Scotland’s Lockerbie Decision Raises Spiritual and Moral Questions
Scotland recently released the only person tried and found guilty in the blowing up of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. He’s dying of cancer, has months to live and was allowed to return to Libya. His release highlights questions around how society ought to treat criminals. If the purpose of incarceration is punishment, then clearly releasing the man was the wrong thing to do.
If the purpose is punishment, then the Scots would have done well to take advantage of the opportunity to compound the suffering of cancer with the suffering of dying thousands of miles away from family and friends who believe he's innocent. However, if the purpose of incarceration is to prevent people who we believe are dangerous from doing further harm, then this purpose was accomplished.
Punishment... revenge... justice... what are the differences? And is it just me, or does it seem like the rehabilitation piece gets short shrift?
If the purpose is punishment, then the Scots would have done well to take advantage of the opportunity to compound the suffering of cancer with the suffering of dying thousands of miles away from family and friends who believe he's innocent. However, if the purpose of incarceration is to prevent people who we believe are dangerous from doing further harm, then this purpose was accomplished.
Punishment... revenge... justice... what are the differences? And is it just me, or does it seem like the rehabilitation piece gets short shrift?
Posted by Paul at 12:36 PM Permalink
21 Comments:
The law too often assumes that rehabilitation, regret and a change of mind is impossible. Who of us hasn't changed our view on things over time? Who of us hasn't done something silly when young that we just shake our heads over later on?
Are we a society that is based on Christ's teachings?
Or those of Moses?
Megrahi, who was released from prison out of compassion and sent back to his home country of Libya, vows to provide evidence before he dies that will exonerate him. He always claimed he was innocent. With due respect to the families of the victims, a dying man who is willing to spend his final days clearing his name makes it easier for me to accept MacAskill's decision.
I wholeheartedly support efforts to rehabilitate criminals. The statistics show that good rehabilitation measures cut down significantly on subsequent offenses.
You probably remember the Karla Faye Tucker case. She was the first woman since the Civil War to be executed in Texas. She committed a horrible murder. Eventually she was rehabilitated in prison through a Christian ministry program. She became a Christian. Karla asked to be allowed to live out her remaining life in prison so that she could continue her ministry there which she had started earlier. She was put to death instead.
Bernard Maddoff. What do we do with the Bernard Maddoffs in the world? What purpose would imprisonment serve in their cases? Wouldn't it be purely for retribution reasons? And if Bernard Maddoff who was stinking rich at one time were to come down with prostate cancer, would he receive as much compassion as Megrahi?
But there must be some reading this thread who disagree? I know I’ve heard some very angry family members calling for the guy to die in prison – although it has to be that out of 270 families, some don't feel that way. However, these don't seem to get quoted in the media, at least not that I've heard so far.
The fact that he and his friends and family say he’s innocent should obviously have no bearing on the situation. He was tried and convicted and found guilty and sentenced to spend his life in prison. What are the courts for if not for producing sentences that are carried out?
A life sentence is a just and humane sentence given the enormity of his crime. Because he happens to have developed a disease, “feeling sorry for him” ought not to overrule the demands of justice.
1) the virtue of compassion
2) the satisfaction of (for once) defying the USA, or rather Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the head of the FBI, countless bloodthirsty ordinary Americans who prefer vengeance to justice
3) the trade benefits which UK will now earn with Libya, to the envy of US
4) a mild feeling of what it must be like to be an enemy of the US and get away with it; as enjoyed by members of the Axis of Evil.
Therefore I think it is fine (but only from my point of view) to do whatever the people (in this case the Scots) want or feel they need to do. But it is not useful or meaningful for me to judge either party as wrong, or as less worthy of my love.
For me the desire for “justice” and “social stability” cannot be coherently connected. There is a legitimate need for the latter, while the former is problematic.
Anonymous – Compassion or, if you will, “feeling sorry for him,” aligns with rational decision making. In his condition and with a short time to live, it’s not like he poses a threat to society now. He’s essentially already served his life sentence – 99.9%.
So you might say that the case comes down to people’s feelings. Do we honor the feelings of those who want him to suffer as much as possible or those who, believing him innocent, will feel some joy and real closure at seeing him again before he dies? And it’s not like the world has never seen a miscarriage of justice. If the guy really is innocent, letting him die at home is obviously a good thing.
