HAWTHORNE’S HESTER PRYNNE, THE EX-OFFENDER’S HEORINE
If Nathaniel Hawthorne were writing today, he might advise American business to change the way it looks at criminal convictions and police records. The reason? Simply this: “Scarlet Letters” can be manufactured en masse. The great American writer would make that point, cocking his head in displeasure. He would then add, I think, that such markers frequently reveal more about the ones demanding their display than it does about those forced to display them.
The U.S. has created a system that manufactures criminals, turning free citizens into offenders. That’s its product; that’s what it is paid to produce. Moreover, the labor offered to private companies through prison contracts has become big …show more content…
Since the 1970s, the nationwide prison population has increased 700%. There is something wrong here. Have Americans suddenly become more lawless than Brits, Germans, Finns, and Canadians--or name your country? American courts, it would seem, hand out felony convictions today as if they were beads thrown out during the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans. Unfortunately, those who catch this prize will get more than a trinket and an embarrassing memory. Instead, they will incur a lifelong sentence, even if they spend no time in jail. That sentence follows them: wherever they go and whatever they do. The legal system seems addicted to this approach; so much so that the American Criminal Justice System now spreads the “benefits” to as many citizens as possible, damaging their future employment, barring them from certain career choices, and even denying them the rights of citizenship in some venues. It’s a kind of Hester Prynne syndrome in which society imitates proudly the very social pathology that Hawthorne excoriates in his story of adultery and hypocrisy in a small Puritan
If Nathaniel Hawthorne were writing today, he might advise American business to change the way it looks at criminal convictions and police records. The reason? Simply this: “Scarlet Letters” can be manufactured en masse. The great American writer would make that point, cocking his head in displeasure. He would then add, I think, that such markers frequently reveal more about the ones demanding their display than it does about those forced to display them.
The U.S. has created a system that manufactures criminals, turning free citizens into offenders. That’s its product; that’s what it is paid to produce. Moreover, the labor offered to private companies through prison contracts has become big …show more content…
Since the 1970s, the nationwide prison population has increased 700%. There is something wrong here. Have Americans suddenly become more lawless than Brits, Germans, Finns, and Canadians--or name your country? American courts, it would seem, hand out felony convictions today as if they were beads thrown out during the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans. Unfortunately, those who catch this prize will get more than a trinket and an embarrassing memory. Instead, they will incur a lifelong sentence, even if they spend no time in jail. That sentence follows them: wherever they go and whatever they do. The legal system seems addicted to this approach; so much so that the American Criminal Justice System now spreads the “benefits” to as many citizens as possible, damaging their future employment, barring them from certain career choices, and even denying them the rights of citizenship in some venues. It’s a kind of Hester Prynne syndrome in which society imitates proudly the very social pathology that Hawthorne excoriates in his story of adultery and hypocrisy in a small Puritan