The Futility of Justice

[Orlion]

Yep, the more I think about it, the more I think Justice is a nebulous, arbitrary concept with no intrinsic moral value. I also think, because such emotional weight is placed upon it, it's one of the most damaging concepts both to the individual and to society.

I'll just let that sit for a while... as a catalyst, if you will

[aliantha]

If you equate "justice" with "revenge," I agree with you.

[danlo]

Albert Schweitzer:

Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, and in opposition to it -- a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.

[Fist and Faith]

In most cases, I don't think there is justice. If you rob somebody, having to pay them back is justice. Probably pay a little extra, because a lot of their time and energy that could have gone into something else was wasted trying to get you to pay them back.

But how do you pay somebody back if you kill, rape, or harm them? You can't. Being in jail isn't balancing the scales. Being in jail for the rest of your life might be a good idea, since that would stop you from doing it again.

Doing to you what was done to them doesn't balance anything. It's just revenge, designed to make the victim feel good.

If we could truly rehabilitate people, so we knew they wouldn't do things again, jail wouldn't even be necessary. If someone was truly sorry about what the harm they caused, and it was assured that they wouldn't do it again, jail would serve no purpose aside from revenge.

[rusmeister]

In most cases, I don't think there is justice. If you rob somebody, having to pay them back is justice. Probably pay a little extra, because a lot of their time and energy that could have gone into something else was wasted trying to get you to pay them back.

But how do you pay somebody back if you kill, rape, or harm them? You can't. Being in jail isn't balancing the scales. Being in jail for the rest of your life might be a good idea, since that would stop you from doing it again.

Doing to you what was done to them doesn't balance anything. It's just revenge, designed to make the victim feel good.

If we could truly rehabilitate people, so we knew they wouldn't do things again, jail wouldn't even be necessary. If someone was truly sorry about what the harm they caused, and it was assured that they wouldn't do it again, jail would serve no purpose aside from revenge.

Your thoughts have been thought before, and answered before...

According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments. If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment. Otherwise, society cannot continue.

My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.

The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.

more...
www.angelfire.com/pro/lewiscs/humanitarian.html

[Fist and Faith]

That's all well and good. However, something has to be done. "Gee, I hope he doesn't do that again" is not the answer. As I've been saying in our other discussions, society will fall apart if we don't prevent certain behaviors. In order to prevent the destruction of the society, these behaviors must be prevented. Everyone must be denied the right to murder. Those who do it anyway must be stopped from doing it again. Having done it, they have given up certain other rights and freedoms. Tough luck. If you don't want to go to jail as punishment for murder, or undergo psychotherapy to stop you from doing it again, then don't murder. Don't expect us to wring our hands and do nothing for fear of objectifying the murderer.

[Menolly]

That's all well and good. However, something has to be done. "Gee, I hope he doesn't do that again" is not the answer. As I've been saying in our other discussions, society will fall apart if we don't prevent certain behaviors. In order to prevent the destruction of the society, these behaviors must be prevented. Everyone must be denied the right to murder. Those who do it anyway must be stopped from doing it again. Having done it, they have given up certain other rights and freedoms. Tough luck. If you don't want to go to jail as punishment for murder, or undergo psychotherapy to stop you from doing it again, then don't murder. Don't expect us to wring our hands and do nothing for fear of objectifying the murderer.

hmm...
Sounds like shades of A Clockwork Orange to me.
...not that I have anything to offer as an alternative.

[rusmeister]

That's all well and good. However, something has to be done. "Gee, I hope he doesn't do that again" is not the answer. As I've been saying in our other discussions, society will fall apart if we don't prevent certain behaviors. In order to prevent the destruction of the society, these behaviors must be prevented. Everyone must be denied the right to murder. Those who do it anyway must be stopped from doing it again. Having done it, they have given up certain other rights and freedoms. Tough luck. If you don't want to go to jail as punishment for murder, or undergo psychotherapy to stop you from doing it again, then don't murder. Don't expect us to wring our hands and do nothing for fear of objectifying the murderer.

I don't think we disagree on that, though, Fist. The point that I wanted to make (and that is fully made in that essay) is that justice, deserved punishment, is far more humane and ultimately limited than accepting the judgement of some experts who could, in the name of curing, impose unlimited "curing" as they saw it (1984?).

[Vraith]

There is an obvious dual nature here, I think.
There is an emotionally weighted connotation of justice that desires a balance, a feeling that the punishment is a counterweight for the victim's pain/suffering.
Sometimes this is possible, but for some crimes there is no punishment that will counter it.

