liberty groups which bring overcrowding suits to judges who simply refuse to apply adequate sentences, there are more than enough guilty parties to blame. But when the dust clears, whoever we blame, the truth is that we simply do not provide adequate punishment.

The question is why?

And I think the answer is to be found in something I wrote earlier. Rather than approach sentencing primarily as a means to protect society from dangerous individuals, both sides of the political spectrum tend to take alternate views. They focus on punishment or rehabilitation, or maybe some other goal, but in the end, none of them are interested in the simple, practical goal of quarantining crime. It is as if we were confronted with an epidemic and we asked how many people a carrier infected, and then quarantined him based on that number, rather than quarantining him until he was no longer contagious.

The correct approach in disease is to keep the infected away from the healthy until they are no longer a threat. The same applies to crime. Rather than trying to provide some sort of "just punishment" or to allow for rehabilitation or even to create a deterrent for others, we should design punishment so that it minimizes the risk to society. In doing so we may need to consider deterrence and rehabilitation, as they play a role in the likelihood of offending again, but, in the end, our one question should be "how long must he stay in jail to prevent him from ever reoffending?"  Our goal should not be to reduce the rate of crime, but to reduce the rate of recidivism.

If we adopted this simple rule, then the whole idea of a registry would be meaningless. If prisoners were kept in jail until they had no likelihood of committing another crime, then there would be no need to register, as prisoners would be the one group about which we would need not worry.

But I am sure some will find fault with my ideas, so let me ask some questions not based on my view of prison, some gernal questions which still make the idea of a registry a bit absurd.

If we have a registry, will every offender need to register for life? If not, then for how long? And if he is a threat for, say five years after he is released, why not just keep him in jail five more years, remove the threat completely, and remove the need for  registry? On the other hand, if he needs to register for life, then are we saying that a sex offender is a permanent threat? If so, why not, once we identify one, do we not either imprison him for life, or execute him, if the risk is life long and serious enough to require registration?

They are difficult questions, and I cannot answer them. It simply makes no sense to me.

I admit, I understand that the registry is primarily a stop gap forced on us by the lenient legal system, but, if there is the political capital to get the registry laws passed, why not just use that capital to get longer sentences enacted? Is that not a much safer alternative?