Joseph Schreiner: Author and Columnist

Crime and Punishment in the United States – Part IV

Flower Moon, 01 May 2026

This moon’s post is the conclusion of my series on crime and punishment in the United States. I bring the series to a close by discussing alternatives to the excessively long prison sentences meted out by the United States legal system. In the end, I come to a controversial conclusion, but one worthy of further discussion.

A 2022 study by the Council on Criminal Justice summarizes the situation with these key points:

The use of long sentences has increased in nations across the globe over the last several decades, but the U.S. remains an outlier in the extent to which it imposes them.
The U.S. grapples with higher rates of homicide when compared with European countries but this does not fully explain its distinctive policies regarding long sentences.
The U.S. imposes longer sentences compared to countries with substantially higher rates of violence.
The average sentence length imposed in the U.S. is more aligned with the criminal justice policies of Latin American countries than with those of peer industrialized nations.

The U.S. holds a substantial proportion of the world’s population of people serving life sentences (40%) as well as the vast majority (83%) of individuals sentenced to Life Without the Possibility of Parole (LWOP).

Is this what the United States wishes to be known for? Are long prison sentences an indulgence which the country can no longer afford? There is plenty of fuel for this conflagration of crime – financial incentives within the legal system, granting Blacks leniency, fatherless households, the drug war – all of which I previously discussed.

What are the alternatives to long prison sentences?

Let us start with capital punishment. Some crimes are so heinous, some criminals so incorrigible, that capital punishment is the only rational solution. Is wasting away in a cell for the remainder of life really any more humane than capital punishment? Perhaps we should be spared the burden of supporting those who cannot be redeemed.

I have one significant reservation to the use of capital punishment, though, and it could be a showstopper – false convictions. The percentage of false convictions in the United States is not trivial. Executing someone falsely convicted is a tragedy in its own right. This does not even take into account the bloated charges brought by prosecutors in order to force a plea bargain.

Another alternative is work camps or factories. Superficially, this sounds like a good idea - make prisoners productive, restrict their freedom, but do not fully imprison them. But this has a downside and that downside is definitely a showstopper. Work camps are a compelling incentive to re-institutionalize slavery. The economic incentive would be to convict as many people as possible to make them slaves. The legal system would be suborned to corporate interests.

Also, realistically, prison labor may not be worth all that much, with many prisoners having few skills and meager work ethic. This employability issue intensifies with the widespread use of artificial intelligence. Prison labor will also depress wages for the law-abiding worker. We could re-create the situation of mid-19th century where slave labor competed with free men.

So where does this leave us? I make a provocative proposal – reintroduce corporal punishment. Something like caning.

Ask a young man just convicted of a major crime - what would he prefer, lashes or decades in prison? An otherwise healthy man might rationally choose corporal punishment. He could then get on with the remainder of his life, make something of himself, and contribute to society. And even more importantly, he will never forget the pain and humiliation. Which is the better incentive to reduce recidivism: avoiding pain and humiliation of a caning, or being served three meals a day for decades?

Of course there will need to be restrictions, based on health. In theory, however, I see no need to otherwise exempt a healthy female from corporal punishment. As a pilot program, judges could offer convicts a choice: lashes vs. years. Those convicts’ choices would help establish an appropriate ratio for future sentences. (Are 5 lashes worth a 1-year reduction in a prison sentence?) After a 5-year trial run, there will be sufficient data to determine whether corporal punishment is an effective deterrent to recidivism.

Is corporal punishment a viable, and humane, alternative to long prison sentences? I think it is time to revisit the issue.