Column: National security
By Scott Walker, M.D.
Dear neighbors,
Wisconsin’s high rate of incarceration cannot be explained by our alcohol consumption alone; the prison population contains many sober souls. With a few exceptions, we can say that we as a society failed to adequately socialize those who do not come to conformity with society’s minimum standards of behavior. Regardless of who we might blame for this failure (e.g. parents, school, church), society pays a high price for these failures, both in the direct cost of incarceration and supervision, and with the indirect costs of lost productivity.
The Department of Correction budget was almost $3 billion dollars in 2023, dwarfing the $500 million spent on Special Ed that year. Society would like to spend less on this problem.
While it is and deserves to be a continuing issue of contention, right now it appears that parents may be held responsible for this failure after the fact.
The guilty verdict for the parents of a school shooter shows us that, but it also shows us that no one is clamoring for the early removal of miscreant children from their parents or other pro-active measures. Can we go so far as to sue parents for the incarceration costs and damage done by their criminal adult children? Probably not. Society’s recourse may not lie with the parents.
What about the schools? Can we judge a public school system by the local crime rate? Sadly, it’s not so simple.
There are clear relationships between school attendance and future criminality, and high school graduation and incarceration, that say that schools are good for us.
Would improving Wisconsin’s schools reduce Wisconsin’s future crime rate? Probably. But neither the Legislature nor the local voters are willing to spend what it would take to find out.
The separation between church and state, weakened though it may be, is still strong enough to prevent us from holding churches accountable when their parishioners stray.
In short, there is no place where society might reasonably hope to recover the cost of failing to prevent incarceration (a process some call socialization, or acculturation). Not from the parents, not from the schools, not from the churches. So in the absence of other capable and responsible bodies or methods, and in the interest of saving money by better acculturating our young people, I propose a mandatory national service. We will have a true melting pot of young people from across the nation come together to work as teams under trained leadership and instruction, to provide vital services and build national infrastructure, learning valuable skills along the way.
The first point to make is that services performed will go far beyond the military option. We can look toward some other countries for examples. In Germany, some national service youth were assigned as aides to senior citizens, who had difficulty getting around or performing activities of daily living. More and more we in America are acknowledging that senior care will be a large employer in the future; rather than have Medicare pay the wages that this service could command, we can cover much of the burden with 18 and 19 year olds who are completing their national service.
Elsewhere, some youngsters may enter a 24/7 version of trade apprenticeships, mixing classroom education, hands-on skills training, shared living quarters, and community service projects that put their new skills to use.
We need more tradespeople, and more people who understand robot technologies; we would do well to make sure that the next generation contains a cadre of those workers.
A re-invigorated Peace Corp would be an option for some youth. Learning how to organize a community to build a greater good is wonderful experience to bring home. And the more our citizens know about the people of the larger world, the less xenophobic we will become. Americorp is going strong, and could be expanded so that those who want to help here at home have the option. Between Americorp and the trade unions, we may be able to do something about the lack of affordable housing across America.
All this is not to neglect the military training that will serve our future society well. With a plethora of guns in private possession, we need to have skilled and trained instructors showing our citizens the proper way to handle firearms. Nevermind that this should have happened at home, sometimes it doesn’t, and our citizens need this skill. By giving everyone who enters national service six weeks of physical conditioning and military training, we will foster a greater understanding and respect for those who serve professionally in the military.
Those who founded this nation wanted us to remember, “E pluribus unum,” so they put it on the Great Seal of the United States. We are a diverse and divergent nation. But we must remain one nation. We must come to trust the people around us not because they are like us, but because as Americans we share the values of democracy, human rights, freedom, respect, civil rights, and fairness. A required period of national service will give us the practice we need at working better together.