Joanne Black
Impossibly long jail terms are all about punishment, not rehabilitation.
The sentencing of former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar to a maximum of 175 years’ jail on sexual abuse charges is not untypical here. He recently began a 60-year sentence for child-pornography offences, and the additional sentence, related to abusing gymnasts, will start once the 54-year-old finishes that, if he ever does.
There are a number of factors in the US’s absurdly long jail sentences. The most hopeful – and unlikely – reason is that it gives an offender time to be rehabilitated. On that basis, if Nassar served his first sentence, then did his 175 years, he might emerge a model citizen, aged 289.
The more common explanation for long sentences is that jail’s primary purpose is punishment. At sentencing, Judge
Rosemarie Aquilina told
Nassar she didn’t believe rehabilitation was possible for him. Therefore, it seems the length of his sentence is mostly punitive but also about satisfaction for his victims. The US has always had a tendency to lock up people, even for minor offences. In 2015, more than 2.2 million people were in prison. No country does more than the US to promote the concept of individual liberty, yet no country has a higher incarceration rate. If that paradox is of interest to Nassar, he has a long time to think about it.
So does Dudley Wayne Kyzer, who murdered three people in 1976 and was sentenced to death. After a retrial in 1981, he was sentenced to two life sentences plus 10,000 years’ jail. He has applied for parole many times since, but having so far served only 36 of his 10,000 years, the maths seems to be working against him.
February has arrived and with it a break in the habit of a lifetime: as well as being able to remember my New Year’s resolution, I’ve actually stuck to it. It was to buy no food or drink in plastic bottles. After I gave up Diet Coke more than a year ago, my bad habits continued with other fizzy drinks. Knowing myself, I thought if I resolved not to buy plastic drink bottles this year, I would simply buy cans instead. But the primary aim of my resolution was to be personally responsible for creating less waste. So, never having acquired a taste for tea or coffee, I have drunk tap water for a month. And champagne. And the odd cocktail, but mostly water. It’s as dull as it sounds.
The upside is that the volume of plastic in our domestic recycling bin each week has halved. That felt great until I went to Costco, a huge supermarket warehouse for retail customers. Along its back wall, pallets of bottled water were stacked high, each containing packets of up to 40 individual bottles. There were thousands of bottles and thousands more of Coke and other soft drinks down a side wall.
Looking at them, I suddenly understood why people often say “there should be a law …” for or against whatever they want more or less of. For a few seconds, in the face of a tidal wave of plastic bottles in a single store, my sacrifice felt futile. But then some inner resolve returned and I decided it was not futile or even a sacrifice. Most days, I get as much pleasure from not contributing to the plasticbottle plague as I used to get from a cold Diet Coke on a hot day.
In 2015, the US had more than 2.2 million people in prison.