Today we mainly punish criminals via prison, which is very expensive. I have previously favored torture (= corporal punishment) and fines paid by competitive debtor prisons. But today, I’d like to sing the praises of exile.

To punish criminals, we could kick them out of the country to whatever other place they choose, among those that will take them. To give them an incentive to get some place to take them, we might offer a modest subsidy, and reserve an especially big punishment if no one will take them.

People worry that fines give governments too strong an incentive to find the innocent guilty (though fines paid to bounty hunters avoid that problem). People worry that torture doesn’t keep criminals off the street, and that it makes us seem cruel. Exile doesn’t have any of these problems! On cruelty, we already prevent most of the world from living here, so how can it be too cruel to prevent a few more?

Some think exile can’t impose small punishments. But you can exile someone for a year, a month, or a week. Some worry that exile can’t impose extreme punishments. But exile doesn’t have to be the whole solution, just part of a solution. For example, to impose punishments bigger than lifetime exile, beat them a bit first.

Some worry about variation in how much people dislike exile. But there is also variation in how much people dislike fines, prison, torture, and public humiliation. The best way to reduce punishment variation is probably to bundle together many kinds of punishment. Maybe fine them some, beat them a little, humiliate them a bit, and then exile them for a while.

In 2006 the US spent $69 billion on corrections, and 2.3 million adults were incarcerated at year-end 2009. A state prisoner cost an average of $24,000 per year in 2005 (source). Why waste all that money?!