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Wankerous redux
Jan. 11th, 2009 12:12 pmI was looking through some older entries in LJ and, upon reading this one I realised that the idea that had sparked off this whole train of thought in the first place had been completely missed in tangential waffling.
The thing that started it was was the question "Why do we punish those who've done something wrong?" I'm not saying that there aren't good reason to have punitive measures and indeed when it's touched on at all, we hear mutterings about deterrence and rehabilitation and suchlike, but I don't find it convincing. If those really were the reason for punishing those who commit crimes, why are punishments varied according to crime? Why doesn't intent carry more weight than the crime committed? Most tellingly, why do we talk about what the criminal deserves when sentences are discussed? As near as I can tell, the main purpose of sentencing is to make the criminal suffer. This is something that is so deeply ingrained that even once I'd realised that this is essentially a sanitised variant of the "eye for an eye" idea of justice, I was still coming up with phrases such as "getting away with" crimes while trying to nut out exactly what process was being put into action.
The fact that this was really all about visiting suffering on someone was brought home to me when reading through the vast collective schadenfreude that accompanied the extradition of Tony Mokbel. I'd like to be clear on the fact that I'm not sympathising with this man in any way. On a purely pragmatic basis, he needs to be removed from the community; he's a hideously destructive person. Having said that, watching the general reaction to him being brought back to Australia for prosecution was something I found disturbing. I got the impression that there was disappointment that he wasn't to be paraded through the streets in an open cart to be pelted with filth. This wasn't about being pleased that process of law was working, it was about watching him squirm. The law apparently works because Tony Mokbel was sad. The wrangling through the courts of Greece to get him extradited had the flavour in the media of some bizarre retributive foreplay. We watched him squirm, laughed at the dreadful wig, and with every spasming wriggle we nudged each other and grinned. "Bet he's shitting himself now." None of this fixed any problems, whether systemic such as the destructive narcotics trade or specific, such as any one of the countless lives demolished. It was purely and simply a circus.
So what are we trying to do with our penal system? Note that I'm really seriously NOT suggesting that the idea of trying and penalising criminals be abolished. That would be disastrous as the sociopathic amongst us realised that there was to be no check on their behaviour. What I'm questioning is the motivation. That motivation in turn informs the nature of sentencing and what we do with criminals while they're in custody. It takes the petty criminal, often a criminal because they have no other strategy by which to live and simply slaps them around and throws them back into the community, more disillusioned and less able to deal with life than before. It also releases clearly dangerous psychopaths back into the community because they've "done their time". In other words, we've made them sad for long enough and the danger that they pose to the general public is regrettable but not the point.
This is what I meant when I spoke of "a serious failing of our social and legal structure as a whole". It's an ethical framework which we don't see because it's so pervasive but which belongs in the past with the executions and mutilations which it once engendered, and which it still does in many parts of the world. We really need to think about how we deal with those who are ill enough that they visit violence on others, and they are ill because otherwise we're considering assault, murder and rape acts which can be committed by sane people. We need to be prepared to take the petty thieves and other sundry criminals and say "Your life strategies are crap and they're hurting both you and others and you're going to have to sort yourself out and we're going to help you with that. No, you don't have a choice in this." It's either that or we just keep taking an eye for an eye and feuding with ourselves which doesn't work any better now than it ever has.
The thing that started it was was the question "Why do we punish those who've done something wrong?" I'm not saying that there aren't good reason to have punitive measures and indeed when it's touched on at all, we hear mutterings about deterrence and rehabilitation and suchlike, but I don't find it convincing. If those really were the reason for punishing those who commit crimes, why are punishments varied according to crime? Why doesn't intent carry more weight than the crime committed? Most tellingly, why do we talk about what the criminal deserves when sentences are discussed? As near as I can tell, the main purpose of sentencing is to make the criminal suffer. This is something that is so deeply ingrained that even once I'd realised that this is essentially a sanitised variant of the "eye for an eye" idea of justice, I was still coming up with phrases such as "getting away with" crimes while trying to nut out exactly what process was being put into action.
The fact that this was really all about visiting suffering on someone was brought home to me when reading through the vast collective schadenfreude that accompanied the extradition of Tony Mokbel. I'd like to be clear on the fact that I'm not sympathising with this man in any way. On a purely pragmatic basis, he needs to be removed from the community; he's a hideously destructive person. Having said that, watching the general reaction to him being brought back to Australia for prosecution was something I found disturbing. I got the impression that there was disappointment that he wasn't to be paraded through the streets in an open cart to be pelted with filth. This wasn't about being pleased that process of law was working, it was about watching him squirm. The law apparently works because Tony Mokbel was sad. The wrangling through the courts of Greece to get him extradited had the flavour in the media of some bizarre retributive foreplay. We watched him squirm, laughed at the dreadful wig, and with every spasming wriggle we nudged each other and grinned. "Bet he's shitting himself now." None of this fixed any problems, whether systemic such as the destructive narcotics trade or specific, such as any one of the countless lives demolished. It was purely and simply a circus.
So what are we trying to do with our penal system? Note that I'm really seriously NOT suggesting that the idea of trying and penalising criminals be abolished. That would be disastrous as the sociopathic amongst us realised that there was to be no check on their behaviour. What I'm questioning is the motivation. That motivation in turn informs the nature of sentencing and what we do with criminals while they're in custody. It takes the petty criminal, often a criminal because they have no other strategy by which to live and simply slaps them around and throws them back into the community, more disillusioned and less able to deal with life than before. It also releases clearly dangerous psychopaths back into the community because they've "done their time". In other words, we've made them sad for long enough and the danger that they pose to the general public is regrettable but not the point.
This is what I meant when I spoke of "a serious failing of our social and legal structure as a whole". It's an ethical framework which we don't see because it's so pervasive but which belongs in the past with the executions and mutilations which it once engendered, and which it still does in many parts of the world. We really need to think about how we deal with those who are ill enough that they visit violence on others, and they are ill because otherwise we're considering assault, murder and rape acts which can be committed by sane people. We need to be prepared to take the petty thieves and other sundry criminals and say "Your life strategies are crap and they're hurting both you and others and you're going to have to sort yourself out and we're going to help you with that. No, you don't have a choice in this." It's either that or we just keep taking an eye for an eye and feuding with ourselves which doesn't work any better now than it ever has.
