| Mar. 2nd, 2006 @ 12:46 pm Semi-political ramble and rant |
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Don't mind me, I'm just:  pensive
Hey, that sounds like: Journey -- Wheel In The Sky
One of the things that has long troubled me about people in general is our tendency to conflate revenge with justice, even as we piously observe that "Two wrongs don't make a right."
Regardless of our rhetoric, at a gut level there is a definite sense among many Americans (and others too, but Americans are the people I know best) that the solution to a problem where somebody has been harmed must incorporate harm to the guilty party to be at all satisfactory. And often we're willing to put aside all intellectual, logical, moral, and even practical concerns to pay homage to our emotional need to hit somebody back.
I experienced this first-hand when I lived in Austin. I participated in a jury selection process, part of which consisted of me and a few dozen other residents of Travis county responding aloud to the question, "Which of these do you think is the primary purpose of the American criminal justice system: punishment, deterrence, or rehabilitation?"
"Punishment" got the most votes by a healthy margin, followed by "deterrence." Out of the fifty or so potential jurors, less than a handful including myself answered "rehabilitation."
There are a number of ways to interpret this incident, of course. The panel wasn't asked whether they thought this was how it should be, for instance (although more than a few of those who chose "punishment" sounded quite satisfied that this should be the case) nor to what extent they thought the other purposes played a role in the system. But nevertheless, the experience has profoundly affected the way I think about the average American's idea of "justice" -- and how in many cases, it's indistinguishable from the same lynch-mob mentality that's been humanity's preferred means of doing business for many millenia.
The reason I think this is a big deal is that it leads us to rationalize a lot of brutality. It's almost as if inside many (most?) people is a powerful need to hurt somebody, anybody -- and once a candidate has been identified that it's OK for us to feel unadulterated contempt for, these people seize the opportunity to let loose with both barrels. It's OK to act like a monster when your target is a monster, goes the reasoning. In fact, it's probably a good thing.
Some of my fellow liberals use the aphorism, "You have to be taught to hate." I disagree. Hating comes quite naturally to most people. What you have to be taught is whom to hate, and why. And while American society has slowly (and sometimes grudgingly) given up on the idea that it's acceptable to hate people for their race, ethnicity, or religion, the hating of criminals is considered quite the norm -- and a net asset, if you're a politician or involved in the criminal justice system. You'll often hear this justified by the fact that people choose to be criminals, and that's valid -- but all the same, hatred is generally not an asset, and decisions made out of hatred aren't generally the best decisions.
Why do I think the primary purpose of the criminal justice system is, or should be, rehabilitation? Because of the outcome. If we plug "bad people" into a system whose purpose is punishment, the best we can hope to get out is thoroughly punished bad people (or dead people). But if the system's purpose is rehabilitation, plugging "bad people" in can get "good people" out. That seems to be a much better deal, and much more effective at preventing crime.
But the objections that I've heard to this idea generally center around the idea that rehabilitating bad people means treating them too well. Regardless of the idea's effectiveness in crime prevention or general morality, a good many people simply find it emotionally unacceptable because the bad guy ends up better off. They ignore the big picture aspect completely, focusing entirely on the fact that somebody did something bad, and something good was done to them in return. And that just feels wrong, like encouraging bad behavior. So no matter what the "facts" say, the truth must be that the best way to stop bad people from doing bad things is to do bad things to them when they do. An eye for an eye. Why would that have made it into the Bible if it wasn't a good idea?
(The fact that this makes the issue so simple undoubtedly helps explain its widespread appeal.)
So in order to deal with their emotional need to hurt somebody, many people have come up with a moral justification for it in certain "bad people" cases. And one of the larger problems with that is this:
It leads us to believe that hurting bad people is the same thing as doing good.
And it's not.
( More beneath the cut, if you're not already sick of reading... )
--- Ajax. |
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