I don’t believe in punishment, for it is not justice. In many ways it is revenge, or an attempt at solace on a sleepless night. It is satisfaction for people who believe in monsters from without, when there is the capacity for the same in all of us.
No baby is born a criminal, and if you argue for birthed mental illness; is that really that creations fault? Most who commit unspeakable crimes are born like we are, and in many ways display the dark face of who we could have been.
Separated by circumstance, a clear maladaptive development in our midst; I wholeheartedly support its non existence. Some call for a final elimination, and others for rehabilitation; both of them still lack justice.
I can understand cries for a criminal’s blood. I even understand those that would exact that punishment post a replicated damage. I am left to ponder, what does that truly remedy?
A proven deterrent in a lawless land, to the extent that it works; by all means why not. A life is a life, but I would everyday support the protection of innocents over one who has transgressed.
In a more temperate clime, as we seek to achieve, there then what is the call to action? An extinction serves as little more than bloodlust and a desire for revenge. Perpetrator expunged, the virus still lurks dormant in the blood of the executioners.
There is no justice to be found at ropes end, and there will be no satisfaction for those with a broken heart. Healed bigger or stronger or whatever story you might tell yourself about such experience; it is forever disfigured.
Perhaps this is the best we can hope for, and therefore, how we as a community strive to heal. Heal from a wound caused by one human child upon another. The healing if and where found, is never in further death, but our own vitality in life. I can imagine both their young laughter at a more innocent age.
Could the peace in one still be returned, and is that not the nobler act; for there is much in the air that caused corrosive change. Is it the child that is hateful and at fault, or is it the pollutant which is allowed to persist?
Neither is an excuse, but many cause and reasons for this calamity can be uncovered. No return to a brighter day; death gives neither satisfaction, nor in most circumstances sufficient protection. The laws are created for the actualization of a people.
Punishment is a placebo for prevention, and has limits; specially when examined under closer gaze. Justice exists in a society where her light and laughter is still present. It exists in a place, where his better self prevails.
An idealistic Eden or a fantasy of a kind heart you may tout? To that ideation I cannot subscribe. Correct ambition must stand with humanity, and never an individual emotion or indeed an act. For as seductive as myopia may be, it traps one there, blunting one’s own reasoning.
Many would see him hang, and though it might surprise, I myself here concur. I would see his removal, but I do not seek justice in this happening, for that is long gone. We are a poor country and at the cost of reforming one life, we could save many more on both ends of crime.
So go ahead and hang him, but do not believe that that is a turn to a better day, or a created space where this act will not happen again. This judgment is simply a matter of economics, while safety, justice and freedom calls for a far earlier structural change.
We are all murders, and we are all complicit. In darkness I sit, hands slick with blood.
~Frumi
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