And throw away the key

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in jail
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
--Oscar Wilde

Yesterday, a Tacoma judge sentenced a serial rapist to 227 years in prison. That's a long time to sit around, pondering whether it was really all worth it, whether you'd perhaps made some unfortunate choices. The convicted man's wife -- yes, he seems to be happily married -- broke down in tears. She "described him as a wonderful father and said she still loves him," according to newspaper accounts.

In handing down such a lengthy sentence, the judge was ensuring that the gentleman, now age 28, would never be released on parole. But just imagine if he were to really live long enough to serve his full term. He would be released -- a free man -- in A.D. 2235.

Well, that's not too impressive. It's just a number.

Ok, think of it this way. If he were being released today, on completion of his sentence, he necessarily would have been sentenced back in 1781. The trial wouldn't have been in Tacoma. Happily, there was no Tacoma back then. But there was also no Portland and no Seattle. Lewis and Clark's trek westward still lay 22 years in the future. Local residents in these parts feasted on salmon and berries, dressed casually, cursed the constant rain, and tried to outspend their neighbors through conspicuous consumption. (Not all that much has changed, I guess.)

So let's say our felon had been sentenced in Boston.

Wherever he was sentenced and imprisoned, eight years later, at age 36, he no doubt would hear through the prison grapevine that a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia had agreed on some sort of constitution for the thirteen colonies. At age 59, he would learn that war had again broken out between America and Britain, and that the White House had been burned. (The Brits' conduct was deplorable. Conservative commentators called the limeys "evil," and said we should refuse to talk to them until there had been a regime change.) But time passed. As an aged inmate, 107 years of age, he might rejoice upon hearing of the firing on Fort Sumter -- maybe the Southern rebels would release Union prisoners if they won? And how about the Spanish-American War? Let's not even go there.

Nope, not to belabor the point further. Let's concede that he'd note a few changes when he was released in 2008. They didn't even have iPods or Cheetos back in 1781. But my point, insofar as I have one, is that the idea of a 227-year prison sentence is like the idea of the national debt. It's a figure that's so huge that it makes no sense until it's considered in some concrete context. For example, to visualize the national debt, we might measure the height of the stack of $1,000 bills that would be required to repay it. And in contemplating the meaning of 227 years, looking backward, we see how much has changed in that time. We can only speculate how much will have changed before his sentence is completed in 2235.

It's not a sentence that I -- or you, I trust -- would care to serve. Certainly not in payment for the twenty rapes for which he was sentenced -- adventures whose joys probably didn't really live up to his expectations, in any event.

(And that's it,/that's all I have to say./I have no greater cosmic lesson,/to insist upon today.)