he world could you have done it?" Simon asked. " I used to be a rod carrier," the convict answered, "on the World Trade Center building-eighty floors up, getting eighteen dollars an hour. One misstep and I was dead. With hash I could make $300,000 a week. One misstep and I was in prison. Better odds." The immediate payoff of crime is so great that many are willing to risk prison. The certainty of restitution, by requiring payment, takes the profit out of crime. The assets of organized crime members and big time narcotics dealers, for example, could be seized at arrest and confiscated on conviction, with the offender ordered to make further restitution through work programs. That is real punishment. Many Americans believe in our current prison system, and also believe that it is an effective form of punishment for the criminal. Some would say that criminals could live decent, civilized lives in prison and graduate to decent, civilized lives in the free world. My question to these people is; how can criminals live civilized lives in an environment that only offers chaos and mild forms of anarchy? It is well known what goes on behind closed doors in prison; terrible atrocities that make the blood boil and the stomach curdle are the only thing these prisoners are accustomed to while they are in prison. Most inmates learn little of value during their confinement behind bars, mostly because they adapt to prison in immature and often self-defeating ways. As a result, they leave prison no better and sometimes considerably worse-than when they went in. The first time offender who is arrested for burglary does not belong in a prison where the only thing he will learn is how to become a better and more violent burglar. Instead, why not make him pay restitution to the storeowner whom he robbed? In my opinion, if this form of punishment was initiated for the lesser offender, our prisons will have the vacancies to incarcerate the Jeffery Dahmers of ...
