Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [11]
Why all these changes took place is an interesting question; I hope this book gives at least some partial answers. The story told here—I I want to make this point very clear—is not a story of “progress.” Whether we are better off or worse off than before is for the reader to decide. I myself think we are considerably better off; but at a rather stiff price.
Beaumont and De Tocqueville, writing about juvenile reformatories (see chapter 7), used a striking phrase; the children in these institutions were not victims of persecution, they said; they were merely deprived of a “fatal liberty.”9 Fatal is a strong word; probably too strong. But the phrase breathes a kind of cautious reminder: even freedom has its costs. This is not the best of all possible worlds; and not all changes are improvements. The shadow of crime haunts “respectable” society. Social pathology lays waste millions of urban lives. There is no free lunch. American liberty comes at a premium price. Total societies, traditional societies, disciplined societies, sometimes keep crime under firm control. After the Soviet Empire collapsed, we are told, street crime increased, along with general disorder. A well-run prison may have iron discipline and perfect order. Not many of us would prefer a well-run prison to the way we live. Yet this must be said (and it is the last of our major themes): a rich culture of liberty has evolved in the United States, but it casts a dark and dangerous shadow. The culture of mobility and the culture of the self are not costless. They have brought with them, like pests imported on exotic cargo, side effects of crime and social disorganization ; and society, so far, has been unable to eradicate these pests, or bring them under control.
These, then, are the main themes of the book. Before we turn to the colonial period, I want to mention two points briefly. The first is about the impact of criminal justice on crime. Supposedly, the main function of the system is to control crime and punish it. Does it do this job?
For most of the period we cover—close to four centuries—we simply have no idea. Clearly, there must be some impact, some deterrent effect, some influence on morality and behavior. How much, is completely unknown. It is pretty certain that it is less than most people think; the constant clamor for more prisons, more executions, more police, assumes a potency that is almost surely a delusion.
On the other hand, this much can and must be said: the system may not do much, or as much as we would expect, about crime rates, but it is not unimportant. It impacts the lives of millions of people. It arrests and processes hundreds of thousands. It drags victims, bystanders, jurors, and witnesses by the thousands into its web; it spends billions and employs millions; its symbolic consequences, its remoter effect, must be enormous, even though there is no known or knowable yardstick.
The second point is about the politics of this book. I have tried to tell an honest story. It would be silly to claim total success. Bias is inevitable. History is not an exact science, with clear questions and right or wrong answers. Everybody who writes about the past is more or less a prisoner of the present, and of his own instincts and values. Crime and punishment are highly charged, emotional, political subjects; there is no way to wring prejudice, attitude, value, out of the text. It is impossible to shape a story without some guiding theories; and we do not choose our theories and approaches at random; they draw us to them, they suck us in.
There are many ways to