If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then justice is the voice of the victim.
Sadly, I’m really fucking tired of hearing those voices.
I’m overwhelmed by the epidemic of victims demanding justice over an indignity or transgression they or people like them have had to endure. Epidemic isn’t a poor word choice in case anyone’s wondering. An epidemic needs to be infectious and it seems to me that the victim count is flirting with a pandemic label. I can’t even begin to count the number of news stories where at some point the victim, or the family of the victim, or a representative of the victim, or the lawyer of a victim makes the statement, “we just want justice.”
As soon as the statement is uttered, I find myself wondering if what they really want is vengeance and or compensation. It’s kind of hard to tell. Maybe there isn’t any difference and vengeance and compensation are part of the concept of justice.
All governments claim to understand justice well enough to manage its administration. However, the implementation of justice is interpreted so diversely from country to country that it makes me wonder if everyone really does understand the concept. Sharia law as opposed to English common law for example. So, if governments can’t reach a consensus on what is just, it’s unlikely that the general population will ever be satisfied that justice is served.
Because damn near everyone has their own sense of personal justice and apparently justice itself is a moving target.
Consider that Canada executed its last criminal in 1962. Hanged by the neck until dead at the Don jail in Toronto. After that, as a nation we decided that the state having the power to kill someone was a bad thing, and so our courts adjusted accordingly and we stopped stringing up convicted murderers. So, justice didn’t evolve but our society did and justice was grudgingly dragged along kicking and screaming.
That’s the moving target component. Not everyone agrees with not having a death penalty though and that’s the personal opinion portion. I’m conflicted by the issue as well. I can agree that an “oops, our bad” to the Milgaard and Truscott families probably wouldn’t suffice after we’d stretched the neck of their family members. But at the same time I’m left asking what to do with Paul Bernardo or Pickton or Clifford fucking Olson. Some primal part of me wants them to suffer. I can screw around with a justification argument that cites deterrence as the reason for my desire for severe punishment, but I’m kidding myself. In my heart I know that I want vengeance. But I resist the eye for an eye instinct and eventually I end up with my version of justice being satisfied with an Olson outcome. Lock them in a little concrete box inside a larger concrete box until cancer painfully kills the prick.
My instinctive desire for retribution can be tempered by logic. I understand that there’s a dash of hypocrisy in the practice of deciding that killing someone is so heinous that we’re going to kill you for doing it. I also comprehend that there’s a small chance that witnesses lied or were mistaken or that the investigators were incompetent. But, if the female body parts dumped into the boulders of Lake Ontario or fed to the pigs in British Columbia were my family, then all bets are off as far as logic and constraint goes. If it were personal I think I’d give it some serious consideration if Corrections Canada asked me to position the noose or push the plunger on the injection.
So, as a rule our society has designed a system where the family of the murdered and mutilated are asked to recuse themselves from the actual administration of justice. You get to read an impact statement but you don’t get to sit on the jury or preside as judge.
It’s probably a good idea. Mob and frontier justice might be expedient but the gain in efficiency comes at a cost to accuracy.
How to deal with the most violent of criminals isn’t our biggest justice dilemma though. We’ve pretty much decided on a box within a box as the solution. The bigger challenge we face is making sure our justice system evolves at roughly the same pace as our society.
This is where things get personal and this is also where the bulk of the victims come from. Social justice victims. These are the voices that I’m tired of hearing. Not that there aren’t legitimate social issues that could use a rethink and a new interpretation. But after a while the sheer volume of personal injustice gets so overpowering that I find myself tuning them all out.
I’ve actually reached a point where I can listen to a victims tale of woe, nod my head and agree that they have a point, and still not really give a fuck. If they self identify as a victim prior to beginning their story then there’s a pretty good chance I won’t listen at all. It’s not the most helpful response but I’m guessing that it’s not an unpopular one.
I realise that my attitude might not look very supportive. But if you’re in a car crash, I’ll stop and help you, or if you appear in front of me and you’re bleeding, I’ll help you as best I can. But if you’re trembling with indignation and you’re not bleeding from a head wound then I think I’ll leave you to your own devices.
My new motto could be, “I’m aware, and I still don’t care.”