And will the feelings of anger and indignation from those who want to see him suffer to the max really turn to something like peace, sanity or joy if they’re given their way? Is it a genuine and healthy form of satisfaction that we’d give to them – or, for that matter, that we give to people who find satisfaction in the death penalty?
Lee – So it sounds as though if someone’s already down and there’s no reason to hit him anymore, those desiring to strike further might want to consider their motives…
Vincent – Psychoanalyzing nations when political and sociological factors are so clearly at work strikes me as problematic. It seems to me that a critique of America’s behavior in the world from the middle of the last century is best construed as some version of “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I’d find a criticism of the days of the British Empire based on the notion that the British people used to be bloodthirsty similarly problematic.
Otherwise, I agree. That is, I’d like to see the US be a team player and, like you, I find it refreshing when nations stand up to the US for good reasons, like France did prior to the invasion of Iraq.
Raymond – "Justice” is a word with a high-minded sound that’s often used for low purposes. If I follow you correctly, social stability considerations would point toward pragmatism – looking at the real-world consequences of decisions – and I think that’s where the focus ought to be too.
Related to this: I wonder if the astonishing thing about Jesus' "love your enemies" might have been that he knew a person might have to use violence against an enemy, but it was also not useful to hate them. Violence could be seen as a purely pragmatic decision. This is also seen in the Samurai tradition.
I think the more interesting question to me is your final one, about rehabilitation getting short shrift. The way we approach criminality seems absurd these days, given what we know about the psychological patterns, addictions, mental health issues, and even economic situations that statistically make someone more likely to commit a crime (not to mention the social and racial biases that make someone more likely to be convicted, once accused.) We make very little effort to address any of these in jail here in the U.S., and it's often said that sending someone to jail here is the fastest way to assure they will become a hardened criminal.
I'm not sure what the answer is, as obviously determining whether or not someone is truly rehabilitated can be a tricky business. But our collective lack of interest in trying definitely signals a lack of compassion to me, and demonstrates our desire to see everything in terms of good and evil, right and wrong, me and 'them'.
The most fundamental meaning of justice for me is fairness. Many theories of justice exist. One in particular is social justice as in "spreading the wealth around." Another is retributive justice. This is the kind of justice Matthew was referring to when he said that he thinks it is "just a dressed-up euphemism for "vengeance"."
This kind of justice has been criticized and compared to vengeance as a matter of fact. For me as I understand it, retributive justice is really about society, through its laws and its courts, making right a moral wrong through punitive means that are appropriate to the wrong as in "an eye for an eye." It is about the punishment fitting the crime and rendered in an impartial manner to the rich man and poor man alike. Vengeance, however, is more personal. It has to do with the individual verses society. Vengeance isn't interested in what is appropriate and fair and impartial, but only in getting back at someone in a spiteful kind of way.
I brought up Bernie Maddoff, because people like him present a problem for those who are opposed to the idea of retribution. Maddoff is already sorry for what he did. So rehabilitating him seems unnecessary. He is no longer a danger to society. No need to imprison him to protect society then. So why throw him in prison? If it isn't to punish him, it must be to send a message to others out there who might be inclined to swindle thousands out of their money that this is what could happen to them. I believe that might be the utilitarian form of justice. I don't know for sure though.
MommyMystic – You give a lot of the same talks I do! I guess great minds think alike, lol… That summarizes a lot about what I think about our criminal justice system too.
I’ve had if not second thoughts then further thoughts about the overall handling of this particular Lockerbie situation. Some of what I see as the overall humanity and sensibility of the decision has been detracted from by the public spectacle and media coverage of his homecoming.
Susie – Thanks for making these distinctions. The only one I’d question is whether it’s possible to distinguish punitive from vengeful measures. I don’t know how you right a wrong by punishing someone since the wrong already occurred. But in any case, loss of freedom and autonomy is a highly negative experience. You could say that the practical need to lock someone up to protect society is itself a punishment for anyone wanting to view it in that way.
Beyond that, it seems to me that prisons shouldn’t be places where inmates are in danger of being abused by other prisoners or guards. I’d like to see them as places that provided for inmate safety and presented them with a very simple way of life designed to foster reflection and the furthering of skills and education.
