Prisons

The other big controversial sporting news, besides for the recent steroid revelations, is where Michael Vick will end up. Most teams have come out and said they will not take him on because of the public relations nightmare that would surround him. Which leads me to ask questions about doing time and forgiveness.

What is the purpose of prison? If it is to rehabilitate people who have made wrong decisions in order to make them productive members of society, we do a terrible job. The problem is I know this is not how those running the prisons think about it. Nor is it how most politicians think about it because they want to be "tough on crime," whatever that means.

The second reason for prisons is simply as retribution. You did something wrong and so we are going to make you pay for it. So, if that is the purpose, why do we continue to make people "pay" after they are out of prison and already done their time? What more do they need to do to be clean?

What is happening with Vick is that people consider the despicableness of his crime, and it was despicable, to still be with him even after he is out of jail. What more do people want? What was the purpose of him being in jail if that wasn't enough? Why do we want to continue to make him pay? The NFL is filled with people who have committed or participated in worse crimes, including those involving the deaths of other humans. What Vick did was absolutely disgusting and he should be punished. But, how is he worse for this than someone who is involved in a shooting which maims or kills a person? Is killing a dog worse than killing a human, or is the difference simply that no one is going to put together a protest about it like the animal rights groups will and so therefore it's okay for them to play?

There are lots of issues with the prison system, how they are set up, who runs them (privatization is an issue that we should be up in arms about), but most importantly what their purpose is. Prisons have not changed in any dramatic way for hundreds of years even though we've certainly made advances in our understanding about human behavior since then, so why isn't that reflected in buildings? Why are we still bent on retributive justice rather than restorative justice? Even those who advocate for victims rights for the most part are not talking about restorative issues but instead retributive.

This is an issue that we need to take on because if we don't it is only going to get worse and we already have rates of incarceration that rival those of the worst dictatorships.