Showing a measure of respect for those who commit evil strikes me as a wonderful idea in principle but a horrendous idea in practice. The real question, alas, is it possible for us to respond to evil behavior on the part of a group in precisely the way that the evil members deserve to be treated without becoming evil in turn?
Of course, in a basically just society an evil person here and there is easy enough to handle. But a society full of individual people is a different matter entirely.
I am guided here by an insight from Plato’s Republic. Punishment is as it should be only if a person will indeed be morally healed. Increasingly, it seems to me that it is a mistake to think that punishment is worthwhile in and of itself.
If one supposes that the world would be a better place without evil people, then what exactly is gained by keeping such individuals in prison? Of course, there is the issue of being mistaken. And that is a reason to be extremely careful. Interestingly, most of the mistakes seem to be tied to judgments based upon circumstantial evidence. With lot and lots—indeed, the vast majority of cases—the judgment of wrongdoing is tied to concrete and irrefutable evidence.
When we have concrete and irrefutable evidence that a person has committed a horrendous crime, what is the point of keeping the person alive? Why, as the European Union, is doing so a more humane thing to do? Indeed, in what sense is keeping the person alive more humane?
The frequently made claim is that taking the life of an evil person who has destroyed the life of one more persons makes those who take that person’s life just as evil as that person is. I have never understood that argument. Indeed, precisely what the argument does is trivialize the very thing that is of the utmost importance to understanding human being, namely motivation.
Two people can perform the exact same act, but with very, very different motivations behind their doing so. We all know that. Indeed, the very thing that we want to know in many cases is not what a person did but why the person did what she or he did.
We cannot hold that motivations make all the difference in the world and at the very same time insist, but without argument, that the putting a murderer to death makes one as evil as the murderer. I do not see what makes keeping a murderer alive a particularly humane thing to do. Quite the contrary, it might reveal a lack of courage and moral fiber on the part of those who insist upon doing so. After all, who says that doing the right thing is always easy?
If, for instance, my dearest male friend of 20 years should rape a woman, then surely I need to put some distance between me and him, notwithstanding all the wonderful things that we have shared. Or so it is until that person merits forgiveness. Yet, there is nothing at all easy about distancing oneself from a dear friend of 20 years. Nothing at all.
What we know is that generally prisons do not rehabilitate. Indeed, we know that prisons are often extremely fertile ground for wrongdoing. This simple truth casts further doubt upon the claim that keeping an egregious wrongdoer alive but in prison is the more humane thing to do. Would someone please tell me what exactly is so humane about putting a person in a context where she or he will either be a victim of evil or perhaps will have to become even more evil in order to avoid becoming a victim of evil?
As I noted earlier, a most common objection to the death penalty is that the wrong person may be put to death. But if prison is as horrific as it seems to be, I fail to see how incarcerating the wrong person for 20 years, say, is somehow considerably less harmful if prisons are as horrific a place as people claim that they are. This is to privilege being alive above the horrific reality of the experience itself, as if merely being alive militates against the horror that one endured. A man who was routinely raped in prison for 20 years might surely think otherwise.
John Stuart Mill pleaded for capital punishment on precisely the grounds that it is the more humane thing to do. So far I have yet to hear a very good argument against him.
Decent people seem rather indifferent to the horrors that prisoners endure. Is keeping people alive such a significant psychological threshold that being more accepting of the death penalty—and so accepting of the death penalty for a greater range of criminal behavior—would render society more morally numb? Indeed, more morally numb than we have already become? Alas, if this question admits of an affirmative answer, that is anything but obvious.
The moral of the story may very well be none other than that displays of humanity should have limits. And that may require moral courage and self-discipline than most of have.
Based upon your entry, do you believe that sociopaths can be determined as children? According to the DSM-IV one cannot determine a “sociopath” until one reaches adulthood. Would you suggest that children can be labeled as sociopaths? If you commit to the fact that children can be sociopaths, would you believe that society should siphon these individuals off from the rest of the greater population? Due to the fact that sociopaths cannot be rehabilitated this would seem to be a logical solution to ensuring that these individuals do not wreak havoc upon society, such was the case with Theodore Bundy.
I am not disagreeing with you that prisons do not rehabilitate prisoners, however, what would you suggest would be a viable solution to handling these individuals after their crimes have been committed. Surely mass execution would be effective in terminating these menaces to society; however, not all crimes are equal (stealing a loaf of bread compared to rape/murder). Therefore, do you believe that all murderers and rapists should be either executed, sterilized or perhaps both? And what if we presuppose that a murderer can in fact be rehabilitated and be released back into society, or at the very least incarcerate this person for the rest of their life. Should we adopt a utilitarian mentality that although some murderers/rapists can be rehabilitated, society should in fact terminate all of these individual due to the fact that if only one remains to be kept alive more damage will be ascertained from this action rather than benefit.
Indeed, it would seem that capital punishment does not serve society as a deterrent to crimes, but rather it acts as a method to cleanse society of these criminals. Therefore, is the justice system truly aimed at rehabilitation or the deterrence of future crimes in the first place, or is the system more geared at serving the ultimate or ongoing punishment to those individuals whom have broken society’s laws? Another question which stems from this argument is if there is a human option to “properly” bring individuals to justice after they have committed a crime against society.
If society merely terminates individuals based upon the fact that they are indeed sociopaths or they have committed heinous crimes, is society adopting a method of eugenics to its legal system? Finally, I will beg the question of what is proper and right in order to deter/punish those who will/have commit/ted extreme atrocities against humanity? Is a mass grave the option or are there other alternatives? It would seem that with the case of sociopaths (ex. Theodore Bundy), there is no viable solution in order to rehabilitate these individuals. Shall society utilize this principle for all criminals in order to maintain “the greater good?”