Why don't we use exile as a punishment any more?

by brewmastermonk

124876720

Post-WWII, exile as a form of judicial punishment would be a violation of international law:

Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that:

Everyone has the right to a nationality.

The Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness further binds member-states not to deprive people of their nationality as a judicial punishment unless they have another nationality, except in fairly limited circumstances^1. The popular image of exile - ie, of forcing someone to leave the country and never come back - is impractical as a punishment for non-political crimes in the modern age, because states don't want to end up harbouring foreign criminals: "Ring ring, hello, Germany here." "Hello, it's the USA, we've got a rapist we want rid of with no connection to Germany, can we send him to live in Hamburg?" "Piss off." There is also no unclaimed land left, aside from (debatably) Antarctica, and dropping someone off in Antarctica with no means to survive would effectively be a death sentence - and a rather cruel one at that.

Persons with dual nationality can be forced to leave their adopted countries for committing crimes - but this is deportation, not exile.

But exile does still happen after WWII, and frequently - its just that it is not formally imposed as a judicial punishment, but is a de facto result for individuals who cannot remain in their homeland for some reason. South American rulers of both ideological sides of the Cold War found themselves living in each other countries during that era - for example, Stroessner (Paraguay) went to Brazil and Torres (Bolivia) went to Argentina (where he was later murdered). Various categories of people who have fallen out of favour with their national governments ended up fleeing abroad in the 20th century - eg, former Republicans in Francoist Spain, Latin American leftists during Operation Condor, Soviet defectors, German social democrats in the Nazi era, German Nazis to South America and Spain following WWII, etc. These processes can be considered a kind of political exile, as often their national governments are satisfied that these "subversives" are out of the country and are content to ignore them. But not always - see, for example, the Soviet KGB's assassination of Ukrainian nationalists^2 Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera in the 1950s, Bulgarian intelligence's murder of Georgy Markov in London in 1978, and the assasination by carbomb in Washington DC of Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier in 1976.

1: Such as obtaining nationality by fraud or if the person is entitled to, but has not claimed, another nationality. Incidentally, the United States is one of the few countries that does allow its citizens to renounce their nationality without first having another one "lined up", so to speak. Occasionally US citizens domiciled abroad who want to avoid tax renounce their citizenship, which tends to be a bad move.
2: And ethnic-cleansing terrorists depending on perspective. A difficult question for another topic!

cazique

As for why it is uncommon, see, e.g., People v. Baum, 251 Mich. 187, 189 (Mich. 1930):

To permit one State to dump its convict criminals into another would entitle the State believing itself injured thereby to exercise its police and military power in the interest of its own peace, safety, and welfare, to repel such an invasion. It would tend to incite dissension, provoke retaliation, and disturb that fundamental equality of political rights among the several States which is the basis of the Union itself. Such a method of punishment is not authorized by statute, and is impliedly prohibited by public policy.

Some states still allow it: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Tennessee. As others have noted, Georgia is most notorious for this, sometimes banishing people to a single, rural county on the state line.

Sex offenders often face a limited form of banishment in the form of being prohibited from coming within a certain distance of a school. See https://www.cga.ct.gov/2007/rpt/2007-R-0380.htm for a list of residency restrictions by state. The 8th Circuit has upheld many of these laws, stating (among other things) “we cannot agree that the right to choose one’s place of residence is necessarily a fundamental right". Doe v. Miller, 405 F.3d 700 (8th Cir. 2005), citing Prostrollo v. Univ. of S.D., 507 F.2d 775, 781 (8th Cir. 1974). Other circuits have reached similar conclusions.

Banishment is still legal at the federal level:

The court may provide, as further conditions of a sentence of probation ... that the defendant ... (13) reside in a specified place or area, or refrain from residing in a specified place or area.

18 U.S. Code § 3563 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3563