Creative Punishment

In Miami Criminal Court, a 20-year-old white Floridian had been found guilty of taking potshots at the home of an interracial couple, and faced 20 years behind bars for shooting into an occupied dwelling and carrying a concealed weapon. But Judge Alfonso Sepe had other ideas. No one had been hurt in the shooting, and the youth had no criminal record. So, after consulting the victims, Sepe decided on probation rather than prison--provided that the young man would attend Saturday morning breakfasts in a predominantly black church and also do volunteer work for a black charity. "You're going to find out," said Sepe, "what it's like to live in a black community."

If the sentence was not exactly orthodox, it was nonetheless in line with a growing search for alternatives to jail. Judge Sepe, 47, has become Miami's foremost proponent of what might be called creative punishment. Rather than hand down penalties that fit the crime, Sepe tries to set probation terms that may prevent continued offenses. Thus a young marijuana smuggler was ordered to go back to college, get a job, report his grades to the court and write a paper on whether marijuana has harmful effects. A youth convicted of disorderly conduct and violently resisting arrest was required to teach a jail inmate how to read. When a cleanup of the Miami River was organized by officials, more than a dozen Sepe "volunteers" were there to help; two were cited for their extraordinary efforts by Florida's secretary of state, and Sepe immediately ended their probation.

As a rule, Sepe considers alternatives to jail only for those convicted of a nonviolent crime "where there is not a trauma left on the victim or the community." His aim is generally to give the chance for "a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment" that prison rarely offers. But in each case, the defendant can go to jail if he fails to fulfill the probation terms. A self-described "romantic Italian" born in Brooklyn of immigrant parents, Sepe credits the discipline of a military academy for his own trouble-free youth. As a young Florida prosecutor, he was in charge of a state narcotics-education program and "came to believe that one of the main causes of drug abuse and crime was idleness and loss of self-respect. As a judge, I decided I could do something about that."

Some of Sepe's more imaginative sentences have been vulnerable to criticism. One assignment, for instance, was to make a defendant caught attempting burglary ask every Jewish family in a voting district whether it had been tested for Tay-Sachs disease, and keep a record of the answer. The survey was abandoned after a medical researcher called it "silly" and pointed out that expert counseling is necessary before such testing, in order to avoid unduly alarming those who may be carriers but do not have the genetic disease. Sepe also caused a local furor last year by offering to release convicted child molesters and exhibitionists if they would take injections of a female hormone to lower their sex drive. Recently, when a psychiatrist reported that a youth who appropriated a 22-ft. sailboat had been "deprived of love and affection," Sepe ordered the defendant to live at home, seek psychiatric help and get a girl friend. That solution failed, and Sepe soon had to send the young man to a mental institution.

The Rewards. Despite such setbacks, Sepe estimates that his sentences have been "over 95% successful." Michael Garrett, 24, was an unemployed artist when he was convicted of possession and sale of cocaine. Sepe ordered him to teach art to mentally retarded children at Miami's Hope School. To Garrett, the experience was the most rewarding of his life; he now is part of the school's paid staff. Carl Dachton had a similar experience. A gun-shop owner held in contempt for temporarily returning a customer's guns in violation of a court order, he was required to take five white, five black and five Cuban boys on trips to the Everglades "to teach them to know and love the outdoors as you do." Delighted with the task, Dachton says, "Now I'd rather go fishing with kids than with adults."

"The court must treat each case as if no other exists," says Sepe. "When an individual violates a public law and owes the community something, why not repay the community with whatever skills or gifts he may have in exchange for not going to jail?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.