When violent crimes are committed and the perpetrator is caught and tried, it is common to hear statements about the leniency of the sentence, it is not sufficient punishment and they should be made to suffer.
After the police shot a knife wielding man who killed two the other day, a friend commented on her Facebook page that they should have shot him dead, he doesn't deserve to live. This type of sentiment rings through many people's minds I am sure. We hear daily the stories of some of the most horrific crimes and the closer they are to home, the more punishment we want to see inflicted against the guilty.
The closer it is to home of course brings up the thoughts of what if it had happened to my daughter, wife, brother, friend and makes one think about how to react. When it comes to violent crimes against those we love, we immediately think about exacting revenge on those who committed the atrocities. In some places they have capital punishment which ranges from lethal injection, hanging, firing squad, stoning and beheading.
In some countries, these are still public executions and even audience participation such as in a stoning. Most of the world frowns heavily upon such behavior but I wonder, if one wishes to take the life of a criminal, does it matter by which means? Of course for the criminal, lethal injection may be preferable to stoning but, in the case of the one seeking the punishment, does it matter?
The next thing that in most cases around the world, the death penalty is a non-public event behind closed doors with minimal witnesses and even though it is still to death, people can be overheard saying, that they deserved to suffer more than they did, they got off easy.
I wonder though for most people, how willing they would be if they had to enact the punishment directly, rather than through a proxy. Currently in most cases, an executioner does the job, a professional intermediary that removes the gory details of the death from the hands of the victims or family of the victims.
If some sick mind who brutally chopped his victims into pieces while alive, you are likely to want a very heavy and punishing sentence for that person but, could you inflict the punishment you desire? People say, 'he should have the same thing happen to him, an eye for an eye' but could you do to him what he did to his victims?
How willing are you to torture someone to death in the cruelest of ways and in doing so, is justice served? I wonder how many would be willing to slice someone open slowly with the intention of letting them bleed to death. Even if a victim was a partner or child, after a funeral, after a trial, after waiting for appeals and all of the evidence and bureaucracy, months or years down the track, is there still enough rage?
Can one carry the necessary anger through all of that time to getting to a point that when handed the knife, one goes into a room where the convicted murderer is bound and intimately slice the person up while looking into their eyes and watching the blood pour from the body. To feel it warm on the hands and the metallic sharpness in the nose.
How is it to think about, this person who has hypothetically killed someone you love in the most heinous of ways and now they are being punished by you, according to your own desires. Does this feel like they are getting what they deserve? Does it heal your broken heart, remove the anger, the rage? Are you now at peace?
This is no longer the distanced schadenfreude, this is utterly personal and one must be very motivated to do such as it is an unnatural act. It was a sick mind that did it to the one that you loved but, is your mind as sick? Can it be?
Perhaps under the right conditions, everyone can kill and potentially if the rage is immediate, it could even be intentionally cruel but, given time and distance, to then go and do it after a long time has passed, that takes a cold and calculating mind. The type that committed the initial act but without the actual pleasure for it, just from revenge.
But, revenge is a pleasure. It is the satisfaction of closing a mental loop, the satisfaction of giving someone what they deserve. One may be entitled to the thoughts of revenge and justify the enactment of it as a right, the retribution, the claiming of the cost of a terrible transgression.
I wonder what would happen after performing such an act. Does one calmly go back home, back to work, back to life after satisfying the hunger for revenge? Would the conscience be clear, would the mind be free of the burden of losing the loved one by taking the life of their murderer? Or would every time one closes their eyes, they relive their actions.
There would be no distance left, no imagining what it would be like to get revenge as revenge would be sated. The anger should subside as justice has been delivered, peace of mind, right? I wonder who gets punished the most.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
