The Argument for Surgical Punishment

Cutting off a persons body part, even under anesthetic, sounds barbaric and it is. But you can ask yourself, would you rather have your foot surgically removed or spend 15 years in a miserable prison? I'm sure many would prefer to lose their foot. I would, myself. So as far as human rights go, I don't think there's a good argument to resist surgical punishment, because what we do already to serious offenders is at least as bad. Indeed, suicide is not uncommon in prisons. For many, imprisonment is effectively a death sentence.

So what are the advantages of surgical punishment? The most obvious is that it's cheap. In New Zealand it costs about $100,000 per-year to imprison a single inmate. That's a lot of money that could have been spent elsewhere. Removing a foot might be more like a one-off $5,000.

Also, an amputee can still be productive soon after their operation, whereas we lose the productive capacity of an inmate. So with physically implanted electronic tagging, the violent amputee-offender can be put to work.

The other advantage is that it may prove to be a more effective deterrent. One of the problems with prison, is that for some people prison is almost as good as life on the outside. Inmates are with their friends, are maybe safer, and are often better cared for than on the outside. Indeed, it's well known that some people reoffend specifically to get back into prison.

Cutting off body parts as a deterrent goes straight to the heart. Only a true freak would not be notably deterred with a threat like that, because it only has a downside, not up, and everyone--including the most simple mind--can visualise exactly what amputation means.

Now, if this is so--that is, if the threat of amputation proves to indeed be a more effective deterrent--then amputation might well represent an improvement on human rights, because the rights of victims to not be victimised in the first place is better actualised with a better deterrent.

Imagine for example, if the punishment for violent rape (not questionable "date rape") is castration. Now if this has the effect of dramatically reducing rape, through deterrence first and then impotence to block recidivism, then can we really argue that the surgical removal of the testes is such a bad or inhuman idea? You could argue that it would be more inhuman to not castrate a violent rapist, if the alternative is to stand back and let more rapes happen.

My conclusion is that if we can get past the 'yikes' factor with the cosmetics of surgical punishment, then there's enough of a positive argument behind it to justify exploring the possibility. At the least, we can consider giving prisoners the option. Allow them to trade time for a body part? It could be their choice.

                                          -Andrew Atkin