Posted by panchmaster from pool0193.cvx25-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.216.193) on Friday, October 18, 2002 at 9:56AM :
I've never understood the grim satisfaction people take in killing the person who killed their loved one. After executions, or guilty verdicts, you see people hugging each other in relief, as if their loved one had just been found unharmed. All that's missing is a high five.
Our system of punishment, it isn't justice, grinds people down and turns them into really dangerous people...people who become parents in their turn so the cycle goes on...our society allows despair and hopelessness to ravage great swaths of our children...remaining "firm" and Republican...telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps...or go hang themselves by them.
What satisfaction is there really in killing the one who kills your child? Where there was one murder, there are two now. You had your good reasons to hate...and, if you examine the murderers life, you'll find that he had pretty good reasons to become deranged and in his anger and hatred, pick on your child. So you "punish" him for it...so what? It's not, "better than nothing"..it's WORSE...it will give us the feeling that we've "done" something to protect other children...we haven't...we've just increased the level of hatred and misery and loosed revenge on those already sinking under a crushing load of defeat and despair. Besides...our child is dead.
As this goes on we have an increasingly distraught community...unwilling to spend a dime really, or give a serious thought to improve the prospects for countless children who, for whatever reason, need more care and patience than they are getting, than you or I might have needed...and who are often subjected to ferrocious abuse. We tell them, "too bad, life is like that."
Well life is also like someone growing up twisted and killing your child...life is indeed like that. If that happens, the State will spend all sorts of money and take a LOT of time...hire any number of professionals, teachers, counsellors, pshychiatrists, doctorts, nutritionists, Judges, prosecutors, jailers, wardens and executioners...and all for what? To get you closure?
What good is closure then? And at what price? The community becomes more hardenned...anger at "potentially" troublesome social problems increases, people become more mean spirited, things get harder for the incompetant and downright weird parents out there...and another batch of people are born and made into the very kind you just executed...and still your children are no safer...indeed, they are at greater risk.
What sort of satisfaction is it to attend the execution of your child's murderer? Why be willing to go to all that time and bother and expense and heartbreak AFTER your child is killed? You have any idea how much it costs to house an inmate for ONE year? More than tuition and room and board at Harvard. After your child is dead...would you be willing to pay that much to have him or her restored?
Then why not BEFORE...so you wont need fucking closure?
-- panchmaster
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