As with other villains, Poul Anderson makes us feel some sympathy for Ira Quick when that unscrupulous politician is facing the consequences of his duplicity. The bad news wakes him from a nightmare about a dead girl and he feels some tenderness towards his supportive wife.
He faces "...prison or a pistol." (The Avatar, XLVIII, p. 394) I cannot legislate about another man's position but, so far, I feel that prison is preferable: time to reflect, meditate, learn, start to do something different. Bad times can be followed by good times which will not happen if we commit suicide during a bad time. Of course, earlier (XXV, p. 222), Quick had earned our contempt when he reflected that no rehabilitative psychiatrist would ever understand the psyche of Ira Quick!
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agee, a stiff term in prison would be far better than suicide! Or dismissal from all offices and exile to another planet, and being forced to start all over again.
Sean
Ah... Paul, you don't seem to know what a lot of prisons are like. Especially for an upper-crust type like Quick thrown into the 'general population'.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I fear I have led a sheltered life. The first time I came to have some idea of how horrible prisons can be was when I read Stephen King's novel RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION many years ago. So I would NOT expect Ira Quick to have much opportunity for reflection and meditation in an ordinary prison. He would be far too busy just trying to survive if he was tossed into genpop.
Sean
Mr Stirling,
You are right. I assume a humane rehabilitation system.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I would be deeply suspicious of and distrustful of anything like "psychocorrection" or "rehabilitation" of convicted criminals. As was Poul Anderson himself. Most convicts, after all, ended up in prison because they were unwilling to respect the lives, rights, and property of other human beings. That said, efforts should be made to make prisons less grim than too many currently are. BUT, a huge problem is how convicts prey on one another.
Sean
A couple of TV shows or movies I've heard about postulate putting convicts in suspended animation. The problem I immediately saw in is that if and when the crook finished his/her sentence, he/she would be released into the world, untouched mentally or physically by the years.
An alternative (I'm not the first to think of this) is to put the prisoner into an artificial, medically-controlled coma. If new evidence exonerates him/her, or there's a time-limited sentence, the convict can be released with a bit of physio-therapy to regain muscle strength. Otherwise, he/she will sleep away the sentence and eventually die without waking. A comatose prisoner can't scheme to escape or start prison riots. No inmate-on-inmate violence, either.
There might also be savings on the amount of food and water required in "Deep Sleep" as opposed to what a convict gets now. The Sleep cell, which I envision floating the inmate like a sensory-deprivation tank, would almost certainly take up less space than a standard prison cell.
Kaor, DAVID!
I like these ideas you are suggesting. I hope some of them, at least, would be practical penology. One or two stories by Poul Anderson touches on similar ideas, even if not directly on them being used on convicted criminals.
And I wrote an article about how the Terran Empire punished crimes. Mostly by corporal punishments or time limited sentences of "enslavement."
Sean
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