Hit It, Judge! Colorado Judge Turns Up The Volume On Repeat Offenders

Recently, Fort Lupton, Colorado Municipal Court Judge Paul Sacco gained notoriety for imposing some unusual-and highly amusing-alternative punishments.  After determining that young noise offenders often dismissed the standard punishment of a fine as negligible, Sacco began implementing a different sentence-Time Out with Barney.  Sacco sentences repeat noise offenders to listen for one hour to music from various artists known to be unpopular with teens, including Barney the Purple Dinosaur, Joni Mitchell, and Barry Manilow. 

While certainly creative, Sacco is not alone in his tactics.  Judges across the country are increasingly using alternative methods to enforce their messages.  San Francisco’s U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker, for example, sentenced a San Francisco teen who stole letters from mailboxes to stand outside a post office wearing a sign that read:  “I stole mail.  This is my punishment.” 

The constitutionality of alternative punishments has been questioned by individual lawyers, as well as civil rights groups such as the ACLU and The Sentencing Project.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld Judge Walker’s sign-bearing punishment as unusual, but not cruel.  It’s less clear, however, whether other practices, such as displaying shoplifters’ mug shots on electronic displays around malls will be upheld as well.  The efficacy of alternative punishments has also been questioned by a number of groups who criticize these methods as unfairly targeting youth offenders. 

It wouldn’t hurt to provide some oversight of these maverick judges to ensure that alternative sentences remain within constitutional bounds.  However, given the dismal success rates of traditional punishments, overflowing prisons, and corrections budget shortfalls, judges should be granted some leeway in crafting more effective brands of justice.