Crime and Punishment

What could be done about crime, especially about the latest global trend?

Lately, there have seen several calls for punishing the criminals who have been effectively introducing and enforcing a worldwide system of slavery and genocide.

Many are calling for trials or even lynching.

Of course, courts are not perfect enough to be trusted, especially after considering the power the judge, the lawyers, and the accused’s monetary resources have over the outcome of a trial. The judge can determine the outcome by allowing or disallowing evidence or testimonies, lawyers can be extremely smart of stupid, and the one on trial needs to afford good lawyers, good “expert” testimonies, or occasionally, even bribes or clandestine threats against jurors or the official players…

Even in an ideal system, who could be found guilty enough to make sure a fair sentence is carried out?

In the past several decades, instead of prisons, I have been contemplating the possibility of sentences matching the crimes, but I cannot see how such a system could be introduced, while both legislation and jurisdiction are so fallible and quite often biased or worse.

Moreover, it’s always been a question, if it’s better to let a 100 guilty parties go free or an innocent person to be condemned.

Following through the brief history of jurisprudence might assist a bit, while searching for answers.

In primitive communities, rules presided; there was no need for “laws.” Among the Iroquois, for one, if you killed someone without a good reason, you were nonchalantly banished for a period of time.

Laws, in the modern sense, were introduced in complex civilizations, where the powerful and the privileged needed protection from the disenfranchised. In Orwell’s words, some have always been created “more equal” than others. For example, killing a slave in Hammurabi’s codes never carried the death sentence.

So, law and order is, simply put, the institutionalization of inequality.

The primary role of laws is to maintain such law and order. The objective was to get rid of the undesirables or, in less critical cases, deterrence, but not necessarily punishment. The idea of punishment was attached to the goal of deterrence, when cruel and unusual punishments entered the scene in highly-populated areas, where deterrence had to be publicized in order to be highly effective.

1.       Social cleanup was always the vantage point of law enforcement, so going to trial was mostly reserved for the privileged, unless deterrence had to be exercised. Consequently, the death sentence was applied in history more often than anything else (for example, even in 1789, in Britain, 12-year-olds were hanged, if caught fishing from the landowner's pond).

2.       Branding or maiming was a step forward, a cruel way of “commuting” a death sentence.

3.       Imprisonment was originally invented for hostages waiting for their ransom, but forced labor turned out to be more profitable than the death sentence.

4.       In the 18th century, do-gooder affluent ladies invented the idea of “reforming criminals,” which gave birth to the idea of the modern prison.

5.       In the US, prison is an industry, in which often innocent people or petty criminals serve long sentences of what can be easily considered forced labor in private prisons. “Three-strikes” laws only perpetuated the officially-endorsed, but otherwise criminal practice.

It is a commonplace that prisons are academies of crime, yet nobody budges to do anything about it, because those, who could, are integral parts and profiteers in the system.

So, what can I say to those, who want to punish the current perpetrators or have them legally sentenced and/or executed?

Who could be found guilty is a good first question:

1.       Only the game-masters;

2.       The enforcers (politicians, the media, faux “experts,” thugs etc.);

3.       The silent accomplices (who knew it was wrong, but did nothing)

4.       The compliant (who didn’t even know they were serving Evil with their obedience – notice that in most jurisdictions, being unfamiliar with the law doesn’t exempt anyone from responsibility)

There is a fine line between the four categories. If all four are condemned, the world’s population might be really reduced to the 500-million goal assigned for humanity on the Georgia Guidestones after the sentences are carried out...

So, realistically speaking: What can be done about the intrinsic unfairness of the law?