retributive justice

i was talking to sarah about the bomb at the boston marathon and she came right out with this how's-the-weather declaration about how whoever did it has just got to die. they killed these people, made the world a worse place, and so forfeited their right to be alive. she allowed, alternatively, that they could be banished, if that was still a thing that happened. this was kind of staggering to me because i've always taken it for granted that the idea of justice as punishment was medieval, savage, bonkers. capital punishment, without even the pretense of rehabilitation and reform, was beyond fucking crazy. i don't know how to argue against something as radically primitive as An Eye For An Eye. I thought we were past this shit.

Maybe the best way of approaching it is in complicating the idea of a person's guilt. someone like sarah comes out swinging saying THEY DID IT! THEY HAD A CHOICE TO DO IT OR NOT DO IT AND THEY DID IT! THEY GOTTA PAY! Punishment as Justice rationales often seem to rest on the final, ultimate act, the bad, bad thing, and forget the typically complicating lead up. They make it just a person and their crime

punishment as a deterrent: savage and wrong and straightforwardly ineffective. sometimes it ends up looking effective because all the people who might've ended up committing crimes are jailed so eagerly that you end up depopulating whole neighborhoods. and who is this "example"? who is this individual to whom justice is by definition denied?

punishment as a response to the complex circumstances that lead someone to that hideous criminal moment: simplifying; it's forgetful that the people who commit crimes are (generally, i think) in a low-ass spot. crime is the fruit of a conspiracy of shitty circumstances in a life, a flailing, usually thoughtless and sometimes flat out insane response. punishment means plucking that low hanging fruit and forgetting the barren earth and toxic rain and blighted orchard from whence it came.

punishment as reparation, as revenge for the victim: shades of blood feuding. also, just dubiously personal and subjective. maim a famous person and it's a universal tragedy; maim a homeless person (MURDER a homeless person!) and who cares—can that not but unjustly, evilly color a judicial proceeding?

crime is either a rational (however crude) reaction to one's circumstances, or insanity. that insanity can either be a fleeting passion or desperation, or a long term stupor because of an insular life, an ignorant mind.

this country loves stories of incredibly stupid criminals, but lost in that is that crime IS an incredibly stupid thing. virtually fucking everybody gets caught and dumped in a horrifically poorly run prison system in which tens of thousands of rapes happen yearly. people who commit crimes are generally enterprising morons. think of this when thinking of punishing these people. do you punish the mentally disabled? ignorance, drug-addled desperation, the banal, unending misery of being a poor, oppressed person in this country, all inhibit people's ability to think clearly enough about how incredibly stupid it is to commit crimes. these are the people you want to punish?

then, inevitably, there are The Evil Ones, the psychopaths or whatever. those whose evil is intrinsic and essential. punishing such people has got nothing to do with them. it can only be for the victims, can only be vengeful reparations. punishing the incurables is mean, small, sentimental, pointless.