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"He was in his mid-twenties. The little boy several houses down the street had caught his fancy some time ago. Then, one night, he could not restrain himself any longer. While the child's parents were watching television in the lounge, he entered the four-year old's bedroom through the window, and carried him, still half asleep, out to a nearby thicket. There he sodomised the child, mutilated his genitals, strangled him with his pyjama trousers, and left him for dead.
The little boy survived. He was found the following morning, wandering through the thicket, dazed, distressed, bleeding, half-naked.
The police swung into action. Their files revealed a surprisingly high number of known child-abusers living in the vicinity. The culprit was found, arrested, tried, and convicted. At the conclusion of the trial it was revealed that he had a long list of prior convictions. Not six or seven, but over fifty! Numerous convictions for serious assault and sexual attacks, as well as routine crimes against property.
He had spent a high proportion of his adult life behind bars; he had received many hours of counselling; he had been "rehabilitated" time and time again. Over the years, the State had spent a small fortune on his case.
Clearly the State, the penal institutions, the social workers, the man's family and friends, had failed society. They had failed to rehabilitate the antisocial individual, again and again and again; and they had failed to protect society from his excesses, again and again and again.
Above all, the man himself had failed society; he had demonstrated himself incapable of contributing to the commonweal; of exercising the restraint and discharging the obligations that are the price each of us has to pay for the rights and benefits of living in community with others.
Sadly, his was not an exceptional case. The pattern is repeated for a high proportion of serious offenders, and it is repeated across the globe - most societies share the problem.
How long must the charade continue? How long do we keep pretending that our efforts to rehabilitate the intractably antisocial make any difference? Is this part of loving our neighbour, of continually turning the other cheek, of our childlike faith in the basic goodness and redeemability of human beings? Or is it a numbers game? Is the cost of permanently incarcerating the antisocial higher than the cost of the suffering of his statistically insignificant number of victims? Are both costs less than the social cost of putting down the habitual antisocial, as a mad dog is put down? Is the dog's right to life inviolable?
Human life is not sacred. It is precious, but it is not inviolable. Human life should be protected at great cost and effort, but there are times when the taking of human life is necessary for the common good. We each also have the inalienable right to take our own lives, or to request that it be taken.
A dead man does not re-offend. He cannot be released back into the community at a later time by a penal system under budgetary pressure, or by rehabilitation professionals too eager to pronounce their charges socialised. He cannot go forth and procreate, further moulding his genetically handicapped scions in his own image, through his probable neglect or abuse. A dead man costs nothing to keep; he does not eat, and neither does he need to be guarded. The considerable resources now directed at maintaining the intractably antisocial in the lifestyle to which they have grown accustomed, could be redirected to much more positive activities, if only we were willing to adopt a more "liberal" attitude toward the death penalty.
But there is always a risk of justice miscarrying, and it is not an insubstantial risk; in some jurisdictions it may almost be expected. A person might be framed. They might fall victim to prejudice and circumstantial evidence. There might be a bent cop or a crooked judge perverting the course of justice.
Also, any one of us may be provoked to murder or atrocity. A single act does not necessarily point to a predisposition to offend and re-offend. It is perhaps only when there is incontrovertible evidence of a disposition to re-offend, despite repeated attempts at rehabilitation, despite the best efforts of professionals, family, and friends, that the imposition of the death penalty should even be considered.
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© TruthInUnCertainty 2018
Article by: R A Mulholland
http://www.truthinuncertainty.com/