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Tag: good press

  • Flog It

    Neil Steinberg wrote a good review of In Defense of Flogging in my old home-town Chicago Sun-Times.

    I’m particularly impressed that caught what I thought was obvious:

    Moskos has brilliantly used the old PR trick of marrying a complex, off-putting topic to a fascinating one. If you want to trick people into reading about penal reform, brandish a whip. And be brief.

    Steinberg goes on:

    In Defense of Flogging is 154 pages long. I read it in less than a day, and it is an eloquent cry to address a problem that we spend billions of dollars trying to ignore. “We’ve run out of options,” Moskos writes. “What we have in America is a massive, terrifying and out-of-control experiment in incarceration.”

    There’s no arguing about that.

  • Brave Thinkers of the Year

    Brave Thinkers of the Year


    The Atlantic’s annual list of Brave Thinkers just came out. I’m in it (and with some pretty impressive company)!

    Mind you, this doesn’t actually mean I’m a goodthinker… just a brave one.

  • Maybe it’s not such a crazy idea…

    Here’s me defending flogging for my favorite TV news show, the NewsHour.

    It’s very interesting that the option of flogging over prison currently registers over 70% support in their online poll. This mirrors the earlier newser survey in which 63% percent thought is was “brilliant” and another 13% found it “intriguing” (20% clicked in one of the negative categories).

  • A Q & A

    In the Crime Report:

    The Crime Report:A lot of people have compared your book to Jonathan Swift’s essay, “A Modest Proposal.” But Swift’s work was pure satire, where yours is an honest look at a possible alternative punishment. Does the comparison frustrate you, or is it apt?
    Peter Moskos:Neither. I like the comparison. True, I don’t think Swift was really proposing eating babies; (while) I am seriously proposing giving the choice of being flogged. But I do see the book primarily as a thought experiment, having a little intellectual fun. In that sense, I think it is somewhat like “A Modest Proposal.” My book isn’t a satire, but I am trying to address real issues and be a bit provocative. So it’s not a crazy analogy.

  • The Right Choice

    I like this line from Time Magazine:

    Reading In Defense of Floggingis a lot like reading Woody Allen’s classic “My Speech to the Graduates,” in which he declares, “More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

  • God Bless The Economist

    God Bless The Economist

    For their review:

    Imagine that you–or, if you prefer, a younger, more reckless version of you–committed a crime.
    …
    And say you were offered a choice: you could either spend those years behind bars, or you could get ten lashes.
    …
    You may think flogging is barbaric, but is there any question which you would choose if you could? According to Peter Moskos, a sociologist whose previous book, “Cop in the Hood”, detailed his year spent as a Baltimore beat cop: “If flogging were really worse than prison, nobody would choose it.”

    The modern American prison system evolved as an alternative to flogging: penitentiaries were designed to “cure” prisoners of their criminality—to render them penitent—rehabilitating them into productive members of society. On this score, as on most others, it has failed.
    …
    “We build prisons for people we’re afraid of and fill them with people we’re mad at.”
    …
    Brutal and archaic it may be, but Mr Moskos convincingly argues that America’s prison system is at least as inhumane.
    …
    Perhaps the most damning evidence of the broken American prison system is that it makes a proposal to reinstate flogging appear almost reasonable. Almost.

    Now will you buy my book?

  • In Salon

    Here’s an interview about flogging featured in Salon.com.

  • Five Year, or Ten Lashes?

    Josh Rothman writes in the Boston Globe:

    His book is, as promised, a well-reasoned defense of flogging. It’s also an attack upon the penal system.
    …
    It’s hard to say how serious Moskos is being (though my money is on “pretty serious”). Even if you aren’t convinced that flogging is the future, though, Moskos’ deeper argument is still compelling.

  • Oh, Canada

    Macleans, the Canadian news magazine, has a great article and Q&A with me. There’s some very good new material here, even if you think you’re heard everything I have to say about In Defense of Flogging. What is it about the Canadians? Why are their articles smarter and more insightful than ours? And they are awfully nice people. I mean, there must be some bad Canadians out there, but I’ve never met one.

    They also have health care, a homicide rate that is a fraction of ours, and many fewer people in prison. (Though, as I learned in the interview, they might be about to go on a US-inspired prison building boom.)

  • Tuesday One-Two Punch (or lash)

    The Blaze(that’s Glenn Beck)
    and Metro(that’s subway). Metro is new material.

    Oh, and there’s a third punch. Let’s call it an uppercut. The Takeaway (National Public Radio) 7:45 AM (which is really the worst possible hour of the day for me to do anything. If it were any early, I’d just stay up all night and be much happier.