Response

Justice

Justice means a lot of things. According to the dictionary, it means righteousness, equitableness, moral rightness, or simply the quality of being just. Justice is a very important concept for human civilization. Without any sort of justice, there is only chaos and violence. There are several forms of justice.

Criminal justice involves the punishment and rehabilitation of people that break the law. Without criminal justice, laws are meaningless. There needs to be a sort of fear of and respect for the law, or people will just do what they want. Sometimes, people want to do things that harm other people. Without any justice, society is ruled by powerful and dangerous individuals that subjugate the weak. Oftentimes, that happens anyway, and criminal law is used to oppress rather than protect. For example, various dictatorships throughout the world. Even in modern liberal democracies, there are unfair and oppressive laws.

There are different purposes to criminal justice. The first is retribution. Retribution for a crime convinces people to follow the law, and appeases the victims and their families. Examples of retribution are fines, jail time, corporal punishment (beatings and so on) and execution. However, the punishment must fit the crime. A life sentence for jaywalking isn't justice. It is only oppression. Retribution isn't only about inflicting punishment on a criminal. Fines paid to the victim can help get their life back on track.

The second purpose of criminal justice is rehabilitation. This means helping the criminal to rejoin society. Examples include vocational programs in prison and helping the criminal to understand the weight of their crime. The goal is to decrease recidivism (an ex-con committing additional crimes after they have been released). A lot of crime is caused by poverty, or by poor upbringing. Helping criminals to get decent jobs will prevent them from robbing people and joining gangs. However, not every criminal can be rehabilitated. Prisons are unfortunately very violent and unstable places, especially in America, which makes it very hard to rehabilitate criminals. Threatened by other prisoners, they often turn to prison gangs for protection. This makes them even more likely to commit crimes when they get out of prison, meaning these violent prisons actually increase crime rates.

The third purpose of criminal justice is protection. This is perhaps the most important one. It means separating innocent people from those who would harm them. Murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals are a particular threat. Some criminals are psychopaths, and thus are very likely to commit crimes again. Special care should be paid to them. It also means following criminals after they have been released, to make sure they don't commit additional crimes.

To use an example, what if someone is convicted of a crime, but for whatever reason is judged very unlikely to commit another crime. What sentence do you give them? If they won't commit another crime, is it really protecting society to lock them away? Do you give them a relatively short sentence, allowing them to be be back and contributing to society sooner? Or do you give them a long sentence, to enforce society's disapproval of that certain type of crime?

The justice system should be careful not to abuse its powers. Sending an innocent person to prison or death row is very bad. It wrecks the innocent person's life. Even short prison terms can cause chaos in the prisoner's personal life, so if you sentence someone to prison, they had better be guilty. A number of innocent people have even been executed in America, and were posthumously exonerated by DNA evidence. If an innocent person goes to prison, that means a guilty person walks free, and may even strike again.

Laws are sometimes used by governments to oppress people. For example, arresting dissidents for speaking out against the government. These dissidents are then considered criminals with all that entails, even though they were made criminals by an unfair justice system. This means that just because you are a criminal doesn't mean you are a bad person, or even someone who did something bad. There are also victimless crimes. That means that the only person that was harmed by the crime, if anyone was harmed at all, was the criminal themselves. These laws are justified by lawmakers as protecting the fabric of society.

There is distributive justice. That means that everything is divided up fairly. It means that everyone gets what's coming to them. Someone who works harder should be rewarded for it, while someone who slacks off or is incompetent should be paid less. Everyone needs to have their basic needs – food, water, air, clothing – attended to, and people who have a lot should share some with someone who has very little. Oftentimes, the more powerful get a greater share, while the less powerful get less. What is important is to be fair.

Another part of justice is equality. Everyone needs to have the same opportunities, though they don't need to have the same results. Proper rights for everyone no matter their race, gender, etc is important. Of course, not everybody gets full equality, and sometimes you have to fight for it.

There is also divine justice. It means that even if someone isn't punished for a crime in this life, they will be punished harshly in the next. This is a comforting thought for some because it means that the worst of the worst who escaped justice – Pol Pot, Pinochet, Stalin – will still meet a final and harsh judgment, while their many innocent victims will be rewarded in the afterlife.

On a more basic level, the idea that good deeds and bad deeds are rewarded and punished, respectively, is a popular one that has existed pretty much since the dawn of mankind and shows up in most religions. People believe that their current set of moral values are handed down from on high, or are a part of natural law. Some people believe that humans created justice. Overall, it is very important, regardless of where it came from.