'...even if right and wrong are universal, how society treats them is not.'
This is really interesting. I think that this is much more important than most people realize. I have a friend whose mom was brutally killed in my rich, essentially crimeless area. It was something that just doesn't happen and it happened to him. We got drunk and he opened up to me one night and he said that the 4 years in between the murder and the moment he stood in the courtroom and talked about his mother and all she did and who she was the most angry and dark time. When he got to talk in the courtroom, with her killers there, that was what allowed him to finally let go. He had be in therapy, trying to better himself, tried antidepressants, lots and lots of weed smoking, everything you can imagine. He had talked about it endlessly. But all it took was 5 minutes in the courtroom and he was finally able to move on. He said it felt like he had been working on a long math problem that he couldn't quite figure out and then suddenly, in an instant, he just realized everything and there was a grand release and relief and finality to the whole thing. He knew the guys were going away before that moment. He knew they wouldn't see the light of day again. But that didn't give him what he needed.In the Breivik trial, this meant giving every victim (survivors as well as the families of those killed) a direct voice. Victims were individually represented by 174 court-appointed lawyers. The court heard 77 autopsy reports, 77 descriptions of how Breivik had killed them, and 77 minute-long biographies "voicing his or her unfulfilled ambitions and dreams."
I disagree here. I think it is categorically different with the American model. The author's treatment of the American model is too apologetic. The US prison system is a travesty. Perhaps the most you could say for it is that it might make some victims feel better.The process continues during the incarceration, which is treated less as a form of punishment than as a sort of state-imposed rehabilitation. It's not a categorial difference from the American model, which includes a number of rehab and therapeutic offerings, but, with Breivik about to enjoy some not insignificant creature comforts in his three-room cell, the emphasis is clearly distinct.
Retributive seems pointless. It's "justice" without a goal. So much conservative protest over wasted dollars and no real effort to give incarcerating someone a long term benefit to society (or at least less of a cost to society). Our current system often makes people more effective predators rather then better citizens. I have no idea of the total costs, but spent a bit of time looking at the cost savings of treatment, counseling and harm reduction programs in Washington State for a CBA class, the savings from diverting certain prisoners from the retributive system were huge, more then paying for the new programs cost. The benefits presumably go much further then the tax dollars spent on crime. People who aren't in jail hold down jobs, probably have better health care, give better care to their children and lots of other things. Too bad every politician lies in wait for a Willie Horton to coup de grass an election, insures that we will never have real reform.
Exactly so. Add to the equation that many American prisons are now run by private corporations, for profit, with an incentive to keep the prison full, and you have a recipe for tragedy.
You talk about human rights.......well, he certainly got his, but what about those 77 that are dead? 21 years for each maybe?