Higgs on Crime And Punishment

Crime And Punishment
Current mood: chipper
Category: News and Politics

Crime And Punishment

This is a very old chestnut, used by politicians who would have us all believe that they and they alone can solve all our criminal problems by locking everyone up, and some believe the answer to be capital punishment, or as I like to call it, state sponsored murder, for everyone, irrespective of whether or not a crime has actually been committed. Admittedly this only applies to the extreme politician, you know, the ones that sex-up the case for going to war and use the Royal Prerogative to bypass the House of Commons. Anyway, it is my belief that the very idea of justice is in fact a kind of warped mythology. There is no such thing as justice at the end of the day; it is a figment of a politician’s and or lawyer’s limited imagination.

Gandhi said “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. Another way of looking at it perhaps is to say that there is a moral price to pay, whether or not you believe that you are right or wrong, for *legal* retribution. If that is so then where does *justice* fit in? Is justice achieved by attempting to balance what a particular society perceives to be a wrong by causing yet more pain? Does this help to alleviate grief or add to it, ultimately? Time and time again you see people on the court steps proclaiming justice has been done, but has it? I think people mistake justice for revenge, surely that’s just storing up more hatred. You simply cannot cause any kind of inconvenience to someone else without generating a negative reaction. Whatever happened to “turning the other cheek”? 
On this, what a society perceives to be a wrong business. Take Holland for instance. There you can legally have sex with a 13 year old in return for two buckets of cocaine and be given the Queens award for initiative. Thirty miles away in England, you’d get 30 years at Her Majesty’s pleasure for that! There’s no justice! Sit back down, I’m joking!

And don’t run away with the idea that America has the monopoly on reprehensible behaviour. Just a couple of years ago, here in the UK, a woman stabbed her boyfriend in an argument over a burger! I wonder, well not really, but it must have been something else to witness eh? I ordered FRIES YOU FUCKER!!! Stab Stab Stab! Whatever happened to Tony Blair’s cry/sound bite ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’? I repeat, A BURGER! Also there’s an ongoing case here now about a mother who had her own 8yr old daughter kidnapped for the sole purpose of getting money, you couldn’t make it up!

Of course at the other end of the intellectual spectrum just recently we have a lawyer’s mother suing her lawyer daughter over allegations made in a book about alleged abuse during childhood. I wonder what Christmas dinner in their house is going to be like? I ordered ROYAL SWAN YOU FUCKER!!! Stab Stab Stab! Makes you wonder just how far we’ve come since T Blair’s clause 4 statement/bollocks about the rights we enjoy reflecting the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect. Pffffff. Ultimately people do not change, as leopards do not change their spots. I say people, as a general rule, have the same sense of morality as they did in back in Tudor England. I could be wrong of course, it’s just a personal view.

Of course the punishment for these people is the fact that they are basically stuck with being them, they are prisoners inside their own heads. A neighbour of mine happens to be much disliked, to put it mildly, hated I think would be a better way to describe it. Anyway one day I casually said to my mother, “Mother I do not hate this man, in fact I feel sorry for him.” “Why my dear son?”, she said, well not exactly those words, anyway I said that I do not hate him because imagine the misery of simply being him, being consumed by all things material and staying up all night inspecting his deeds to make sure any surrounding properties were not in breach of any covenants etc. That and the unimaginable misery of being in close proximity to his pig-ugly wife, no no, being that man would be an absolute nightmare. Anyway hate requires too much energy, then again so does feeling sorry for him, hmmm a dichotomy. 

Anyway, back to the above mentioned women, now you could argue that hanging either of these women would be no great loss to society, and I would almost be inclined to agree, but what does it say about a society that chooses to punish someone, albeit of limited intelligence, to the extent that society has the God given right to take a life? I would say, it hardens society by making life itself appear almost worthless. To the pro-death lobby I would say because you are essentially asking someone else to kill/murder on your behalf, where is the morality or even justice in that? Why should you expect someone else to shoulder the burden? It’s also a submission to fear, a fear that believes crime would rocket if the death penalty were not in place. Some would argue that a life spent in prison is actually a worse punishment than death and would therefore act as a bigger deterrent.

Whenever I see a documentary on the American prison system and in particular death row, black men seem to make up the vast majority of in-mates. Some of them have done terrible things no doubt, but that surely does not justify treating them in this way. Given the recent election victory of Barack Obama, I was wondering, given his “civil rights” background, if he is going to abolish the death penalty? If Obama intends or is persuaded to leave the system alone then I think that tells you everything you need to know about the direction in which he intends to steer the American people. So, in my humble opinion, never mind Guantanamo, the death penalty is the most urgent civil rights issue he faces on his own doorstep, in his own country.

Notwithstanding, I have read that Obama is in fact pro death penalty, but only if it’s the “right guy”. FUCK ME! There I was under the impression I was right of Genghis Kahn and all the time I was left of Obama. There’s nowt as queer as folk! On a serious note, he is making the wild and dangerous assumption that a judicial system has the capacity or capability of being perfect and is therefore unable to arrive at an incorrect decision. This smacks of legal arrogance in the extreme, especially in light of the fact that every other western democracy deals with crime without the death penalty. 

I think you have to put yourself in the position of being the one person, the “one in a million”, who has been wrongly accused, even their own families don’t believe them, and then imagine that long walk to the death chamber. No matter how you look at it, it is nothing more than a system of revenge. If you look at it from a religious stand-point then where are you, exactly? Only God can give life and only God can take life away. If you believe that in your heart, then how could you possibly be pro death penalty? Does this not put Obama’s legal and religious credentials in question? Perhaps he’ll change his mind. Now that would be “change” many Americans, and I suspect those on death row, could live with, whatever they’ve done.Will he act?

We have but two Hopes, No Hope and Bob Hope

Higgs Boson

Copyright: Higgs Boson 2008