Everyone who knows me knows that I abhor violence. I have been an anti-violence organizer since I was a teenager. I cut my teeth organizing against racial violence, I then found myself doing anti gender-based violence organizing which led me to anti-prison work. Anyway, I read an op-ed this weekend in the Jerusalem Post by someone advocating that perpetrators of family violence be assessed a “violence tax” in addition to being incarcerated.

From the Op-Ed:

THE TIME has come to change our approach to perpetrators of violence in the family, so that their punishment will also compensate and rehabilitate their victims. Family batterers need to recognize that there is a painful financial price for their abuse. Following a conviction for serious crimes, such as child abuse, molestation, rape or murder, offenders should be required to pay a “violence tax.” It should be a painful deterrent that will transfer all the assailants’ assets and earnings to the victims of his violent crimes and to the state to pay for his incarceration. Upon his release from prison, the tax will be gradually reduced, but the criminal should still be required to pay for his victims’ treatments and rehabilitation and compensate them for their suffering.

Treatment for violent offenders has stagnated for many years in the absence of effective deterrents and appropriate care for victims, who are often left helpless.

It’s time to shake up the judicial system and to punish violent offenders financially as well as by imprisonment.

Let me get this straight… Because we have failed as a society to deter family violence through incarceration, we should now add a financial “punishment” to the mix. Rather than interrogating the reasons for why criminalizing perpetrators of family violence has failed to end this problem, the solution proposed is to increase the level of “penalties” for the crimes. This makes absolutely no logical sense to me.

More from the Op-Ed:

The goal is to give meaning to the hollow mantra “the prisoner paid his debt to society.”

Many will roll their eyes and wonder if justice can be bought. The answer is twofold: First, the financial penalty will be added to a prison sentence and will not replace incarceration. The violence tax will provide an additional source of funding for rehabilitation and repayment to society that the offender will pay for his actions.

Second, the money paid to the victims will not restore their physical or mental health, but can provide them substantial relief. A situation of restorative justice where the offender pays for his victims’ treatment is not only poetic justice, but might even awaken in the offender a feeling of remorse for his crimes or ownership over the processes of changing his ways. He participates, indirectly, in the repair of the lives he himself destroyed or scarred.

Painful restorative taxation of violent offenders could cause those considering harming others to reconsider their actions. Make no mistake. This is no fine imposed for traffic offenses, but confiscation of all the assets and income the offender has accumulated over his lifetime – to be reserved for only the most severe crimes. This could cause some potential murders and rapists to think before committing their crimes. Even if some criminals won’t be deterred, it will contribute to the alleviation of the suffering of the lives scarred by violence in the family and maybe prevent the next murder.

In the U.S., since our prisons are filled with poor people already presumably there would be very little to “seize” in terms of assets. While the U.S. is seeing a re-emergence of debtor's prisons, I am hoping that this concept of a “violence tax” does not catch on stateside.