Notes from the Left Coast

Drummond Pike’s Blog

An interesting referendum is being considered in California – Proposition 5 – that seeks to expand the availability of treatment alternatives to incarcerating non-violent drug offenders. Opposed vehemently by prosecutors and the deep-pocketed Prison Guards Union, few give it much chance of passage. In a cash-strapped state spending more on prisons than higher education, why would that be the case, especially since the efficacy of alternative approaches have become well established. I think to understand it, one has to reach back in time.

In his wonderful book, A Commonwealth of Thieves, Thomas Kennealy tells the tale of early Australia and how it was settled by convicts transported from Britain to relieve the overcrowded jails. From the early 17^th through the mid-19^th Centuries, British law focused harsh punishment on crime, particularly property crime – theft of even petty amounts of material or money led to death sentences or, if folks were fortunate, to the a humane outcome: transportation to the Colonies. We have all heard of the Australian example – indeed, the transportation of some 150,000 convicts to the shores of New South Wales and elsewhere on the continent has become central to their national identity. It gives Aussies a certain rough willingness to try anything, to dismiss the role of class, and to strike independent positions on many issues.

What I found so interesting in reading this history was a brief comment from Kennealy that the reason for the First Fleet of convicts being sent to Australia in 1789 was because the recent American Revolution had cut off the decades old practice of shipping convicts to America. Indeed, 60,000 American colonists had been delivered from Britain’s prisons by the middle of the 18^th Century. Perhaps this explains Samuel Johnson’s famous remark, immortalized in James Boswell’s biography, describing the colonists in 1769. “Sir, they are a race of convicts and ought to be content with anything we may allow them short of hanging.” I don’t think he was a great fan of the Founding Fathers, but that is a different story.

Two things strike me about this little known aspect of the early immigration to America. First is just that – it is little known. In contrast, Australia, which didn’t have the fortunate stories of the Pilgrims or the Puritans or the Huguenots that permitted Americans the myth of being a land of religious refugees, the idea that most folks sprang from convict stock is deeply imbedded. True as it is of America, though to a lesser proportionate degree, Americans have never seen themselves in this way.

The second has to do with redemption. I’ve always been curious about the deeply held notion of punishment in America. Do something wrong, be punished. There is little credibility given the notion of reform or redemption: three strikes, and you’re out. Again, Australia contrasts starkly. Kennealy writes about a famous Irish pickpocket, George Barrington, who was brought to Sydney in the second flotilla of convict ships (some of which had been diverted from the slave trade). In part due to his notoriety, and in part to his subsequent recognition as Australia’s earliest historian, Barrington helped imbue Australian culture with the idea that one can change for the better if given a decent chance. In Britain, his story became widely known as well.

I have long given up the notion that rational argument results in enlightened electoral outcomes, and I doubt Prop. 5’s future will rise or fall on the economics that may favor it. No, I suspect it will be the cultural notion, so deeply ingrained in our awareness, that suggests offenses require punitive response to teach the pain of breaking laws. If only the response of those poor, addicted souls, whose hollow lives fuel the criminal justice engine, would conform to the approach. Alas, the complex social and psychological dynamics associated with addiction have never been shown to do so.