On Justice

One of the most toxic ideas in American culture is the tacit association of justice with punishment. Of all the morally backwards, medieval institutions in our society, our continued physical, mental, and sexual torture of prisoners is one of the most heinous. Prisoners are some of the most marginalized, disenfranchised people in the US. According to a 2016 study, "research has consistently shown that prisoners have high rates of psychiatric disorders". To me, this statistic already suggests punishment is not the right course of action. People with poor mental health should not be subject to harm; they are the ones who need the most help.

Let's say we start giving criminals with mental health problems psychiatric help instead of incarcerating them. What about everyone else? Other good predictors of crime are maternal smoking during pregnancy/other prenatal traumas, childhood abuse, social isolation, and low socioeconomic status. None of these things are in a person's control, so they are also bad reasons for punishment. But they are all good reasons to rehabilitate and support people who commit crimes.

Let's say we stop punishing everyone who commits crimes due to the above factors, so all we have left are mentally healthy people who are criminals for bad reasons, like maybe they're really greedy or narcissistic or whatever. Even then, punishment would have little place in our justice system. Punishment is not good at deterring crime. Prisoners have over a 75% recidivism rate over a 5-year period. When you consider the incentive structures involved, it's really not hard to see why: The for-profit prison industrial complex has every motivation to keep growing its incarcerated populations, and no incentive to rehabilitate them. Yet it would be far better for society if all those greedy, narcissistic people were rehabilitated rather than incarcerated -- and if that's not possible, they should at least have to repair the harms they've caused.

Punishment as justice is philosophically broken. It's really weird that our typical punishment for a serious crime, a prison sentence, is not at all related to the crime itself, and totally strips the victim of all agency. Imagine if criminals saw the suffering they inflicted on their victims and had to actually address those harms instead of sitting in a room for some arbitrary timespan. Imagine if victims saw the reasons why criminals did what they did, rather than not being able to interact with them at all. How much more human potential could we tap? How much more compassionate and kind could we become? How much more togetherness and understanding could we foster?

Let's say someone harms you in some way. In one scenario, they go through a court process you have no control over and waste a few years of their life in prison. Let's say this experience teaches them a lesson and they never commit a crime again (even though this rarely happens). In the other scenario, they are forced to honestly confront the consequences of their actions. You show them how their behavior has impacted you, they take responsibility for it, and then they take meaningful steps to repair those harms. Not only is the second scenario better for the person who harmed you, it's better for you, because you actually had a voice in the process and the person responsible tried to make amends. This is restorative justice. It's far more fulfilling to see someone grow than to see them punished. It reminds me of a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends." How sweet that is.

Of course, saying all this is easy, but I'm not sure if I could do it in practice. I see an inspirational story of a woman who took the restorative justice route with her husband's murderer and wonder if I could be that strong. It's normal to wonder. After someone hurts you, it's natural to want them to suffer, to seek retribution, to take pleasure in their sorrow -- but this is not true strength. True strength is wanting the best for them. True enlightenment is wanting the person who hurt you to thrive, because people who are thriving are far less likely to commit crimes. There is a grain of truth in the idea of karma, because people who suffer are more likely to inflict suffering on others, while people who are happy are more likely to bring happiness to others. To paraphrase MLK, suffering anywhere is a threat to happiness everywhere.

Buddhism/Hinduism is just one example of our understanding of this truth. Christianity is another. I was talking with some Christian friends about the notion of justice in their religion. One of the great paradoxes in Christian doctrine is the simultaneity of God being perfectly merciful and perfectly just. I thought this was a major flaw in Christianity for a long time, but upon greater reflection, this is no paradox at all; in fact, there is great wisdom in this teaching. The true nature of justice is mercy, not revenge, or punishment, or deterrence. My best crime-prevention strategies are to improve education, social mobility, and sense of community. My ideal notion of justice is restorative, healing, concerned with the victim and the perpetrator in equal measure. This is the world I want to live in.