<http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Mar-21-Sun-2004/opinion/23315158.html> Sunday, March 21, 2004 Las Vegas Review-Journal VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Part II: Air-drop them on the Rat Islands Last time, we were answering Michael's e-mail inquiry: "I would like to know what alternative you propose when saying we should do away with prisons." We started by suggesting the retroactive repeal of every law enacted since 1912. Was murder illegal by 1912? Of course. Rape? Of course. Kidnapping, armed robbery, bunko fraud? All serious criminal behaviors had been outlawed by 1912. So why have the number of lawbooks on the shelf multiplied tenfold in the past 92 years? Release everyone jailed on a drug law (unknown before 1916), for income tax evasion (impossible before 1913), for any kind of illegal possession of or commerce in firearms (laws unimagined a century ago), or for violating any kind of regulatory scheme or edict erected since 1912, and the federal prisons would be virtually empty, while even the state pens would probably see their populations cut in half. Of course, repealing all those laws enacted since 1912 would have another huge benefit: In the process, we'd eliminate the welfare state. Stop subsidizing drunkenness and sloth, and the darndest thing happens: People have to go to work. And people busy working to support themselves have far less time to commit crimes. (Don't tell me no jobs would be available. By repealing all laws enacted since 1912, we'd be repealing virtually all the ordinances that currently outlaw many jobs, including the minimum wage laws, the laws which make it illegal for strong young men of 15 to help support their families, OSHA, and the EEOC ... just for starters.) Get rid of the welfare state, and most unmarried women would no longer be able to afford to raise their children. They'd have to marry someone who could help support them. Why, they might even have to (feminists may now squint their eyes closed really hard) make some kind of unsavory deal with such a man, in which they would agree to raise and school the kids, cook some meals, and explicitly negotiate such other arrangements as were anciently considered appropriate to "marriage." (No one is proposing this be made mandatory. Child-bearing is now optional. We're just tired of being taxed to support other people's brats without being in on the negotiations. Also note that with the end of the taxes that now support the welfare state -- including the mandatory government youth propaganda camps, cynically dubbed "public schools" -- a second income would no longer be necessary to support a family. One spouse could stay home to tutor the kids -- which spouse would be nobody else's business.) And guess what? Members of stable married families tend to commit a lot fewer crimes, especially if adult supervision is pretty much constant. By now our prison population has probably dropped by three-quarters. (What was the incarceration rate before 1912?) To reduce it beyond that, we might have to apply an optional death penalty to a lot more crimes, including serious property crimes. What's an optional death penalty? The ancient Greeks knew. Either we're going to execute you this weekend, or you can leave the country. For good. Send them to any land that would take them. If there are no takers, give them a permanent tattoo (remember, they do have another option) -- a red-white-and-blue target might work. Evacuate as far east as Dutch Harbor, give them a 50-pound bag of beans and a book of matches, and air-drop them into the Aleutian islands. The only catch is, if they ever come back, any citizen who shoots and kills the bearer of one of those tattoos will receive that $30,000 reward we were discussing last week. There are people willing to risk their lives to get into this country. Doesn't it make sense to use exile from this country as a punishment for sociopathic predators -- admitting some worthy Cuban or Romanian or Sri Lankan in their place? I somehow suspect word would get back to their street buddies that a life of crime in New Guinea or the Congo or the cold and fogbound Rat Islands is nowhere near as pleasant. No cable TV. No 7-Elevens to knock over. Prison seems to hold few terrors for our growing professional criminal class. So on top of being vastly expensive and not terribly humane, there's not even much evidence that our prison system really "works." But it's a measure of the terminal decadence of our society that "responsible people" simply bite their nails and simper, "Oh, woe is us. What can we do but loot ever more money from the paychecks of the shrinking productive class to lock up this ever-growing population of angry, illiterate losers? Where on earth do you think they're coming from? We didn't have this problem back before the government ran all the schools!" But anyone who proposes anything dramatically different from this status quo is accused of being either a) an unsuccessful comedian, or b) nuts. Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega." His Web site is www.privacyalert.us. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'