Crime and punishment seems to be under a great deal of discussion lately, and it's one of those issues that always seems to be lurking in the background, even when the issue is not directly about crime and punishment. Roman Polanski, for example is not an ordinary sex scandal, but is a debate about crime and punishment. The drug and abortion issues are really about whether these things should be considered crimes, and if so, how they should properly be punished.

In a recent post I titled "Who are the real criminals?" I looked at the phenomenon of overcriminalization (focusing on federal law), and pointed out a number egregious examples.

While it wasn't really what I was talking about, commenter "Dwight" drew a contrast between "dishonest" and "badness" criminals, and raised an entirely new topic:

So do you think that we have a shortage of dishonest to badness criminals? Graft and corruption seemed to be more prevalent than ever. Should pension fraud cases be pursued, or is it OK to steal money from the government? How about income tax fraud?

Righties supposedly want law and order, but whose law and whose order?

That's where I guess I'd have to be considered a "conservative" -- if such labels apply. However, I am a liberal in the sense that I would not use prison as punishment for non-violent criminals, and I would not punish victimless (vice type) crimes at all. As to what the punishment should be for tax cheating, pension fraud, and white collar crime in general, I don't know. But I'm thinking that most of these offenders (and they are offenders) would qualify for work in the vast bureaucracies that the rest of us can't escape, so maybe I'd use them as white collar paper slaves. (Under supervision, of course, so they can't steal on the job.) And if that's not punishment enough to satisfy society's lust for revenge and blood (as, say, in the case of Bernie Madoff), then society might have the right to demand a public flogging of some sort. But if they're not violent, I see prison as pointless. Prisons are expensive, overcrowded, and violent places, which IMO should be reserved for violent offenders, the primary goal being to protect society, not to punish.

So while it would be dishonest of me to call myself a conservative, I see a lot of dishonest and negative stereotyping of conservatives in the area of crime and punishment -- some of which tempt me to embrace the label of "conservative" by way of reaction.

A recent example of this is a piece that Andrew Sullivan linked (he titled it "Conservatism And Capital Punishment") about an apparently innocent man who was executed in Texas. Apparently, "conservatives" are to blame, because "they" don't care whether or not innocent people are wrongly executed. Plus, they believe that science doesn't matter!

This Nightline piece is amazing. It's worth watching the two people largely responsible for Willingham's death. It's worth thinking on the fact that John Jackson, the original prosecutor (who, based on Willingham's music choice, believes he killed his kids as some form of devil worship) is now a Texas judge. It's worth thinking on the fact that we have arson investigators who think science doesn't matter.

Texas justice is essentially sorcery, and there will be people who say that we can perfect it, that we can close the loop-holes. They're wrong. The problem isn't with loopholes--it's with us. We are fallible. Conservatives, more than anyone, should know that--it undergirds their entire philosophy. They don't think government can perfect much of anything. What makes them think we can perfect murder? I'd have a lot more respect if they just came out and said, "Yeah, it isn't perfect, but it's a price we should be willing to pay.

Some of the comments I found there typify this view of conservatism.

Conservatism is not a philosophy, but a club for resentful whites:

We are fallible. Conservatives, more than anyone, should know that--it under-girds their entire philosophy.

If conservatism were a philosophy, that would be true. But it's actually a club for resentful white people (and Michael Steele) to recite a few shifting, angry slogans. Principles, and policy, have nothing to do with it.

Some humility in the machinery of death-- and in theology-- would certainly be a welcome addition to conservatism. But resentment isn't about humility.

It's no accident that so many of these people are Christian fundamentalists. They honestly believe that they got what they did because God gave them a deserved reward. Ergo, people who experience unfairness must have done something to deserve it. It's a blame the victim mentality, that conveniently jibes with Republican ideologies that ignore ingrained racism and entrenched poverty. The only thing I can find that all Republican positions have in common these days is "I got mine, screw you." There seems to be no acknowledgement of others suffering in today's conservatism.

Will someone please let me know?

Then of course there's Texas. Apparently, that's a place which has a huge monopoly on conservative principles, and where all conservatives believe that it's just fine to execute the innocent -- just as long as they're guilty of something else:

When I was growing up in Texas, the loudest proponents of the death penalty self-identified as conservatives. And when I visit my home town, I've heard self-identified conservatives (politicans and private citizens) say that not only do they support the death penalty but also it's OK with them if an innocent person or two is executed by mistake.

I agree with Stacy up thread, who hypothesized that these are Just World-ers. They seem to assume that both (a) the state's innocent victims were guilty of something else and thus "bad people" and (b) as they themselves are "good people", they are in no danger of personally becoming one of these victims. As many of these people equally vocally call themselves "good Christians", this seems a very peculiar way to love our neighbours as ourselves. Perhaps these people have very small neighbourhoods?

Another conservative "principle" seems to be that if someone is trashy and cluttering up respectable white society, then by all means it's OK to pull the switch on him:

I think the subtext of so much of the behavior of the people responsible for Willingham's execution, at least as depicted in the New Yorker article, was a more chilling version of this. Killing him, whether or not he was guilty of the crime with which he was charged, WAS a price they were willing to pay. To them, Cameron Willingham was nothing but trash. Even if he wasn't guilty of murdering his three children in cold blood, he was guilty of being poor and distasteful to respectable white Texan society. Their world was better off without him cluttering it up, so why bother taking the necessary pains to provide him with justice under the law?

I say this as someone who supports the death penalty. In order for it to work, society needs to be extremely scrupulous in ensuring that innocent people are not executed, because cases involving executions of the innocent become the best single argument in favor of abolishing the death penalty.

However, there does seem to be a difference between conservatives and liberals in one important respect. Conservatives might not want to execute people for the crime of being bad, but neither do they want to hire bad people and put them to work at ACORN, or in the census. (Not a new idea, BTW. Philadelphia has made hiring ex-felons an official priority.)

What's up with that?

Is there a disagreement between conservatives and liberals over who is good, and who is bad? Or does it involve the concepts themselves?