Monday, April 17, 2017
Eye for an Eye and the White Bear
The White Bear program where the lady is forced to live through the same crime she committed over and over can in no way be seen as justice. Justice, though harsh, is still fair. It would be one thing if she was forced to live through it once and was then sent to jail to carry out her sentence. For is an eye for an eye when carried out by a justice system and not individuals the best form of justice? Keep in mind that justice is synonymous with fairness, it is no more than what the criminal did to the victim and no less. Would it not be fair that if Johnny was attacked by Riley and sliced Johnny's face making Johnny blind, then a form of justice would be blinding Riley. Though eye for an eye would get complicated in cases of rape when it would become difficult for the punishment to be carried out because the justice department would have to then employ a rapist in order to mediate the punishment because it would be ethically questionable to put such a crime on the head of any man or woman, the guilt would be tremendous, and as we've seen with soldiers that come home from war that bring the war home with them, it could possibly have a negative impact on their lives. The crime would then spread as it impacted the punisher and his life, but then employing a known rapist, someone who would not be affected mentally by the act, would be, for lack of a better descriptor, feeding the beast, giving in to the criminal. While it could be argued that this known rapist is fulfilling a necessary position in society as the punisher of rapists, hiring the rapist to rape would surmount to rewarding the act of raping and could encourage future rapists to act on their urges (don't worry I gagged while it came out) which would go against one of the other factors of Eye for an Eye punishment, fear. The person must follow the golden rule of "treat others how you would want to be treated" because if not they get treated the way that they treated others. Of course, you do find the occasional deviant that wants to be harmed the same way that he harms others, but we'll ignore that for now and possibly forever. But the point is Eye for an Eye relies on the fear that if I kill someone, I get killed. If I brutally harm someone, I get brutally harmed the same way. Then when we get these crimes that require someone to commit an act as heinous as rape, we cannot ethically make someone commit the act and then live with it, but then the fear of retribution is gone. The whole system would fall apart without that fear, and the justice system must act justly, other wise what's the point. The argument would be hiring someone to rape someone would be unjust because either (A) the person enjoys raping other people or (B) the person does not enjoy raping other people and then has to live with the guilt and shame that comes from the act along with any diseases the person being punished has. We've established that eye for an eye would not work for this, and it can be agreed that preventative measures would be best, but there will always be rapists, and they must always be punished. The modern idea for punishment is lock them away so that they can't harm anybody else while the reflect on their actions, but they're always released eventually, those that don't get life sentences which is uncommon for one time events that aren't murder. This system has very mixed results after all many criminals go on to repeat the same crime. There must be a system that (A) provides fear for any future perpetrators, (B) provides treatment and real rehabilitation for perpetrators, while also (C) preventing any future crimes committed by the perpetrator especially those of the same type. (A) and (C) will at times go together hand in hand.
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very interesting thoughts on this topic. You mentioned that fairness is an important aspect of justice, and that fear is an important aspect of punishment. How do you see these two things (fairness and fear) going together? More generally, how do justice and punishment relate to each other? Are they the same thing or different things?
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