Bruce Schneir linked this interesting essay, which points out that the ever-dropping crime rate is sort of fake. In reality, crime (particularly rape) is increasing, but not counting crimes committed within the prison system gives an illusory decrease. We’re sweeping it under the rug, where it can flourish and grow out of sight. This is particularly disturbing in light of the findings of Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, which confirmed Rudolf Diels’ observations about how certain kinds of work create and foster sadism, and Temple Grandin’s observations on the behavior of slaughterhouse workers. When we imprison people, we not only intentionally punish and degrade the prisoners, we also unintentionally degrade many of the people we’ve hired to staff the prisons.
“The infliction of physical punishment is not every man’s job, and naturally we were only too glad to recruit men who were prepared to show no squeamishness at their task. Unfortunately, we knew nothing about the Freudian side of the business, and it was only after a number of instances of unnecessary flogging and meaningless cruelty that I tumbled to the fact that my organization had been attracting all the sadists in Germany and Austria without my knowledge for some time past. Rudolf Diels, as quoted in Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts”.
It had also been attracting unconscious sadists, i.e. men who did not know themselves that they had sadist leanings until they took part in a flogging. And finally it had actually been creating sadists. For it seems that corporal chastisement ultimately arouses sadistic leanings in apparently normal men and women. Freud might explain it.” —