In his 1961 essay “Why Don’t We Complain,” William F. Buckley Jr. describes a crowded, sweltering train car aboard which everyone would be better off if even a single passenger had the chutzpah to demand the conductor lower the thermostat or crack open the windows to “let the great outdoors to come indoors.” In Buckley’s story, no one in particular is to blame for the miserable conditions; everyone is guilty of “that tendency to passive compliance.”
Yesterday morning, as I boarded the F-Train, I was confronted by a similar problem. But, unlike the “supine breed” of passengers aboard Buckley’s train, I am lodging a complaint — if only after the fact.
As I stepped into the inundated train car, I was awoken from my reverie. I was not miffed for want of elbow room — I’m a Brooklynite born and raised, and I commuted on the 4 train from the Bronx every day of high school. No, all the New Yorkers, native and adopted, respected the unspoken but ubiquitous subway etiquette: Don’t make eye contact, place your bag/purse/pet carrier between your legs, stand up for the elderly, pregnant, and disabled. That is, all except one decidedly indecorous fellow.
There are hard-working New Yorkers, some of them women, elderly, disabled, or some combination thereof, who ought to have had the opportunity to sit down. Politeness and common decency demand as much. From an economic perspective, the behavior of this gentleman constitutes deadweight loss: Real value is being forgone when one (inconsiderate) person monopolizes an entire row of would-be seats. Standers are denied the utility of sitting and would-be passengers cannot even board the train for want of standing room.
Despite the flagrantly unacceptable behavior of the recumbent man, Buckley’s prescience was proven: Not a single person complained.
Women scoffed, men sneered (myself included), and children quizzically stared, but nobody — no group of people, not a single person — demanded that the man rise from his slumber and sit on the seat. If the somnambulant was schizophrenic, mentally ill, or otherwise lacked reason and/or volition, he should not be morally indicted for his utter lack of consideration; someone is a moral agent if and only if he can choose his actions and has the faculty of reason with which to do so competently.
If the man was indeed suffering from psychosis, rendering him incapable of caring for himself and functioning in society, his behavior ought to be tolerated, his absent mind pitied, and the person entrusted to the care of medical professionals in a psychiatric institution until his faculties are restored. I do not say this lightly; depriving someone of his autonomy — his liberty — is the most awesome power the state possesses. Consequently, this power must be narrowly circumscribed, applied judiciously, sparingly, and with rigorous oversight.
However, the standard for the expression of this power must not be zero type I errors. There will be false positives. In the criminal-justice system, innocent men are occasionally wrongfully imprisoned. The punishment of even one innocent individual is the inevitable tragedy of all criminal-justice systems — one that warrants constant vigilance. To minimize such false positives, our society has constructed and refined institutions in the spirit of Blackstone’s ratio: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent person suffer” (italics added).
But the inevitability of such an error is insufficient justification for prison abolition. Notably, Blackstone’s ratio is not undefined: It has a numerator and a denominator. Blackstone is not willing to let every guilty man go free in order to prevent the punishment of a single individual. Justice, after all, “is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice” of society (Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, II.i.3). Without prisons for violent, anti-social criminals who violate the autonomy, liberty, and property of the citizenry, social cooperation on the scale of a modern civilization is impossible.
We should consider who is helped by leaving the seriously mentally ill to their own devices instead of involuntarily committing them to institutions designed to protect them and the public. Admittedly, the absence of asylums protects those few sane people who would be erroneously (or maliciously) committed against their will, just as prison abolition would ensure not a single innocent person is put behind bars. But at what cost? Certainly the cost is higher than a few people missing their train — particularly for the person suffering from both a broken mind and near total apathy of his fellow man.
An unmolested schizophrenic may have perfect liberty absent state coercion, but he is far from free. For those unable or unwilling to complain for themselves, I submit this complaint in their stead.