A Use for Poverty

A society that won’t spend the money to keep murderers and rapists behind bars is understandably puzzled about how to deal with nonviolent criminals. We hesitate to toss bribe-takers and stock-manipulators into the pokey with cutthroats and muggers. Yet we know that fines and hours of “community service” are vastly insufficient either to deter or punish. And the country-club minimum-security prisons to which we sometimes send an embezzler or election-rigger mock equally the ...