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Many states have gone on prison-building sprees, yet the penal system is choked to bursting. To ease the pressure, nearly all convicted felons are released early—or not locked up at all. "About three of every four convicted criminals," says John DiIulio, a noted Princeton criminologist, "are on the streets without meaningful probation or parole supervision." And while everyone knows that amateur thugs should be deterred before they become career criminals, it is almost unheard-of for judges to send first- or second-time offenders to prison.Meanwhile, the price of keeping criminals in cages is appalling—a common estimate is $30,000 per inmate per year. (To be sure, the cost to society of turning many inmates loose would be even higher.) For tens of thousands of convicts, prison is a graduate school of criminal studies: They emerge more ruthless and savvy than when they entered. And for many offenders, there is even a certain cachet to doing time—a stint in prison becomes a sign of manhood, a status symbol.But there would be no cachet in chaining a criminal to an outdoor post and flogging him. If young punks were horsewhipped in public after their first conviction, fewer of them would harden into lifelong felons. A humiliating and painful paddling can be applied to the rear end of a crook for a lot less than $30,000—and prove a lot more educational than 10 years" worth of prison meals and lockdowns.Are we quite certain the Puritans have nothing to teach us about dealing with criminalsOf course, their crimes are not our crimes: We do not arrest blasphemers or adulterers, and only gun control fanatics would criminalize the sale of weapons to Indians. (They would criminalize the sale of weapons to anybody.) Nor would the ordeal suffered by poor Joseph Gatchell—the tongue "pierce through" with a hot poker—be regarded today as anything less than torture.But what is the objection to corporal punishment that doesn"t maim or mutilate Instead of a prison term, why not sentence at least some criminals—say, thieves and drunk drivers—to a public whipping"Too degrading," some will say. "Too brutal." But where is it written that being whipped is more degrading than being caged Why is it more brutal to flog a wrongdoer than to throw him in prison—where the risk of being beaten, raped, or murdered is terrifyingly highThe Globe reported in 1994 that more than 200,000 prison inmates are raped each year, usually to the indifference of the guards. "The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who ... are convicted of nonviolent offenses," former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun has written, "border on the unimaginable." Are those horrors preferable to the short, sharp shame of corporal punishmentPerhaps the Puritans were more enlightened than we think, at least on the subject of punishment. Their sanctions were humiliating and painful, but quick and cheap. Maybe we should readopt a few. From the first sentence we know that ______
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Black and Hispanic patients infected with the HIV virus are less likely than whites to participate in clinical studies of new treatments or to receive experimental drugs, according to the first study that has used nationally representative data to examine such disparities. Moreover, underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in HIV treatment studies becomes a concern for the applicability of the clinical research to patients in the general population.The findings indicate that people with HIV infection overall are much more likely to get experimental treatments than are people with other diseases, such as cancer or heart disease. Because AIDS treatment is evolving rapidly and because the virus often develops resistance to approved drugs, AIDS activists have lobbied successfully to expand access to new medicines. An estimated 14 percent of the approximately 231,000 adults treated for HIV infection in 1996 participated in a clinical trial, and 24 percent had taken an experimental drug, the study found. Only 4 percent of adults with cancer who are less than 50 years old participate in clinical trials.But the results suggest marked racial and ethnic disparities in access to experimental HIV treatment. Blacks made up only 23 percent of clinical study participants but constituted 33 percent of adults receiving HIV care. Similarly, 11 percent of study participants, but 15 percent of HIV-infected patients nationally, were Hispanic. In contrast, whites made up 62 percent of participants in HIV trials, yet represented only 49 percent of adults receiving HIV care.The research team studied a nationally representative sample of 2,864 adults in the 48 contiguous United States who were receiving care for HIV infection in 1996. They interviewed participants three times between 1996 and 1998, asking about their participation in studies, their use of experimental drugs and other personal data, including such factors as their trust of doctors and desire to participate in decisions about treatment. The researchers found that, in addition to being black or Hispanic, several other factors also reduced patients" likelihood of participating in a clinical trial. They included having less than a high school education, belonging to a health maintenance organization (HMO), and living eight or more miles from a major research hospital. Patients who were white, who were highly educated or who received their health care close to a research center were more likely than others to get experimental drugs.In an editorial accompanying the study, Talmadge E. King of San Francisco General Hospital suggested that racial and ethnic disparities in access to experimental treatment may reflect "barriers at the level of the patient, the physician, the institution and the community." Doctors may harbor unconscious prejudices toward blacks or Hispanics, he suggested. Patients may be mistrustful or fear that participating in a study will threaten their autonomy. Researchers studying new treatments for drug companies may avoid enrolling members of minorities "because they believe that poor compliance is common in these groups." Because fewer Black and Hispanic HIV patients participate in clinical studies of treatments ______
Washington DC has traditionally been an unbalanced city when it comes to the life of the mind. It has great national monuments, from the Smithsonian museums to the Library of Congress. But day-to-day cultural life can be thin. It attracts some of the country"s best brains. But far too much of the city"s intellectual life is devoted to the minutiae of the political process. Dinner table conversation can all too easily turn to budget reconciliation or social security.This is changing. On October 1st the Shakespeare Theatre Company opened a 775-seat new theatre in the heart of downtown. Sidney Harman Hall not only provides a new stage for a theatre company that has hitherto had to make do with the 450-seat Lansburgh Theatre around the comer. It will also provide a platform for a large number of smaller arts companies such as the Washington Ballet, the Washington Bach Consort and the CityDance Ensemble.The fact that so many of these outfits are queuing up to perform is testimony to Washington"s cultural vitality. The recently-expanded Kennedy Centre is by some measures the busiest performing arts complex in America. But it still has a growing number of arts groups which