The Wheel of Justice
Did you ever see The Animaniacs? Man I thought that show was brilliant when I was 7. Now I watch it and I get more of the jokes, but I don't get it, know what I mean? That's not the point though. Point is, the puppy children or whatever they were used to spin this Wheel of Fortune style wheel at the end of most episodes to determine the day's moral lesson. Which usually had nothing to do with the show. I like it, and it could fix our penal system. The problem with our method is we tell people what will happen to them ahead of time. But this just feels like the empty threats our parents make every day. Stop now or... who cares what the or is, or never comes. Then you get these juvies, who turn 18, used to pranking, you know, and all of a sudden or comes, and its like a slap in the face.
And we all know the horror movie becomes dull as soon as we've seen and gotten used to the monster. Its in our genes, our chemistry to face anything and if we can see it, to reason it down. Oh a tiger is pouncing...that's not so bad. At least its not saber-toothed! We need this function so as not to get overloaded/heated and just roll over to play dead. Its a survival technique, but its the bane of horror film directors, I promise you.
Well, back to the point- if you tell people about capitol punishment, or life in prison, they know what to expect, and the would-be criminal talks himself out of the punishment. Oh that's not so bad, he concludes, and commits his little crime anyway. No one thinks they will get caught. They know others get caught, but in every kind of poll of the most average people, 80% will state themselves to be above average in any given category (lover, athlete, dish washer, office drone, and so on), so they think they will get away with it, whatever it is. And when caught, they will think, damn, I committed the perfect crime, but the breaks were against me. What rotten luck that I left 38 fingerprints and those 400 detailed text messages and emails and letters written in my own blood where I outlined my entire scheme and all that! The police were so almost fooled! Ah, it would be funny, if it weren't bankrupting our society.
So let's not define the monster. Vagueness is our new friend. The wheel of justice our new friend. Every criminal will be brought in to spin the wheel before a judge. It must go all the way around at least once. Every wheel will have at least 1 get off scott free slice, and 1 death by hanging or death by firing squad slice. But all the rest will depend on the crime. For whacking mailboxes with a baseball bat from a moving car, you get some fines up there, and minor jail stops, like 1-5 week slices. And for rape, you get a whole lot of "get turned over to the victim, bound and gagged" and "get turned over to Burt, the 600 pound gorilla at the zoo who has been molesting the others to establish his dominance in the enclosed jungle ecosystem exhibit" slices. Good luck boys.
Or simply find one repressed but creative person in each district to serve as the judge. This person will have no rule book. He can, if he just finished Shakespeare's "The Tempest" go Prospero on your ass and put you on a raft and push you out into the ocean without any food. If you don't die, I guess we'll forgive you, boys, best wishes. Hey look a shark fin already! Or he can send you to some pervert's basement like in Pulp Fiction. I mean perverts keep basements you know, so someone is going to wind up being chained down and tortured in these basements. Why innocents? I think if the government is going to regulate everything, and have paperwork and all that, and ruin all our lives with red tape, that these perverts ought to have to go through it all too, and scofflaws and burglars can fill a need in society; our need to not have young people get kidnapped and have their lives ruined through no fault of their own. I would much rather face a known, where my lawyer will know just how to tie up the system for years and years no matter the situation, than an unknown, where a crazy and sadistic person absolutely corrupted by absolute power might do whatever he liked with me. The unknown is much more a preventative. I mean death row is death row, but a wheel of justice or a crazy judge might do anything to you- even send you to death row!