As to when to release people and on what grounds, it seems to me that these should again be based on practical considerations around the public good. A lot of these are judgment calls and I’m not sure how much expertise and knowledge we really have about matters such as whether longer sentences discourage others from committing a particular type of crime.
Retributive justice (such as the death penalty, or life imprisonment) is very much about satisfying (or rather, channelling) this impulse to vengeance. Society must "do the vengeance function" in a way that is perceived as just (i.e., fair) to prevent people doing it themselves, leading to Hatfield/McCoy feuds, gang wars and Baghdad-style rounds of ethnic cleansing. This is what drove Hammurabi to create his famous Code: to promote social tranquility in a culture given to multi-generational blood feuds. All societies have an interest in taking away from individuals the legal right to exact vengeance in order to regulate and bring deliberation into the process, limit the vengeance to an appropriate punishment for a proven offense, and forestall a spiral of retribution.
And the Bernie Madoff case is clearly about not only that, but deterrence as well. ("If you bilk people, you will rot in jail.") Especially with people intelligent and rational enough to succeed in finance, the threat of legal consequences (backed up by a paper trail) is very instrumental in keeping the vast majority of them dotting their "i"s and crossing their "t"s -- as long as the threat is consistently followed through on by regulators.
But deterrence has limited usefulness. It presumes rational decision-making on the part of the to-be-deterred, something that obviously was not the case with Karla Faye Tucker, and in fact most violent crime (outside of organized crime). And it also is ineffective with those who are driven by ideology to risk their lives for a political agenda, such as al-Megrahi. (And then, of course, there is always the "I won't get caught" element as well!)
At one time in many cultures, a sufficiently grave offense against society would lead to exile. In a closed world, there is nowhere left to exile to, and prison serves as a form of interior exile. It is not merely about keeping society safe, or rehabilitating the offender, or deterring others from the same crime; it is a judgment of the offender, a collective turning of the back, a statement that as a result of their deed they have made themselves repellent to all decent people, and are therefore rejected by society as a whole. Through this act of internal exile, the deed is condemned through action as well as in words.
Al-Megrahi's release forces the question: At what point -- on what criteria -- do we make the collective decision that someone who murdered 270 people should be allowed back into the world?
My fundamental consideration for moral decision making is the question of what course of action does the most good/causes-risks the least harm.
Long term/life imprisonment of people who do great harm to others enhances public safety. Non-vengeful as well as vengeful people favor long sentences for very dangerous people. It’s a course of action that clearly reduces the risk of harm to the general public.
In contrast, the death penalty, being administered by fallible human beings, runs the continual risk of putting the occasional innocent person to death and eliminates the potential, even if the numbers may be small, of those who commit heinous acts but would later prove to have the capacity to see the light and become good persons/contributing members of society/an inspiration to others.
And what actual reason is there to kill someone who we have in custody and can keep from doing further harm? My impression, like yours, is that deterrence hasn’t been demonstrated and would appear unlikely, especially with violent criminals. Neither does the vengeance-outlet theory of social chaos that you mention strike me as likely. Western Europe, Canada and Australia don’t have capital punishment and are highly stable nations. And clearly there are other reasons that can be cited for the instability in Iraq or the social causes of gang warfare.
I can see no motive at the bottom of capital punishment but the emotional satisfaction of taking revenge. To me, this seems like a very small thing – and a questionable good – in comparison with the gravity of taking a life and, once in a while, an innocent one.
The idea that judgment of the offender himself is implicated in the desire for vengeance – judgment of his very person, his human essence – sounds right to me. The offender is seen as a special kind of guy – a “bad guy,” a kind of creator or originator of the harm he did almost as if he selected his own genes and was impervious to his environment instead of someone whose course of life, like the rest of us, was inextricably enmeshed with his circumstances and who might well have become literally a different person – just as we know ourselves to have been deeply shaped by such factors as early experiences and how we internalized them when we were children, opportunities we did and didn’t have, people we happened to meet along our way, help we received or never got…
On the particulars of the Lockerbie case, the more I hear about the possible political angles the more I question the wisdom of how the decision to release him was carried out and perhaps the wisdom of the decision itself. I think I’d need more inside information about how all this came about than any of us is probably going to get.
“What course of action does the most good/causes-risks the least harm?” – I do know that this would be my criterion in this case as with others, and that figuring out the best course is sometimes easy but sometimes complicated…
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