Fruitless Deterrence

There are a couple reasons why an entity would punish someone. For one, the administrative body might want to make sure you cannot commit a certain act again. Second, they might want to rehabilitate you. Or they might wish to deter you from committing a certain act again.

Last year I received a write-up for underage drinking in an on-campus apartment and the dean assigned me twelve community service hours. The dean also noted that if I got in trouble again I'd have to complete a more rigorous set of tasks. With this, it seems clear that the administration is trying to deter me from drinking on campus again. Here's the problem: I'll be 21 in a little over two weeks. So even though I am posting at 7am because I had to be at my community service hours an hour ago (leaving after this post), and even though doing these hours will fuck up my whole day, the deterrence can only possibly last until April 28, at which point the entire matter will be moot.

This is marginally related to drug policy as it shows just how fruitless attempts to curb the use of psychoactive substances actually are. In fact, I never stopped imbibing, primarily because I live nowhere near campus now and I physically cannot get caught by school administrators again. But also, it shows that the administration isn't out for any good cause: they might not be seeking pure deterrence. Maybe they just want to make me "pay for what I did," seeing as in just a couple of weeks I will be able to "do what I did" for only about 6 bucks, and nothing else.