Page 27 - NYLS Magazine • 2014 • Vol. 33, No. 1

If you ask any employee in a Department of Corrections to justify
what they do, it’s always spoken of in terms of safely segregating

prisoners until they can be reintegrated back into society.”

Among the many problems he inds with the criminal justice and

corrections systems, Blecker points to the rare but serious concern
of preventing wrongful convictions. As Blecker details in his book,

addressing this problem is equally as important as ensuring that
vicious criminals do not enjoy lives of privilege in prison.

“True retributivists—as I am—are equally as concerned with

over-punishing as we are with under-punishing,” said Blecker in a
December interview with Irish talk radio station Newstalk FM.

While casual observers might initially mistake Blecker’s passion
for justice as cold-blooded revenge, Blecker’s advocacy for victims

and justice has intrigued many, earning him appearances on Fox
Business, CNN/HLN, New York Public Radio, and Newstalk FM.

He is also a frequent op-ed contributor for the Hartford Courant,
the New York Daily News, and CNN.

Although many states across the country have increasingly sought

to abolish capital punishment, Blecker is less concerned about
the ultimate punishment that is administered, just as long as the

punishment its the crime.

Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law

School praised he Death of Punishment as “a

truly remarkable and deeply moral book—an

eloquent, unsparing, oten counterintuitive,

“Both prisoners and wardens will tell you prison is like a little and sometimes painful meditation on why,

town—there’s a barbershop, post oice, commissary, gym, ping whom, and how a decent society should
pong tables, candy bars,” said Blecker. “here are pleasures to be
decide to punish, and what those questions
had, games to be played, and friends to laugh and grieve with. It’s all
together, too much like life outside.”
can teach us about universal truths of morality

and justice.” So while Blecker may be in
In fact, Blecker points out that within no Department of
Corrections mission statement, be it state or federal, is any mention familiar territory with his controversial views

of the word “punishment.”
on capital punishment, his expertise and

knowledge of the reality of life in prison is a
“It’s nobody’s job to punish in a Department of Corrections,”
Blecker said. “If you ask corrections oicers, they say it’s for the valuable insight that will challenge the beliefs

judges to determine the punishment. If you ask the judges, they’ll of many readers. •
tell you it’s the corrections oicers’ job to enforce their sentence.

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