Three sentences the rioters will understand

It didn't take long after today's posts for a reader to raise the question of what I would do with hoodlums and hooligans caught looting, burning and generally causing mayhem.

The Economist says they should be brought before the courts and shown that criminal behaviour has "long-term consequences". Such as what? Should we keep building more and bigger jails, and filling them up even faster than we can build them? That's what the lawn ordure "reformers" keep advocating. Doesn't anyone have a better idea? Ahem...

I present not one but three (count `em, three) ideas on how to send the gangstas, chavs and other scum a message in language they can understand. (I do not speak of Jamaican English.) These ideas are not new. Two of them have been tried before, but set aside as emphasizing retribution and deterrence at the expense of rehabilitation. As if these offenders could be rehabilitated. The third idea is still being tried, but only in a half-hearted way. Here they are.

Hard labour
Agent 3, who was called to the bar back in the `60s, says he can't recall ever hearing "at hard labour" tacked onto the end of a prison sentence. While states and provinces across North America are campaigning to get service clubs to "adopt a highway" (meaning picking up the trash and suchlike), inmates of our prisons sit on their blacksides playing cards and watching TV.

What's wrong with the concept of the chain gang? Such was proposed, earlier this year, by the Leader of the Opposition in the Ontario legislature, but "forces for good and progress" in the community denounced Tim Whodat and the idea for being throwbacks to the 19th century. Admittedly, there have been plenty of abuses in times past, but the idea that convicts should have to work off their debt to society -- by making big ones into little ones, for instance -- is basically sound.

Corporal punishment
Commentators and criminologists tell us that one of the causes of the societal breakdown we're witnessing is a lack of discipline. Not much more than a century ago, the British army was famous for its discipline, demanding unquestioning and instant obedience from uneducated and rebellious soldiers, many of them drawn from the underclass which we now wonder how to control.

It was not uncommon for judges to give a "hard case" the option of going to jail for several years, or joining the army. If they survived, those who joined up came out better men and better citizens. Because they were disciplined. How? By corporal punishment! The army way of life, in those days, might be summed up as "grog and flog".

And please don't tell me that's an old-fashioned idea. Corporal punishment was still possible under many criminal codes up until the hippy-dippy `60s, when it became, yeah, uncool. And I'm talking about the so-called civilized world, not Saudi Arabia or some other Sharia law hellhole. Imagine the look on the face of a perp on hearing "sixty strokes".

Deportation
Australia was founded by convicts who had been sent to the Antipodes as punishment for crime. Since the country was just a collection of British colonies at the time, the founding fathers were not being deported but transported. Since Britain and America have pretty much run out of colonies, and Canada never had any to start with, transportation is no longer an option. But what's wrong with the idea of sending people who are in your country illegally, and commit a crime while they're there, back to where they came from?

Nothing! Nothing except political correctness requires us to tolerate the presence in our midst of foreigners who disrupt our society and break its laws. And judges know this, so every now and then one of them has the courage to order a convict deported after serving his sentence. What happens then? They get off the plane at Kingston (just sayin') and get right back on the next plane back to London or New York or Toronto. In the unlikely event they're challenged on arrival, they all know the magic word "refugee". And so the cycle begins again.

We have been soft on criminals for half a century now, because, as the gliberals keep telling us, "it's not their fault, but ours." They're depraved on account of they're deprived! (See previous post.)

Hugging hoodies doesn't work! If we really want to put an end to the complete disregard of laws and social norms on display last week, it's time to get tough with the underclass. I gave you three ideas, without calling for the cutting off the hoodlums' hands or heads. Next time your elected representative tells you he or she doesn't know what can be done, tell them you know... No charge.