I would like to see judges use hard physical labor more as punishment for minor crimes. The work assigned can be unpleasant enough to make the person who has to do it resolve never to put himself in that position again. I remember reading, too many years ago to recall all the details, the account of a man who had committed some relatively minor crime--stealing a car to go joyriding, or something like that. He didn't get away with it, and the judge sentenced him to several months' worth of mucking out the horse stalls at Santa Anita, so many hours each week, during the summer. The guy lived far on the other side of Los Angeles and had a long bus ride to get there each time. And when he did, there was a lot of hot, smelly, distasteful work he had to do--or else. He was recounting, years later, how the whole experience was so miserable that it had made him determined to be a good citizen, which he had been. And he thought the judge had been more than fair to him.
