Fear-Driven Policy

How do you create effective public policy in a field that sparks high emotion? Homelessness, the gun registry, Afghanistan, euthanasia, interest rates—in volatile and unstable times almost anything can be turned into an irrational bogeyman that all the research and studies in the world cannot combat. In March, a collection of academics gathered at the annual Walter Gordon Massey Symposium in Toronto to consider this highly charged question under the rubric “Private Emotion, Public Policy.” After many hours, the best that could be gleaned from the discussion was that reason and emotion coexist in all of us, cannot be separated and must each play their part in the creation and acceptance of worthwhile policy.

This essay deals with just such a public policy conundrum: whether to respect the constitutional rights of citizens, even when imprisoned, versus the need many people feel to punish prisoners by depriving them of most of their rights. In a country with an aging...