Polite Dissent

In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
–General Standards Part A, #6 of the original Comics Code

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh writes an intriguing piece on punishment. He discusses the various theories of punishment and the philosophies behind them.

Of course, he’s talking about the real world. But his post got me thinking: are comic book villains ever really punished? Sure, they’re captured by the heroes, sometimes tried in court, and then sent to jail. But are they really punished?

According to Volokh, there are 6 main theories of punishment: incapacitation, restitution, rehabilitation, norm-setting, deterrence and retaliation.

• Certainly prisons in the comic world incapacitate. Villains are locked up so that they are not free to commit crimes. Of course, in the comic book world, prison breaks are as common as rain and there seems to be no three-strike rule.
• Restitution? I’ve never seen this addressed in a comic, though many villains and villainous corporations aren’t exactly hurting in the money department.
• Has any villain ever been rehabilitated in prison? The villains who have gone straight seem to do so on their own, not through any punishment (except maybe the Identity Crisis kind). Attempts at rehabilitation ultimately fail in the comic book world, the scorpion will always kill the frog, and the villain will return to crime. “How nice, Luthor has volunteered to work in the electronics shop.” Or “I think putting Poison Ivy to work in the garden here at Arkham would be therapeutic.”
• The concept behind norm-setting is that by punishing people for committing a certain act, you’re communicating to everyone that this particular act is wrong. I don’t think this really applies in the comic book world because the crimes villains commit tend to be over the top and quite clearly criminal.
• When one is dealing with megalomaniacal super-villains,deterrence just doesn’t work. It may have an effect on low-rent villains and henchman, though this is more fear of a particular hero than fear of punishment. (“You didn’t tell me we’d have to face Batman – I’m outta here!”)
• Retaliation. I’m surprised at how little this aspect of punishment is shown in comics. Modern comics have been showing this a bit more than Silver and Golden Age books – for instance, solitary confinement is seen frequently. However, it seems that when retaliation is shown it tends to be taken too far in the opposite direction, as in the cruel prison warden cliché that still shows up (Flash: Iron Heights, for example.)

With the exception of recent (and short-lived) series like Hard Time and Bloodhound, it seems to me that the only thing a comic book prison is good for is a jail break.