Being the nostalgic that I am, I can’t help but long for the days when criminals would be punished with spankings in the square, dunkings or being put in the stocks. Granted, I didn’t live back in those days, but I still long for them.

“Hard time” is the modern-day remedy for crime — break the law, and society will put you into a very uncomfortable place for as long as it is deemed you deserve. This serves as protection for society — it keeps dangerous criminals away from citizens trying to live peaceful, happy lives.

However, jail time is not the cure for all criminals. While people who commit major crimes (murder, rape and grand theft, to name a few) need to be locked up for our protection, people who commit odd and petty crimes can be better remedied by the best punishment of yore — embarrassment.

My love of this form of punishment, coupled with a recent sentencing from home (Lake County), has prompted me to use this space to praise alternative-sentencing genius, Municipal Judge Michael Cicconetti of Painesville, Ohio.

In Fairport Harbor, on Christmas Eve of 2002, four teenagers were drinking beer and smoking pot. In their boredom, they stole a statue of the Baby Jesus from St. Anthony’s Catholic Church’s nativity scene. They then brought the statue home, pierced and painted it, and returned it to another church, the Inspirational House of Prayer.

Cicconetti sentenced two of the teenagers Tuesday. Believing the teenagers were genuinely contrite, Cicconetti gave them the option of spending 120 days in prison, or buying a new statue, wrapping it up in blankets, making an apology sign and marching down the streets of Fairport with a donkey. If they take the second option, their prison sentence will be reduced to 40 days.

In June, a Painesville Township man was pulled over because he drank a beer in the car he was riding in. He fled, resisting arrest. Cicconetti suspended most of a six-month jail sentence on the condition the man run in the law enforcement division of Painesville’s Johnnycake Jog — the better he placed, the more Cicconetti would reduce his sentence.

Last February, a Painesville man shouted obscenities (including the classic “pig”) at police. Cicconetti sentenced him to stand on a high-traffic street corner with a swine for two hours, holding a sign saying “this is not a police officer.”

In each case, Cicconetti designed the punishment to fit the crime in a beatifully poetic fashion.

The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” Any consitutional literalist would immediately attack these sentences, along with others Cicconetti has made during his tenure.

But before anyone gets the idea to fight these “violations” of constitutional right, they should consider two things: intent and effect.

Colonists utilized punishments like the pillory (a wooden beam which held a criminal in place while townspeople pelted him or her with food), water-dunking and travelling floggings, in which a criminal would be tied to a cart and dragged from street to street to be whipped.

These punishments, though they seem physically abusive, were designed primarily for the public humiliation aspect. Also, the same colonists who employed these methods were those who penned the Constitution. Perhaps their intent, worded as “cruel and unusual punishment,” meant “unusually or creatively cruel punishment.” This part of the amendment was most likely meant to end torture and human disfigurinment rather than all forms of alternative punishment.

Cicconetti only gave alternatives to those he believed had sincere guilt over their crimes. In every case where the unique sentence was carried out, it was the criminal’s decision to take the unorthodox option — signifying there is nothing inherently “cruel” about the punishment if it is chosen over jail time.

I want to say “thank you,” Judge Cicconetti. You have adequately punished criminals (according to general public satisfaction with the sentences), made examples for potential future evil-doers, helped to keep prisons from being overcrowded…

…and occasionally given us something entertaining to watch.

Kyle Woodley is The Lantern Opinion Editor and thinks the pillory should be used more often. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].