| Now think about this rationally for a moment, without the emotion involved.
We've been hanging, flogging, drawing and quatering, stoning people to death, maiming and beheading people in some part of the world since time began. Mediaeval methods.
Has it stopped people raping or murdering?
Of course not. You see, as ScottyB said, there is and always will be a certain percentage of people in the world who are either mad or bad. People who have become so dehumanised, either through mental illness or conditioning, that they simply can't control their primal urges to rape, abuse, beat up or murder others. These people will always form the underbelly of civilised society, there will always be a pool of people who the rest of us might view as just plain evil.
So here is the moral dilemma. By definition, we can't do anything about these people unless they commit some form of crime. We certainly can't put people in the gas chamber just because they 'might' cause some harm to sections of our society one day - a bloke called hitler tried that. So we can only act after the event, by which time it's too late for the victim.
Do we kill that person after the event then? What purpose does it serve? It won't stop other people being raped and murdered because there will always be psycopaths and perverts at large in our society. So the only purpose that taking somebody's life away from them serves is that they wouldn't be able to commit a serious crime again.
But then, so does locking them up and melting down the key.
The difference is that while human beings sit as judge and jury, while human beings perform the forensic and DNA tests, there is always room for error, or incompetence, or even plain malice. Look at how many times people in pathology labs, for example, find themselves at the centre of a shock horror investigation because simple 'routine tests' such as cervical smears or cancer tests have been cocked up by supposedly competent and trustworthy people.
Look at the number of high profile cases where a police force has 'fitted up' people who have later proved to be innocent - either because they've seized an opportunity to nail a little scroat that they've wanted to put behind bars for ages, or because there is political or social pressure put upon them for a quick result.
While there is the slightest doubt over any of the evidence, even when a conviction has been secured, you have to retain the chance to put right any mistake that you might make. If you kill someone, that possibility doesn't exist. That is the only way we can truly call ourselves civilised.
And before anybody points a finger accusing me of being a wooly liberal let me tell you a story. I've already posted a thread about what me and my family have had to put up with these last few months.
In October, my wife was attacked in the toilets of a pub in Oxford. Somebody pushed their way into the cubicle just as she had unlocked the door to leave, pushed a black cloth into her face so that she couldn't see who they were, bundled her back into the cubicle and raped her. The cloth was most likely soaked in some form of 'date rape' drug because her recollection of what happened between being pushed back inside and coming round about 20 inutes later is hazy and comes in flashbacks.
The Police haven't got enough to go on and after 3 months investigation decided to put the case on hold and just file it.
Now the thing is, thinking about that days events, I have my own suspicions about a guy that was in the pub talking to her earlier on. In my mind, he did it. I remember his face and I could make it my business to spend all my spare time travelling to Oxford to go on a vigilante hunt for him. I've been training in Karate for the last 4 years and I could probably beat that person to a pulp - maybe even kill him. But what if I get it wrong? What if the person I suspect is completely innocent? What if I get the wrong guy, just someone who looks like him? What does that make me?
Hang 'em and flog 'em is just a knee jerk reaction and, with all due respect, shows a paucity of thought in my opinion
Its only other purpose is revene. Revenge? Where does that get you. I think that people who take up cudgels and shout 'hang em, flog em' on behalf of the victim may not truly understand what the victims of a violent crime might want. Nothing will 'unrape' my wife, nothing will bring back the victims of murder. So what purpose does revenge serve?
Victims truly want a sense of justice that somebody pays for the agony they have wrought, but for me a true life sentence meaning that somebody spends the rest of their life in a barbaric environment where prisoners regualrly get beaten up and have to remember not to drop the soap in the showers is enough.  |