Crime and Punishment...

With fingers lighter than a Luna moth's wings, Timothy Mack has spent 13 years spiriting wallets from the pockets and purses of Los Angelenos, an artful dodger's career that has been interrupted by 20 arrests and two jail terms.

In a way, Mack's latest sentence is the law's ingenious tribute to his skill. When Mack was brought before Los Angeles Superior Court on charges of picking $15.11 from a woman's purse, Judge Richard Hayden improvised a sentence worthy of Dante's Purgatory. In addition to serving 20 weekends in jail Mack was condemned, for the next two years, to wear mittens any time he is in a public place. "The mittens," said the judge, "must be of a texture a least as heavy as 8-oz. duck." One might as well break Artur Rubinstein's fingers. Mack has disappeared, in what presumably is defiant despair; a warrant is still out for his arrest.

Most civilized law has long since abandoned the theory of explicitly fitting punishment to crime--castrating rapists, for example--but there is something to be said for the principle in its less violent forms. Perhaps a criminal should even be forced to make restitution in kind. The robber should work to repay his victim, the murderer should be indentured to support the dead man's family. Most crimes, after all, are offenses not against the state but against persons; and persons, short of bloody revenge, should have some satisfaction.

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