This post comes as a delayed response to a large-scale discussion between family members on the implications of Capital Punishment, all in the wake of Joseph Wood's botched execution by lethal injection in Arizona. After substantial time to consider my views on Criminal Justice, I am still unable to give a 100% certain view on the subject, purely due to the nature of crime and the variations that exist between cases; one convicted murderer is not necessarily the same as another. A woman defending herself against a violently abusive partner, lashing out in self-defence may still be interned at Her Majesty's pleasure for murder, just like a psychotic axe murderer with a concept of "guilt" far removed from the aforementioned abuse victim. What, then, should be society's answer to crime and its perpetrators, because imprisoning any and all does not work and neither does the Stalin-esque approach.
Marshall Stalin once quipped on the finality of death as a problem solver; "No Man, No Problem!" Which would seem to infer Capital punishment for extremely dangerous criminals solves the problem of that criminal. Admittedly, such a system is, at least, straightforward. It is, however, completely and utterly riddled with moral, legal and statistical objections. I agree with Desmond Tutu; "If you take a life when a life has been taken, that's revenge not justice." Capital Punishment is not acceptable and should never be acceptable in the 21st Century. I cannot understand how anyone in Britain could see the Death Penalty as viable when we deplore justice in some countries where thieving children lose a hand for stealing, homosexuals are publically hanged and adulterous women are stoned to death.
Miscarriages of justice are not as rare as we would like in Britain and such a system would invite chaos if Capital Punishment meant the execution of someone who could later be found to be innocent. In certain terrorism cases, new problems would arise from such false convictions resulting in martyrdom.
A large proportionof Capital Punishment advocates incite the idea that the threat of the electric chair, hangman's noose or lethal injection acts as a deterrent to would-be criminals. This argument is false and the evidence shows why. If execution is a good deterrent, then why is death row in many a US State as populated as they are and not awash with empty cells? Furthermore, statistical analyses have shown that States with execution invariably have higher murder rates than non-executing States. There is no evidence of any credibility to suggest that Capital Punishment is a deterrent or a suitable sentence in a modern justice system.
So where does that leave us? We cannot let heinous crimes go undealt with and incarceration in prison is not the cure-all some would believe, besides, it costs too much in the modern age of human rights. (And no, we cannot do away with human rights; they are like the Nuclear Bomb, Religion and the iPhone - we cannot uninvent them!)
The first step is to stop giving mandatory prison sentences for drug users, alcoholics, and others with addictive, compulsive disorders. The same is true of those who commit crimes that originate from addictive behaviours, for example, gamblers who steal to fund their addiction or people who endanger others' lives for the sake of adrenaline. Any repeat offender is technically insane (trying to repeat the same thing expecting different results) and while they do not all require a padded cell and a straightjacket, Britain should be tapping its market of Psychologists to address these issues and fix people who are broken.
Some, of course, don't fit in to this category, such as our earlier female who killed her abusive partner in self-defence. One advantage to British justice is the nature of sentencing, and that a crime's nature can be accounted for regarding how harsh a sentence should be. Nonetheless, by its very nature, criminality is abnormal and this means prisons are largely populated by technical weirdoes. Psychology is a fast-growing, ever-evolving branch of science and should be exploited to its fullest to bring down the prison population and the economic drag on society it causes.
The bottom line is not to reinforce criminality negatively, but to show how "good" behaviour is rewarded either by its own merits or by a direct reward. We spend our early lives learning that good teamwork in sport will result in victory, that behaving ourselves brings good things and that we should treat others as we ourselves wish to be treated. Yet, at adulthood, for many, there is a choice between the mundane and unrewarding or an easier, sometimes criminal way that brings potential punishments. Some parts of restorative justice involve combining logic and empathy to illustrate why a wrong thing is wrong and how far reaching the repercussions are of criminality and if those elements are fixed within a thief, drug-trafficker or assaulter then half-the battle is fought in changing someone from a harmful drain on society to someone who fits in with what is expected of a civilized citizen.
Justice needs to be truly transformative, not merely a way of visiting punishment on people who break the law. Punishments still need to exist, but only in tandem with a system that makes those who are broken realize what has gone seriously wrong with themselves and then mend themselves, and their ways permanently so they can, safely, participate in making the human race work in its oh so idiosyncratic ways.
