This bothered me, but this since this is GQ, I’ll spoiler my rant:
I never understood this kind of thinking. Why does the ideal have to include everyone instead of leaving a little room for exceptions? It’s not about vengeance or even punishment, just practicality. If an offender stands a reasonable chance of rehabilitation, great, let’s do everything we can to help… but if not, or if that person is a clear and present danger to others, why the hell should taxpayers pay to keep him around for the remainder of his life?
I’d be just fine with a criminal justice system that treats 99% of its prisoners as royalty while it puts to death the remaining 1% deemed too dangerous or obviously unwilling to ever reintegrate. I don’t have to think of Anders as a monster. I just wouldn’t want him in my society. It’s like putting down a rabid dog regardless of your feelings towards it; there’s just no good reason to keep it around.
A moral code can treat every person equally while discriminating based on their actions. That’s the whole point of a code: To suggest ideal actions, and conversely, consequences for undesired actions. Mass murder could mean an automatic execution, and there’d be nothing unfair about that if everyone knew the rules and only those who choose to commit it face the consequences.
To suggest that something like that is depraved is, I think, to hold an unrealistic and ultimately counter-productive view of the world and of the range of possible human behaviors. Just as a person wouldn’t be hailed a hero for mundane acts of good, a person wouldn’t be subject to the harshest consequences for mundane acts of evil. Extraordinary acts, however, can be met with extraordinary responses. You can account for gradients of actions and consequences while still being fair.
“Nothing but animals” is a meaningless argument. We are animals, and like many animals, sometimes we kill for necessity, sometimes we kill for convenience, and sometimes we kill for cruelty. A mass murderer kills out of cruelty or a misguided sense of necessity (as determined by the society). To execute that murderer would be an act of necessary self-defense or, at worst, an act of pragmatism that would free up resources for other uses.
What is depraved is to allow your society to be ruled by ideals so short-sighted and rigid that it would sooner protect a person who has no interest in being a part of it as you know it, a person who seeks to destroy everything it stands for from the inside out, rather than realizing that perhaps your ideals could use a little more nuance. Denouncing force only works if all your opponents agree to it too; otherwise, it’s like arming your soldiers with protest signs that say “Thou shall not kill” as your enemies nuke your cities one by one. Sure, you may held steadfast to your useless ideal until the very end, but then there’d be none of you left to spread that ideal and the world would be replaced by a much less desirable set of rules, arguably resulting in much greater suffering overall. Holding true to an ideal that silly is neither humane nor noble. It’s insane and suicidal.
Reply, people are complaining about the conditions he is being held in now, before there has even been a trial. Can we at least agree that everyone deserves a trial?
Well, Reply, I’m not talking about four star accomodations, or anything remotely luxurious or decadent. Magiver voiced annoyance that the man is being provided with a bed and a cell that isn’t crawling with rats. When we talk about human rights, that needs to apply to everyone. I’m not necessarily saying the death penalty goes against that (tho I believe it does). I say house the man in a basic cell with basic accomodations, or give him a quick death, but there’s no call for dungeons, torture, horrid living conditions because it isn’t just about that particular criminal, it’s also about the men and women who have to run such places and carry out such punishments. That is NOT something that should happen in a society that professes to believe in equal human rights.
You misunderstand. Sorry, I wasn’t being clear.
I don’t care about Anders. I was using him as an example. Yes, I agree that he deserves a trial (although he already confessed, so I’m not sure what’s left to try). Beyond that, I don’t care where he is right now or where he’s going, because he’s not American and I have no interest in changing Norwegian rules.
I was speaking hypothetically of the kind of society I’d want to live in, not Norway in particular… if anything, it’d be a future America. My reply was to Indygrrl’s statement (only). And what I was trying to say (with less emotion and less ranting) is just that I don’t believe in cruel or unusual punishment either, but I see nothing cruel or unusual about justified executions for certain prisoners.
I believe that the one-size-fit-all, prison-as-punishment approach has spectacularly failed. Instead, in this hypothetical society, I’d like to see a system split into rehabilitation for most and execution for the rest – if we believe a prisoner is fixable, we’ll try, and if not, they die. Under no circumstances will they be left to rot in a jail cell (regardless of its luxuries) because that wastes their time and wastes our money. I’m not really sure who “life in prison” serves except prison companies.
In that we agree. I don’t think bleak conditions do any good. Even as a deterrent, I think the costs to the psyche of the imprisoned (thus lessening their chances of rehabilitation) would outweigh the benefit of any crime prevention those conditions would cause.
Though I have to say that’s just my gut feeling, and I would love to see actual data backing it up.
This little article about Brevik’s lawyer sums up my feelings on the issue, I agree with everything he stands for.
Whether he was responsible for his actions, and thus whether he deserves any punishment at all.
There’s no way he will be deemed not responsible for his actions, at least not if Norwegian courts reason the same way as the Swedish ones. For this to happen you must be totally raving mad and out of your mind, which Breivik isn’t.
Breivik has confessed, but he has also entered a plea of not guilty.
Several days ago, the media reported that in his statements prior to his deed, he wrote that he expected to be tortured once caught by the police; this was given as evidence that he lives in a different reality far away.
If that is already enough to be criminally-not-liable-insane, I don’t know.
Well, even with all our ideals of the judiciary system as a body independent of politics, I don’t think it’ll ever be (politically) possible to declare Breivik insane enough to not be responsible for his actions.
I’m willing to bet a case of good Belgian beer against a can of Bud Light that he’ll be declared legally responsible for his actions and that he’ll get a sentence of at least 21 years preventive detention.