When a stranger breaks the rules in a scary way, it is always tempting to banish them.
This old-fashioned word might suggest disgraced medieval nobles driven from of their kingdoms. But banishment occurs whenever a person is cast out from what used to be their home or social group.
A few examples of modern-day banishment:
- Expelling high school students who have committed acts of violence is a straightforward way to show “zero tolerance” for their misbehaviour. Doing so is often welcomed by other students and parents who have suffered from the misbehaviour.
- If unhoused people are or might soon be living somewhere— in tents or in a proposed new shelter —neighbours often organize, trying to make sure they can’t.
Like most people, I have felt the desire to have rule-breakers banished:
- After an unhinged man randomly assaulted my spouse outside a transit station, my first thought was that he should be imprisoned right away, to eliminate any chance that he would do it again. Part of me wanted revenge, as well as security.
- When I ride the subway and someone is muttering and gesticulating a few seats away, driving other riders away from sitting nearby, sometimes my first reaction is that they should be removed and not permitted back in the subway until they have been “helped” by some government or charitable organization.
Expulsion, imprisonment, being “moved along” out of the subway or neighbourhood — these are all ways to banish people.
Law and law enforcement are used to remove people whom we find threatening. In the worst cases there may be no reasonable alternative: after all our government has a very important duty to keep us safe.
And yet being “cast out into the wilderness” is typically very painful for the individual, because humans are such a social species. Imagine walking into a room where dozens of people are eating at tables and talking to each other, and knowing that everyone sees you, and none of them will make room or want you at their table. This is what it feels like to be cast out, even if you still have your liberty and material comfort.
Is inflicting that pain a necessary price to be paid for making the rest of us safe?
In many cases, the sense of security we get from banishing problematic people is illusory. After high school students with impulse-control problems are kicked out of school, or subway riders with mental health problems are kicked off the subway, they hang out elsewhere. The problems continue in new locations, both for them and for the people now around them.
If your car is stolen by a 17-year-old who was at loose ends and hanging out with crooks because he was expelled from school, you are the victim of an earlier choice to banish rather than rehabilitate.
Likewise, when we “move the homeless along” without creating homes for them or addressing the root causes of their homelessness, they don’t disappear off the face of the earth. The homelessness problem is simply moved along to another neighbourhood for new neighbours to deal with.
Rehabilitation means restoring a person’s capacity to be a contributing, law-abiding member of society.
Rehabilitating people takes time and money and skill, but the payoff is immense. It is possible to rehabilitate people while they are imprisoned or otherwise banished, but it’s a lot easier if they remain in society with supervision and role models and opportunities.
We live in a web of mutual responsibilities. No matter what a person has done, and no matter how threatening or alien they may seem, they have duties to everyone else, and everyone else has duties to them. Rehabilitation means guiding them back to a place where they can fulfill their duties — to obey the law, to care for those who depend on them, and to contribute to society.
Rehabilitation is usually the counsel of the better angels of our nature. We should try to listen to the angels on our shoulders when rules have been broken and we feel afraid, and pay less heed to the darker voices demanding vengeance and banishment.
The post Dealing With Rule-Breakers: Banishment’s Lure and Its Limits appeared first on Slaw.