“Thank you M’am”, an Argument for Criminal Justice Reform

The short story “Thank you M’am” by Langston Hughes challenges the notions of punishment and rehabilitation that are the backbone of our criminal justice system. Whilst the United States employs a system of punishment and deterrence, Scandinavian countries such as Norway have experimented with more rehabilitative programs. In “Thank you M’am” the woman represents a rehabilitative approach to justice, whereas the society around her represents an approach that would suck the boy into a never ending cycle of punishment and reoffence. Especially in poor communities, people like Luella Bates Washington Jones understand the struggles of young men and aim to steer young offenders onto the right path instead of taking them off the path all together.

In “Thank you M’am” Roger, a young hoodlum, attempts to rob an old lady's purse. This old lady, however, turns out to be stronger than expected and defends herself. Clearly angered, she “put[s] a half-nelson about his neck” and drags him to her apartment (Hughes 2). The young boy expects the worst, fearing to go to jail and face harsh punishment. To the contrary, Ms. Jones sits down with him, cooks him a meal, and shares anecdotes from her life with him. The fears of looming punishment, however harsh, did not deter Roger from perpetrating crime and neither do they deter kids nowadays. The pull of material goods and their associated vanity, that have only grown in our modern consumerist society, were just too much for Roger to resist. Ms. Jones who has “done things, too, which [she] would not tell you (Roger)” understands these powerful forces that drag young men into crime (Hughes 3). With this clear understanding of the motivations and repercussions of crime, Luella Jones reaches out to the boy and tells him “shoes come by devilish like that will burn your feet” (Hughes 4). She opens his eyes to the facetiousness of a system that forces boys, like Roger, to steal from old ladies, like herself, and hopes this will steer him away from the wrong path in the future. Instead of being caught in an endless cycle of repercussions and reoffense, Roger listens to Ms. Jones and even thanks her at the end.

The criminal justice system Roger would have been subject to still maintains a recidivism rate of 76.6 %. In contrast to this, Norway, which employs a rehabilitative system akin to Ms. Jones approach, boasts a recidivism rate of 20 %. The boy is fully aware of and greatly fears jail, but that does not stop him from robbing an equally poor old lady. Unless he is provided with the crucial skills that will help him acquire the desired material goods and the social standing they are associated with he will be caught in a vicious cycle of crime, punishment, and reoffense. Norway’s criminal justice system, like Luella Bates Washington Jones, aims to provide those skills instead of weighing young men down with punishment and social ostracism. The boy is flabbergasted by this approach and his openness results in a better outcome for all parties. It would not have benefited Roger, Luella Bates Washington Jones, or even society in general to harshly punish Roger and then welcome him back into the system with a 76.6 % probability. German rappers like Xatar have been through this vicious system and share the same insights as Ms. Jones. In a song released after his 5 year jail sentence he confronts the system directly criticizing that “you lock us in a cage/ and when we reenter society you expect us to be tamed (Genius.com).” The facts and personal accounts from across the world speak for themselves.

The politicians and administrators of our criminal justice system get locked into a cycle of penalizing crime, recidivism, toughening of punishment, and repeated offense. As President Obama lamented in a Vice Documentary entitled "Fixing the System" “Nobody ever lost an election because they were too tough on crime.” Instead of continuously toughening laws against crime and incarcerating more and more people the system must take to heart the parable of “Thank you M’am.” An effective criminal justice system requires real experience and insight, not political power play.