are desperate for mid-sized space downtown. Michael Kahn, the theatre company"s artistic director, jokes that, despite Washington"s aversion to keeping secrets, it has made a pretty good job of keeping quiet about its artistic life. The Harman Centre should act as a whistle blower.Washington still bows the knee to New York and Chicago when it comes to culture. But it has a good claim to be America"s intellectual capital. It has the greatest collection of think-tanks on the planet, and it regularly sucks in a giant share of the country"s best brains. Washington is second only to San Francisco for the proportion of residents 25 years and older with a bachelor"s degree or higher.Washington"s intellectual life has been supercharged during the Bush years, despite the Decider"s aversion to ideas. September 11th, 2001, put questions of global strategy at the centre of the national debate. Most of America"s intellectual centres are firmly in the grip of the left-liberal establishment. For all their talk of "diversity" American universities are allergic to a diversity of ideas. Washington is one of the few cities where conservatives regularly do battle with liberals. It is also the centre of a fierce debate about the future direction of conservatism.The danger for Washington is that this intellectual and cultural renaissance will leave the majority of the citizens untouched. The capital remains a city deeply divided between over-educated white itinerants and under-educated black locals. Still, the new Shakespeare theatre is part of job-generating downtown revival. Twenty years ago downtown was a desert of dilapidated buildings and bag people. Today it is bustling with life. If Washington is struggling to fix the world, at least it is making a reasonable job of fixing itself. Washington"s inadequate role as a cultural center is best demonstrated by ______
Black and Hispanic patients infected with the HIV virus are less likely than whites to participate in clinical studies of new treatments or to receive experimental drugs, according to the first study that has used nationally representative data to examine such disparities. Moreover, underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in HIV treatment studies becomes a concern for the applicability of the clinical research to patients in the general population.The findings indicate that people with HIV infection overall are much more likely to get experimental treatments than are people with other diseases, such as cancer or heart disease. Because AIDS treatment is evolving rapidly and because the virus often develops resistance to approved drugs, AIDS activists have lobbied successfully to expand access to new medicines. An estimated 14 percent of the approximately 231,000 adults treated for HIV infection in 1996 participated in a clinical trial, and 24 percent had taken an experimental drug, the study found. Only 4 percent of adults with cancer who are less than 50 years old participate in clinical trials.But the results suggest marked racial and ethnic disparities in access to experimental HIV treatment. Blacks made up only 23 percent of clinical study participants but constituted 33 percent of adults receiving HIV care. Similarly, 11 percent of study participants, but 15 percent of HIV-infected patients nationally, were Hispanic. In contrast, whites made up 62 percent of participants in HIV trials, yet represented only 49 percent of adults receiving HIV care.The research team studied a nationally representative sample of 2,864 adults in the 48 contiguous United States who were receiving care for HIV infection in 1996. They interviewed participants three times between 1996 and 1998, asking about their participation in studies, their use of experimental drugs and other personal data, including such factors as their trust of doctors and desire to participate in decisions about treatment. The researchers found that, in addition to being black or Hispanic, several other factors also reduced patients" likelihood of participating in a clinical trial. They included having less than a high school education, belonging to a health maintenance organization (HMO), and living eight or more miles from a major research hospital. Patients who were white, who were highly educated or who received their health care close to a research center were more likely than others to get experimental drugs.In an editorial accompanying the study, Talmadge E. King of San Francisco General Hospital suggested that racial and ethnic disparities in access to experimental treatment may reflect "barriers at the level of the patient, the physician, the institution and the community." Doctors may harbor unconscious prejudices toward blacks or Hispanics, he suggested. Patients may be mistrustful or fear that participating in a study will threaten their autonomy. Researchers studying new treatments for drug companies may avoid enrolling members of minorities "because they believe that poor compliance is common in these groups." HIV viruses rapidly develop resistance to approved treatments ______
The liberal view of democratic citizenship that developed in the 17th and 18th centuries was fundamentally different from that of the classical Greeks. The pursuit of private interests with as little interference as possible from government was seen as the road to human happiness and progress rather than the public obligations and involvement in the collective community that were emphasized by the Greeks. Freedom was to be realized by limiting the scope of governmental activity and political obligation and not through immersion in the collective life of the polis. The basic role of the citizen was to select governmental leaders and keep the powers and scope of public authority in check. On the liberal view, the rights of citizens against the state were the focus of special emphasis.Over time, the liberal democratic notion of citizenship developed in two directions. First, there was a movement to increase the proportion of members of society who were eligible to participate as citizens especially through extending the right of suffrage—and to ensure the basic political equality of all. Second, there was a broadening of the legitimate activities of government and a use of governmental power to redress imbalances in social and economic life. Political citizenship became an instrument through which groups and classes with sufficient numbers of votes could use the state power to enhance their social and economic well-being.Within the general liberal view of democratic citizenship, tensions have developed over the degree to which government can and should be used as an instrument for promoting happiness and well-being. Political philosopher Martin Diamond has categorized two views of democracy as follows. On the one hand, there is the "libertarian" perspective that stresses the private pursuit of happiness and emphasizes the necessity for restraint on government and protection of individual liberties. On the other hand, there is the "majoritarian" view that emphasizes the "task of the government to uplift and aid the common man against the malefactors of great wealth." The tensions between these two views are very evident today. Taxpayer revolts and calls for smaller government and less government regulation clash with demands for greater government involvement in economic marketplace and the social sphere. The author"s primary purpose is to ______
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