But there is a less emotionally attached [though not completely severed] connotation, and this is the part we can try to codify in Law. The roots of this meaning are fairly simple, even though the implementation, effects and implications are complicated and debatable.
The roots are that everyone is subject to the same standards, treated equally when accused. Of course, this connects back to the emotional at the next step because of the notion that the punishment should fit the crime...
And deterence [at and after the punishment stage] has no real relationship with justice. It might have some relation before any act, if you think that teaching citizens the rules, expectations, consequences is a kind of deterence. .
Overall, though...the first post is correct: it is nebulous.
And it doesn't have any intrinsic value, moral or otherwise. But no intrinsic value is not equivalent to no value at all.

[aliantha]

There is an emotionally weighted connotation of justice that desires a balance, a feeling that the punishment is a counterweight for the victim's pain/suffering.
Sometimes this is possible, but for some crimes there is no punishment that will counter it.

And I think this is what may have been among the things that spawned the idea of God meting out justice in Heaven -- of people who don't get what's coming to them here in this life having to answer to Somebody after death.

I think a lot of things in the human psyche cause humans to want to believe that there's more to existence than the plane we're currently inhabiting.

Note that I'm not saying that this impetus doesn't prove that an afterlife must/must not exist. I tend to think there *is* one, but just because I wish there was one doesn't make it so.

[rusmeister]

There is an emotionally weighted connotation of justice that desires a balance, a feeling that the punishment is a counterweight for the victim's pain/suffering.
Sometimes this is possible, but for some crimes there is no punishment that will counter it.

And I think this is what may have been among the things that spawned the idea of God meting out justice in Heaven -- of people who don't get what's coming to them here in this life having to answer to Somebody after death.

I think a lot of things in the human psyche cause humans to want to believe that there's more to existence than the plane we're currently inhabiting.

Note that I'm not saying that this impetus doesn't prove that an afterlife must/must not exist. I tend to think there *is* one, but just because I wish there was one doesn't make it so.

Yet the curious thing is that this desire is practically universal. That suggests something that contradicts the idea that practically all of humanity is merely thinking wishfully or fantasizing.

[Fist and Faith]

It gives one reason to consider the possibility. But it is not evidence, any more than humans all having two arms is. If one asks why some don't have three, some four, some seven, some two, the fact that we all have two is not proof that we were intentionally made to have two. And the fact that this desire is practically universal is not, either. There's no reason to think, if there is no creator, people don't have psychological similarities, just as we have physical ones.

I'd be EXTREMELY interested in the results if we were able to see how everybody currently alive would feel/believe about this (among other things) if all were raised without any hint of religion. Would practically all people come to have a feeling, or even a hope, that there is a being meting out justice after we died?

And yes, I see you worded it such that you're not saying it is proof, or evidence. I'm just speaking to the point in general.

[aliantha]

Well, but Fist, religion had to start *some*where. I'm not willing to go as far as rus is, obviously. But a whole lot of people had to agree at some point, or had to be talked into agreeing, that there must be something other plane of existence than the one we're on.

OTOH, I think the desire to have enough material things to take care of all of our wants and needs is near-universal, too. And yet we have religions a) talking us out of that desire, b) telling us that we just have to wait 'til the next life to get it, c) telling us you just have to work hard enough in *this* life to get it (the "religion" of capitalism, if you will), d) suggesting that if you *don't* have it now, you're not wishing hard enough (a la "The Secret"). And so on. Just having a near-universal urge for something-or-other doesn't prove anything.

[Avatar]

Like Fist, I don't really think there is justice. There may be restitution, but unless all you mean by justice is "fairness" then it's unlikely that we're achieving much in those stakes.

At Uni we studied Rawls' theory of justice, but while the principle may be interesting, his insistence on the veil of ignorance makes it impractical, if not downright impossible, to actually obtain a workable system of justice from.

Nope, justice is either fairness, revenge, or nothing.

As an author once wrote,

There is no justice. There is just us.

--A

[rusmeister]

It all depends on your worldview.
And whose worldview (if any) turns out to be the actual objective truth.

[Vraith]

Like Fist, I don't really think there is justice. There may be restitution, but unless all you mean by justice is "fairness" then it's unlikely that we're achieving much in those stakes.

At Uni we studied Rawls' theory of justice, but while the principle may be interesting, his insistence on the veil of ignorance makes it impractical, if not downright impossible, to actually obtain a workable system of justice from.

Nope, justice is either fairness, revenge, or nothing.

As an author once wrote,

There is no justice. There is just us.

--A

Heh..I once wrote in a truly aweful poem
in mindworld comfortless
cruelcold justice
lives, and is just
ice.

[Fist and Faith]

It all depends on your worldview.
And whose worldview (if any) turns out to be the actual objective truth.

Well, since we won't learn the answer of whose worldview (if any) is the actual objective truth until we die, if even then, we have to base our decisions in these matters on other things.