Vermont’s Shame and our Therapeutic Culture
By Robert Maynard

The January 23^rd edition of True North Radio’s web site featured a guest article by Bill O’Reilly entitled "Vermont’s Shame". The article went on to chronicle the Vermont’s now well known problem of ridiculously light judicial sentences for vicious child molesters. We in Vermont thank Mr. O’Reilly for bringing national attention to our plight. Perhaps the added exposure will help to shame our political class into taking action. That would be a good start, but only a start. Many who have been rightly disturbed by this outrage have focused on legal reforms to address the problem. While this is a good idea, it is not sufficient in and of itself. The legal and political issues involved here reflect ideas in the realm of culture that need to be addressed if we are to effectively deal with this situation. The mindset that has led to such decisions has been referred to as our "Therapeutic Culture". 

On January 13^th of 2006 the Burlington Free Press carried a "My Turn" submission from Gale H. Golden, a social worker and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, that sheds some light on this mindset and how it leads to such decisions. The piece was written in support of Judge Cashman’s sentence of a man who sodomized a six-year-old girl over a four-year period to just 60 days in jail and was entitled "Cashman Did Right Thing Looking For Another Way"

In criticizing the traditional approach to crime and punishment, Professor Golden states: "Punishing and marginalizing sex offenders is the prevailing societal stance. In theory it aims at protecting children." This approach is no longer the "prevailing societal stance" among those who shape pubic opinion in our culture, especially in the mental health field. The traditional approach stems from our Judeo-Christian cultural roots that views human individuals as "moral agents", who are to some extent responsible for their behavior. Punishment is not just for protection of potential victims, it is also an acknowledgement of this aspect of human nature and a form of education in regards to destructive and unacceptable behavior. Far from "marginalizing" criminals, it upholds their dignity by affirming that they have a certain degree of control over their behavior and thus are responsible for such behavior. This "Free Will" doctrine is at the heart of the notion of natural rights which are the basis of a free society.

Professor Golden goes on to state that: "While promoting insight and understanding of why someone might become a sex offender is not a popular pursuit, it is, nevertheless, also important to understand that someone does not wake up and decide to be a sex offender." This is a clear attempt to set up a shallow mischaracterization of the traditional approach so that she can dismiss it in favor of the modern therapeutic approach. The classical Judeo-Christian approach never claimed that people suddenly "wake up and decide to be a sex offender." There has always been a recognition that the factors which drive human behavior are complicated and multifaceted. The question is whether we possess a degree of free will and have a certain amount of control over our behavior and responsibility for it, or is our behavior TOTALLY determined by forces and factors beyond our control? In other words, does behavior have a moral component, or is it no more significant than hair or eye color?

It is clear where Professor Golden comes down on this question: "If someone with diabetes were imprisoned, they would be treated in the prison setting." Here we arrive at the crux of the matter. A criminal is no more responsible for his behavior than someone with diabetes is for their condition and is as much of a victim as the person he or she committed a crime against. Criminal behavior is not something that we have any control over, it just happens to us. Given this belief, how can we expect decisions where the punishment fits the crime?

Recent scientific research seems to back up the traditional view of humans as a moral agent. A report from THE COMMISSION ON CHILDREN AT RISK makes the claim that humans are biologically hardwired to make connections to a transcendent source of moral meaning and to "Authoritative Communities" that transmit that sense of moral meaning. The Commission is a group of 33 children’s doctors, research scientists, and mental health and youth service professionals. Their mission is to investigate empirically the social, moral, and spiritual foundations of child well-being, evaluate the degree to which current practice and policy in the U.S. recognize those foundations, and make recommendations for the future. The Commission is an independent, jointly sponsored initiative of YMCA of the USA, Dartmouth Medical School, and the Institute for American Values. The commission’s principal investigator is Dr. Kathleen Kovner Kline of Dartmouth Medical School. 

The title of the report is "Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities" and a summary of the report can be seen at: http://www.josh.org/download/HARDWIRED_TO_CONNECT.pdf

The report claims that a breakdown of connections to a transcendent source of moral meaning and purpose and to the authoritative communities that transmit such meaning is at the heart of the deteriorating mental and behavioral health of U.S. children. They site such factors as rising rates of depression, anxiety, attention deficit, conduct disorders, thoughts of suicide, and other serious mental, emotional, and behavioral problems among U.S. children and adolescents. 

Could it be that the rejection of the notion that human beings are moral agents might have something to do with the breakdown our culture is experiencing of a connection to a transcendent source of moral meaning and purpose? How can one feel a sense of such a connection when we are being led to believe that behavior has no moral component and we have about as much control over it as we do in coming down with diabetes? By all means, we should have counseling along with punishment. That being said, maybe it would be a more effective way to deal with criminal behavior if they received counseling that pointed out their nature as a moral agent and the degree of responsibility they have for their actions.

--Robert Maynard lives in Williston