Glenn the Great
03-12-2006, 08:42 PM
Just recently in the news, the overthrown dictator of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, has died in prison of a heart attack near the end of his trial for war crimes against the Serbian people. What has been catching my attention about many of the news stories is an overwhelming sense of utter disappointment in the fact that by dying he has "Thwarted Justice" or "Escaped Responsibility" since his trial wasn't over yet.
The man is dead. Dead. What more do people want?
I personally have no care for the man. He was a terrible butchering tyrant, but he's dead. My interest in this story and peoples' reactions to it are because they are a good example of a problem I have with many peoples' idea of justice. Some ideas which I find absurd and not worthy of the admiration that the concept of justice should have.
There have always been people like this who do damage against society or the world around them in some way. I am a firm believer that the aim of justice, or the solution to the problem, is to focus on separating the perputrator from the outside world through either prison or death (if necessary.) Contain the offender, and the problem vanishes.
People always struggle with the idea of whether a prison's purpose should be
to isolate the offender so he does no more harm, or simply to "punish" the offender. I believe in the former, and the only justification I see for "punishment", is in cases where it is understood that the offender will be released in the future, and thus there is the legitimate concern for stopping recidivism (future offenses.)
But that simply isn't the case in matters like this where if the sentence isn't death, it is sure that the offender will spend the rest of his life in prison. In cases like this, the only reasonable goal is the separation from society. In Milosevic's case, his death has effectively satisfied this goal. So why is there so much anger over the matter?
This anger makes me picture in my mind the people set against the offender as being ravenous hounds bearing their teeth. Not the kind of picture one should have when thinking of a righteous and just judge of another person.
Humans would sentence a man to die behind bars, make his life miserable, and if he tries to commit suicide, they will go out of their way to frustrate his efforts in an attempt to prolong his miserable life of suffering. This is what prisons do to their prisoners. It is a spirit like this that makes people discontent with a man like Milosevic's death, when his death in the end of his terror.
Justice is not about creating suffering in one man to balance out the suffering he caused to others. Two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that I live in a world where I am surrounded by people who think like this gives me shivers. It makes me realize the glaring evil that goes up the chain of "authority." Knowing things like this make me reluctant to have anything to do with most other people.
Why do I seem to be the only one interested in fixing problems rather than kicking a fallen horse?
The man is dead. Dead. What more do people want?
I personally have no care for the man. He was a terrible butchering tyrant, but he's dead. My interest in this story and peoples' reactions to it are because they are a good example of a problem I have with many peoples' idea of justice. Some ideas which I find absurd and not worthy of the admiration that the concept of justice should have.
There have always been people like this who do damage against society or the world around them in some way. I am a firm believer that the aim of justice, or the solution to the problem, is to focus on separating the perputrator from the outside world through either prison or death (if necessary.) Contain the offender, and the problem vanishes.
People always struggle with the idea of whether a prison's purpose should be
to isolate the offender so he does no more harm, or simply to "punish" the offender. I believe in the former, and the only justification I see for "punishment", is in cases where it is understood that the offender will be released in the future, and thus there is the legitimate concern for stopping recidivism (future offenses.)
But that simply isn't the case in matters like this where if the sentence isn't death, it is sure that the offender will spend the rest of his life in prison. In cases like this, the only reasonable goal is the separation from society. In Milosevic's case, his death has effectively satisfied this goal. So why is there so much anger over the matter?
This anger makes me picture in my mind the people set against the offender as being ravenous hounds bearing their teeth. Not the kind of picture one should have when thinking of a righteous and just judge of another person.
Humans would sentence a man to die behind bars, make his life miserable, and if he tries to commit suicide, they will go out of their way to frustrate his efforts in an attempt to prolong his miserable life of suffering. This is what prisons do to their prisoners. It is a spirit like this that makes people discontent with a man like Milosevic's death, when his death in the end of his terror.
Justice is not about creating suffering in one man to balance out the suffering he caused to others. Two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that I live in a world where I am surrounded by people who think like this gives me shivers. It makes me realize the glaring evil that goes up the chain of "authority." Knowing things like this make me reluctant to have anything to do with most other people.
Why do I seem to be the only one interested in fixing problems rather than kicking a fallen horse?