Guilty? by Teri Kanefield

Author:Teri Kanefield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

DETERRENCE, OR A WARNING TO ALL

Deterrence is the theory that people won’t commit crimes—or they will be less likely to commit crimes—if they know they will be punished. Deterrence is based on the assumption, among others, that people know what is legal and what is not. Just for a moment, imagine James Rogers at the bank. The teller puts down a large stack of money and James has a split second to decide what to do. People are in line behind him. The teller considers their transaction finished. What should he do? Should he pick up the money and leave? Or should he say, “Hey, I think you made a mistake!”

A great many people, even those who consider themselves to be honest, law-abiding citizens, might feel tempted to keep the money.

Those who favor deterrence assume that something like this will go through the mind of someone in that position: “It’s really tempting to take all this money, but if I take it, I’ll be violating that law that defines bank robbery as walking out of the bank with more than a thousand dollars belonging to the bank. So I’d better not do it.”

The first problem with deterrence is that most people wouldn’t know that taking advantage of a teller’s mistake can be considered bank robbery with a penalty of prison time. Most people are likely to know that taking advantage of someone’s mistake is not honest, but dishonesty is not necessarily criminal. Moreover, nobody could be expected to know that if the amount carried away is more than $1,000, the punishment becomes much harsher.

So a person might think, “I shouldn’t keep this. It’s wrong,” but having no idea it was a felony with a prison sentence, she might keep it anyway, figuring, “It was the teller’s mistake, not mine.”

• • • •

There’s a second problem with the theory of deterrence: It works only if everyone is able to make rational decisions.

Nicholas Horner, a husband and father, served as a soldier in Iraq. He was awarded multiple medals for his military service, including a combat action badge. As a result of his experiences in combat, he developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a kind of anxiety that occurs after a person has experienced a deeply traumatic event. PTSD causes actual physical changes in the body, including changes in hormones and chemicals that carry information to the nerves. Soldiers returning from battle often have PTSD. Time in prison has been known to cause it as well.

Nicholas was discharged for PTSD with a 50 percent disability, which was later increased to 100 percent. After he returned home, his family said he was changed. He was fearful and jumpy and inclined to commit violence. He asked to be put into the hospital because he was, in his words, a “walking shell,” but the hospital would not admit him.

Three weeks after he had asked to be admitted to the hospital, he went on a rampage in his hometown and killed two innocent people and wounded another. The people he killed did nothing at all to provoke him.

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