While this is the amendment that allows prison work camps and work programs, as well as the requirement that criminals participate in the maintaining of their prisons, it serves a much larger purpose, mainly expressing that a right contained in the constitution may be taken away if citizens do not behave lawfully.
The implications of these amendments and the others so similarly worded are indicative of the Classical School of Criminology. Offered as an incentive, the rights encourage rational, but criminally inclined humans to make the rational choice towards the non-criminal action. Because it would be in the humans' self-interest to keep their rights, they are encouraged to choose non-criminal action. Thus, the drafting of the constitution this way suggests that the founders were relying on the Classical School of Criminology when considering human behavior, rational choice, and the desire to keep a lawful society.
Further relying on the Classical School of Criminology, the constitution sets up a just system of punishment, or a courts system. Article three of the constitution establishes the Supreme Court as the primary judiciary body of the land, also allowing the court to establish a series of inferior courts Congress "may from time to time establish." In the second section, the article lists that all cases involving crimes should be decided by jury. By establishing this formal yet just criminal justice system,...
The existence of such a system suggests that humans are naturally inclined toward criminal actions, making such a system necessary. By making the system just, the forefathers allowed for citizens' fair trials, but by clearly establishing the system, the forefathers implied that it would be used, and meant it as a form of negative incentive for rational humans inclined toward crime. Threatened with a competent criminal justice system, rational humans are dissuaded from committing crimes. With a rational mind, humans understand that a competent criminal justice system provides a strong chance that crime will be punished. It is not, therefore, in the would-be criminal's self-interest to commit a crime, as it would be met with punishment. Thus, in establishing the criminal justice system of the courts, the forefathers used the Classical School of Criminology in their writing of the constitution.
While the constitution has long been haled as one of the most distinctive human rights and democracy documents of the Common Era, the document is also riddled with influences from the Classical School of Criminology. Both rights, as positive reinforcement and the courts, as negative, serve to illustrate this point.
Works Cited
The Classical School." 1998. Crime Theory. 4 July, 2008. http://www.crimetheory.com/Theories/Classical.htm.
