Unintended Consequences of a Punishment Society

This piece was started, but not completed, prior to the predictable verdict in the George Zimmerman case, which, while helping to create the impetus for thinking about the topic, is only one example, and perhaps not the kind you think.

It seems to me that far too many people in our society are focused on punishment, specifically punishing someone (else) for perceived slights or injustices, or to somehow evening the score as they see it being kept. People take it on themselves to hand out punishments to those others they think have somehow avoided the appropriate consequences for actions that violate some kind of code.

I admit that it irks me when people seem to be getting away with something that I’m sure I would be punished for, or that is self-centered or self-serving, to the detriment of society. However, I’m much more likely to just shake my head and move on than to decide it is somehow up to me dish out some kind of punishment. I’m not so obsessed with rules (maybe because I had trouble following them myself) that I feel any need to take on any enforcement responsibilities. Mostly, though, I’m just not an angry guy.

Some religious leaders reinforce their congregants’ anger by spending lots of time passing judgment on those who have transgressed, in either major or minor ways. Inadvertently or not, those leaders encourage their followers to take on the role of righteous punishers themselves. 

Politicians certainly reinforce anger as a way to generate support from those who are frustrated at the way things are going, be they bankers or welfare recipients (as either perpetrators or victims, take your pick). When politicians talk about reform (immigration, welfare, voter fraud, etc.) today, look closely at whom they are trying to punish, because you won’t have to work hard to find their target.

Isn’t punishment what the nasty divorces exemplify, one spouse getting revenge on the other however (s)he can, including using the children or poisoning the parental well? Isn’t that also really what passive-aggressive behavior manifests, punishing first, with an explosion, and then rationalizing the outburst? 

Looking at the Zimmerman case, I wasn’t surprised at the jury’s decision (reasonable doubt is a tough standard; just because you or I think someone is guilty doesn’t make them so in the legal sense of the word). I didn’t follow the case closely enough to know how I would have decided were I unfortunate enough to have been selected for the jury. I don’t know who is guilty, or who is at fault, and neither do you, because none of us were eyewitnesses. Even if I had been an eyewitness to the tragedy, what I saw (and heard) would have been colored by the prejudices I bring to the party.

I don’t know George Zimmerman, but I’ve known too many people like him – Wanna-be cops, bullies suffering from Chronic Outrage Disorder.* That is my prejudice. But Zimmerman is also one example of my point; he wanted, maybe even needed, to punish someone, perhaps anyone, for what he saw as an ever-expanding threat to life as he knew it. That doesn’t make him guilty, of course, nor does it make Trayvon Martin innocent.

It does, however, typify the problems created by the need of some people who feel it is their duty, their prerogative, their right, to punish those who they believe are so deserving. No matter whose story you believe, either partially or in its entirety, either Zimmerman’s or Martin’s, one (or both) decided the other was deserving of punishment. Ironically, whatever violent response to the verdict may arise will be just another example of the punishment motive.

Punishment attitudes also explain many cases of “road rage.” Because some other driver appears to be not following the rules, and getting away with their “sin,” the self-appointed enforcer lets his/her anger drive the need to punish. Such an attitude can also explain the classroom teacher or administrator who becomes a bully, using discipline not as a tool to maintain order but to punish a kid or kids who may or may not be deserving, but who represent all that is “wrong” with schools or the world. These types, too, I have known.

How many have seen the neighborhood or playground enforcer, yelling at kids (or even other adults)? How about the frustrated parent who is driven to teach his/her kids lesson after lesson through punishment? “I’ll teach you!” The level of anger often has little relation to the gravity of the transgression, or perhaps even to the transgressor.

I don’t object to consequences for actions that cause disorder in or create danger to society. Those consequences may involve punishments, from mild to severe, but those consequences and punishments need to be administered by someone tasked with that obligation and meted out to a specific miscreant, whether to one’s own child by a parent or to a criminal by legal authorities (who follow codified procedures), not by some self-appointed surrogate for misplaced anger or aggression. Punishment is a tool, and like any tool, dangerous in untrained or unauthorized hands.

* My student-teaching cooperating teacher was one such person. For fun he rode with the Moline Acres Police Department (think now defunct St. George in South County) as an Auxiliary Officer in the evenings, carried an expandable metal baton, and actually liked “Tree Duty” at McClure HS, where we sat in his Dodge Charger (think Starsky & Hutch) with some kind of snack taken from the cafeteria and did surveillance to catch kids smoking. I can not imagine a much worse way to spend time but he enjoyed both the catching and confrontation.