“The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.”

Via Ann Althouse, I found a touching story about a new program to rehabilitate youthful offenders by having them perform Shakespeare. This, it is urged, would increase their low self esteem:

The program would train court-referred teenagers to mount an abbreviated Shakespeare play after a six week session, under supervision of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee theater faculty.

Modeled after a Shakespeare program in Massachusetts, the local version would help boost self-esteem for participants and teach them to work collaboratively, according to advocates for the program. Diverting just one youth from a year of state incarceration would more than make up for the cost of the program, Supervisor Gerry Broderick said.

Supervisor Patricia Jursik quoted Shakespeare in ribbing Clarke, suggesting his criticism was linked to 2012 budget cuts dealt to the sheriff. Jursik described Clarke as “scrambling on the budget battlefield, shamefully dismounted, yelling: ‘My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse.’?” Jursik noted Clarke uses county money for horses in parades.

Clarke called the Shakespeare program “a stupid and insane idea,” especially at a time his budget is getting cut. Clarke said no tax money is used for his department’s horse rentals. He pays a flat fee for horses that are used in park patrols and parades from asset forfeiture funds, Clarke said.

Opponents said evidence the Shakespeare in the Courts program worked to divert wayward youth from future crimes was lacking and questioned the spending at a time when the overall county courts budget faces a deficit.

Critics also said juveniles who have committed crimes such as assault and battery deserve tougher sentences than the Shakespeare program.

“Think of the victims when they hear that instead of serving time?.?.?. that somebody’s going to get this (Shakespeare program) in lieu of punishment,” Supervisor Paul Cesarz said.

OK, first of all, I think it’s very likely that many of these offenders did not commit crimes against victims. They face punishment for drug and alcohol offenses, in which the victims are themselves. Whether they suffer from low self esteem is debatable, but whether performing Shakespeare can turn them around is even more debatable. Just how would it work? Are we talking about Shakespearean boot camp with a drill sergeant of a director threatening Elizabethan Era punishments? How would that work? I’d like to know more about the details, because I’m skeptical. But I did find a few selected quotes a sadistic director might use:

Fill all thy bones with aches.

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

Come not within the measure of my wrath.

He that dies pays all debts.

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,
Unwhipp’d of justice.

I’m not saying youthful druggies would benefit from having such sentiments beaten into them. But a Shakespearean boot camp might at least be amusing on YouTube.

However, violent criminals are in another category entirely, and I think the idea of sentencing muggers and rapists to perform Shakespeare is thoroughly ludicrous. It’s the sort of think that can only have been dreamed up by an academician, most likely for purposes of getting government money (our money, natch). The “self esteem” crap is window dressing. Violent criminals of whatever age by definition use force to overpower their victims and get what they want. Not only am I unable to see how low self esteem could cause someone to attack and rob another person, I think they most likely have precisely the opposite problem: high self esteem. Using force to take property from another person is an act involving criminally extreme selfishness.

From a Surgeon General report:

In general, there is little evidence that low self-esteem causes violence or that violent offenders have low self-esteem. On the contrary, the evidence is more consistent with the position that high self-esteem and threats to high esteem lead to violence (Baumeister et al., 1996). This has important implications for treatment and intervention programs and the use of esteem-building activities in these programs.

The Baumeister paper (“Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence and Aggression: The Dark Side of High Self-Esteem”) can be read here in PDF, although from my own experiences with criminals I have noticed that people who are prone to commit violent attacks are simply the human version of animal predators. They are feral, and very ballsy in nature, and they can only be stopped either with force or by making it painfully clear to them in one way or another that continuing the attack will be more trouble than it is worth. In any event, people who prey on other people are aggressive assholes. To get them to yield, they need to be stopped, deterred, brought down, ground under, broken, and of course in many cases they are so aggressive that such a thing is not possible using legal means. However, it is clear to me that if they “need” anything in relation to their despicable form or “self esteem” it would be to have it lowered and not raised.

So while I question whether performing in a Shakespearean play would succeed in raising the high self esteem these people already have even one iota, I would submit that if it did, it would only make them worse.

The more I think about the whole ridiculous idea, the more I feel like asking an impolite question.

Are these self esteem people batshit crazy?

(“Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.”)