punishment

The latest controversy in criminal justice revolves around the defense of 16-year-old Ethan Couch, who killed four people when he hit them with his car, driving at double the speed limit and double the legal blood alcohol level (as an underage drinker, actually, there is no acceptable limit, but let’s stick with the charges). Couch’s defense argued that he suffered from “affluenza”—a condition under which he had lived such a privileged and entitled life, with so few consequences for bad behavior, that he could not now be held suddenly responsible for his actions. Bizarrely, the judge accepted this defense and sentenced Couch to ten years of probation and a stay in a rehab facility known for its hippotherapy (affectionately, if a bit dismissively, known as “having a therapy pony”). Had affluenza not been accepted as a defense, the usual sentence for Couch’s crimes would have been 10-20 years of prison time.

In an article for Forbes, Dr. Dale Archer reminds us that the lack of consequences that accompanies privilege isn’t anything new:

Economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen introduced the term ‘conspicuous consumption’ in the 19^th century to explain the behavior of […] families who spent their accumulated wealth in ostentatious ways to show off their newfound prestige and power.

Archer goes on to stress that the real worry is how common the modern trend of affluenza seems to be. He worries that the Keeping Up With the Kardashians era may be breeding a generation of narcissists, if not sociopaths who not only don’t understand punishment but also balk at the idea that they have anything to be punished for. He cites social psychologist Sara Konrath of the University of Michigan:

Her study of 13,737 college students found that there was a 40% decrease in empathy currently, when compared with 20 or 30 years ago.

In the end, it may be the application of the cute name “affluenza” that proves most offensive: personal responsibility is all the rage when it comes to the poor and people of color, but wealthy whites’ privilege appears to have found yet another way to keep them above the fray.

See more on “Affluenza” at: https://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2013/12/20/catching-affluenza-the-role-of-money-in-criminal-justice/

Popular wisdom and those who defend the death penalty say that the most heinous crimes should be more harshly punished. But, as Lincoln Caplan points out in a recent New York Times editorial, this is simply not the case. Death sentences are far more random than that, as shown by a study of murder cases in Connecticut from 1973 to 2007.

The Connecticut study, conducted by John Donohue, a Stanford law professor, completely dispels this erroneous reasoning. It analyzed all murder cases in Connecticut over a 34-year period and found that inmates on death row are indistinguishable from equally violent offenders who escape that penalty. It shows that the process in Connecticut—similar to those in other death-penalty states—is utterly arbitrary and discriminatory.

The study revealed that, far from being blind, Lady Justice metes out harsher punishments based not on the egregiousness of crimes but more often on race and geography. These findings echo those of sociologists who have studied the death penalty, such as Scott Philips (as “discovered” in Contexts, Winter 2011). Philips examined how the victim’s social status affected whether a defendant was sentenced to death in Texas from 1992 to 1999. Results showed that if the victim was “high status” (e.g. white, no criminal record, college educated), defendants were six times more likely to be sentenced to death. Black defendants, though, whose victims tend to be of lower social status, were still more likely than others to be sentenced to death.

In light of such evidence and with the death penalty on the decline (some states, such as Illinois in 2011, have abolished it altogether) Caplan argues it’s time for this “freakishly rare,” “capricious,” and “barbaric” form of punishment to go.