Crime and Punishment?

What deters a would-be criminal? One's own conscience, for a start. Obviously, that's not always enough. The fear of getting caught, of getting arrested, of disappointing the people who love you, of being ostracized by society at large.

In order to deter crime effectively, punishment needs to be "sure, swift and severe". Cesare Beccaria codified this philosophy in the 18th century. Yet even he realized that the "severe" component of this trilogy had the weakest impact. Punishment needs to be severe enough to loom in the mind (i.e. not just a slap on the wrist), but any increase in severity will have no measurable impact on future deterrence.

Of course, the justice system in our modern society continues to put emphasis on the severity of its punishments, increasing the length of prison sentences, despite the ineffectiveness of this course of action. In fact, it is counter-productive. Prisons are over-crowded, judges become reluctant to hand out effective sentences to "first-time offenders". Punishment is no longer "sure", in fact it is very avoidable if one has a good lawyer. Add to that the typical delays of the court system, and the swiftness of punishment becomes a joke.

A recent New Yorker article (Don't Shoot, June 22, 2009) describes a program designed to curb gang violence and public drug sales by focusing police actions. Rather than the typical maneuver of arresting one or two people (who are sure to be released in a day or two), the police will adopt a policy of zero-tolerance. The police will target all dealers, all gang members, and arrest everyone complicit. This will happen every time a crime is committed. There will be no letting up. The vital component of this program is convincing the gangs that the police will seriously apply its provisions - that punishment will be swift and inescapable. And it works despite the fact the severity of this punishment is unchanged.

Quantum of Solace

After an auspicious rebirth of James Bond in 2006's Casino Royale,  featuring a buff and tough Daniel Craig in the iconic role, the follow-up film Quantum of Solace unfortunately returns to a more familiar Bondian formula.  Though Craig still channels a down and dirty Bond - emerging from various dire scrapes with more cuts and bruises than Demi Moore's ex in a Quentin Tarantino flick - with a soiled yet functional tuxedo, the movie is little more than a sequence of grandiose chase scenes.  And the over-the-top villain is back, an environmentalist anti-hero subtly named Mr. Green (making me think that the movie would culminate in the library with a candlestick). 

Ostensibly, the plot features Bond out to avenge the girlfriend killed in the previous movie, yet the scenes move forward without reason - save for some tenuous thread that links to the mysterious secret society cum evil corporation that seems to be taking over everything.  Of course, Bond manages to seduce one beautiful girl despite his grief.

Dame Judi Dench performs credibly in the role of the boss lady Q, but even that is not enough to rescue this loudly violent piece of popcorn.

Sub-Prime Stagecoach

This article on the Wells Fargo bank, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, and the ugly pervasiveness of racial discrimination read like an expose written decades ago.  Like in the 1950's, before the Civil Rights movement, before Kennedy, before a man walked on the moon. 

Yet the vehicle of prejudice was distinctly modern.  Wells Fargo loan officials are accused of systematically pushing mortgage loan applicants who were black into the sub-prime category, even if they qualified for less costly loans.  

Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

This, of course, made blacks much more vulnerable to mortgage default after the crash of home values.

The bank proffered bonuses in front of the loan officers for selling these sub-prime mortgages.   It is little wonder that they steered people into them - they even targeted the Baltimore area black churches for more customers of these poison pies.

Perhaps some of these loan officers were not outright racists.  Perhaps some of them thought they were just following a win-win policy, making their bonuses and giving people their mortgages.  

Perhaps the bank management didn't intend to setup a racist practice when they instituted the bonus policy.

Perhaps some of these people even voted for Obama.

And When Did You Last See Your Father?

The bad sound and lines of mumbled, marble-mouthed, English-accented dialogue are distracting.  Yet "And When Did You Last See Your Father" overcomes this handicap for the most part and presents an entertaining and occasionally poignant little film experience.  Despite its subject - the last days of a father dying of cancer and a son trying to reconcile his conflicting emotions - the movie succeeds by injecting a sense of life and humour through a series of flashbacks, and by keeping the maudlin to a minimum.

Jim Broadbent and Juliet Stevenson, as the dying father and suffering mother, provide excellent performances that span a few decades in elapsed time.  Colin Firth plays the adult son with a touch too much repressed emotion and old English anguish - especially in contrast to the larger than life personality of his supposedly philandering father.  There is also a sister - but her role verges on insignificant - one hopes that this editing didn't cause another family rift.  Hopefully, in the original memoir, the sister is actually part of the family.

The viewer never does discover a straightforward answer to one of the central questions of the movie - did the father have an ongoing affair with the boy's 'auntie - though there is a strong hint...

The answer to the 'secret' was not terribly important.  The family had its crises and its secrets, but managed to struggle through and keep itself intact.  Of course, this is a resolution the son can only attain in retrospect.

Chained to a Stump

Why in the word is the American news media still paying attention to Dick Cheney?

I understand that they like this idea of a trumped-up virtual debate between Cheney and Obama, that they think this supposed controversy will sell their product.

But how can there be a debate when one side has the credibility of a stump?  Do we need to go over all that again?

1.  Directed the fabrication of evidence of WMDs to justify a war that shredded any remaining legacy of American justice, virtuosity and ideal, while allowing the criminals and terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan to escape and regroup.

2. Directed the fabrication of legal opinion and legislation to justify the use of torture in interrogation, thereby shredding any remaining moral justification to obtain information that is by its nature suspect and useless.

All this reminds of the farewell media tour that Cheney took in his waning days of power.  The interviewer asked him, "Why is that, in the latest polls, you only have the support of 12% of the American public?"

Cheney answered in his best gruff, wounded bear voice.  "I don't care about the polls.  I care about doing what's right." 

The interviewer then let him off the hook by re-asking the same question in different forms, and getting the same smug answer.  Luckily for the interviewer, Cheney did not have his shotgun with him that day.

I would have asked: "How is it - if you are so convinced that you're right and continue to be right - that 88% of the people have come to believe you are wrong.   Do you think the American public is that dumb?"  

Amal

Amal is one of those movies designed for the naive and hopeful optimists of this world.  This is quite obvious from the title - Amal is arabic for hope - and it doesn't attempt to hide its black-and-white view of the world.  Set amidst the slums of a major Indian city (the setting provides the primary charm of the movie), Amal is an auto-rickshaw driver with an unlimited generosity of spirit - who cares nothing about money unless it is well earned, and is driven to live up to the sacrifices of his now-dead father.  His rather unbelievable goodness is contrasted against pretty much everyone else in society - who are uniformly motivated by greed, sloth and other deadly sins.  Amal meets a dying, grumpy millionaire who likes to slum around and annoy people - thus confirming their unworthiness - and (surprise) earns an unwitting entry into the old man's will.  The movie then meanders through empathy and coincidence as the viewer watches to see if the uber-deserving Amal will be cheated out of this unlikely inheritance.