Justice

What is justice and what is the purpose of our justice system? According to Merriam-Webster, justice is “the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments,” where in this case, “just” means righteous. In other words, rewarding people for doing good and punishing people for doing wrong. 

I think it’s fair to say that the current American criminal justice system concentrates on the punishment part of that definition. We take those who we believe have done something unjust and put them on trial. If they are convicted, they are imprisoned or fined. It rarely goes farther than that.

This punitive model of justice has major failings. First, recidivism rates among convicts is incredibly high, so punishment appears to have only a moderate deterrent value. When someone gets out of an American prison, they generally go right back to a life of crime. Second, this system largely ignores victims. Someone can cause you a great harm, and usually the most you can hope for is that they are punished for it. In some cases, victims have the recourse of civil suits to recover damages, but that requires them to know who has harmed them, to be able to convince a jury that person harmed them, and for that person to have the resources to cover the damages. So in most cases, punitive justice completely fails the victim of a crime.

I believe this calls for a more rehabilitative and restorative system of justice. When someone commits a crime, our goal should be to make it as least likely as possible that the person commits a crime again. And when someone is a victim of a crime, our goal should be to do as much as possible to mitigate the harm that was done to them.

Rehabilitation works. Many countries such as Norway and Sweden that treat their criminals better than the United States have lower recidivism rates. We need to give those who have harmed society the resources to develop into people who will be contributing members of sociey.

The victims of crimes should also have public support. It is not only the criminal that has harmed the victim in the commission of a crime, but also the system that has enabled that criminal to harm them. In that way, society as whole owes them a debt. There is no reason why the victim of a crime should pay the full cost of the harm done to them. Public resources should be available to anyone who can prove they are a victim of a crime. It should not require knowledge of the criminal’s identity to pursue damages. 

Some may object to the cost of these measures as such proposals call for the use of public resources. Why should we pay to help those who have harmed people, and why should we pay for the harm done by someone else? I would answer that such changes to our justice system would benefit everyone. At some point in our lives, any one of us may be the victim of a crime. Rehabilitation makes that less likely. And if it still happens, restoration can at least help us to try to move on.

I believe society benefits when individual and collective interests align. Doing the right thing should be rewarded. But too often, we place people in situations where doing the right thing comes with extra costs. How many more criminals would come forward if they knew they would get the chance at rehabilitation instead of being locked up and left to rot? How many more victims of crimes would come forward if they knew they would get the support they needed to overcome the harm done to them? In the name of justice, such behaviors should be encouraged. We, individually and as a society, need to do what we can to make these changes happen.