Clockwork

Chlorpromazine or Thorazine is a powerful tranquilizer used on horses. Besides being barbaric, prisons are like nuclear reactors that like Chernobyl can melt down and poison the environment. Incarceration is also incredibly expensive. What if the Clinton Correctional Facility or Dannemora, as it’s called, were closed and all the inmates released—on one condition, they were all put on horse tranquilizer? Finland has a highly advanced criminal justice system. The word penitentiary connotes a place where one pays penance, but it can also point to a place of thinking. Rehabilitation rather than punishment is the Finnish ideal. But let’s get back to the idea of drugs a la Anthony  Burgess’s crew of Droogs in Clockwork Orange. Brainwashing? Lobotomization? But shouldn’t some criminal brains be washed? 

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