The Problem of Punishment

For Capital Punishment By Walter Berns Basic Books, 214 pp., $10.95 My cousin the cop told me some years ago of an armed robber who was shot and wounded while fleeing from the scene of his crime. Later, lying in a hospital bed, he said to the policeman guarding him: “You know that cop who shot me—he’s crazy, man, craaazy! You don’t shoot people anymore. You used to do that, but now you don’t shoot people. That cop’s crazy!” Having gone on in this vein for some time, he then said: “You know, I’ve done a lot of things and I’ve got away with a lot of things, but I don’t think I’ll try that anymore. I might meet that crazy cop again and he might just blow me right out of here.”

I have always found that story instructive, all the more so since reading this book by Walter Berns. The book offers a calm and reasoned case for inflicting the death penalty for certain crimes. But it is an argument not so much for capital punishment as for capital punishment. Punishment is a more basic issue than the particular form it takes. As Berns says in his Introduction, when he was first getting into the subject he “learned soon enough that it was impossible to discuss capital punishment without discussing punishment in general; our penal system, so inadequate and increasingly seen to be so, is in large part the result of our attempt to avoid punishing criminals and, above all, to avoid executing them.”

FC

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Francis Canavan

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For Capital Punishment By Walter Berns Basic Books, 214 pp., $10.95 My cousin the cop told me some years ago of an armed robber who was shot and wounded while fleeing from the scene of his crime. Later, lying in a hospital bed, he said to the policeman guarding him: “You know that cop who shot me—he’s crazy, man, craaazy! You don’t shoot people anymore. You used to do that, but now you don’t shoot people. That cop’s crazy!” Having gone on in this vein for some time, he then said: “You know, I’ve done a lot of things and I’ve got away with a lot of things, but I don’t think I’ll try that anymore. I might meet that crazy cop again and he might just blow me right out of here.”

I have always found that story instructive, all the more so since reading this book by Walter Berns. The book offers a calm and reasoned case for inflicting the death penalty for certain crimes. But it is an argument not so much for capital punishment as for capital punishment. Punishment is a more basic issue than the particular form it takes. As Berns says in his Introduction, when he was first getting into the subject he “learned soon enough that it was impossible to discuss capital punishment without discussing punishment in general; our penal system, so inadequate and increasingly seen to be so, is in large part the result of our attempt to avoid punishing criminals and, above all, to avoid executing them.”