Justice, Served Cold: The myth that punishment gives Justice a body

I have just finished watching a documentary about a heinous crime which led to a conviction and ultimately death row. The crimes were so unimaginable, the proof so direct, the perpetrator so obviously linked to the crimes. The judgement was easy, the trial wasn’t even about guilt or innocence, but about the death penalty or not. 

Now, I always had an issue with the death penalty. Call me old-fashioned. I just never understood how after 5000 years of Judeo-Christian values, we still kill people. Wasn’t it one of the ten commandments? What difference does it make, if we don’t do it ourselves, but that the state does it for us? Calling it “capital punishment” hardly changes the very fact that it is a premeditated murder. And since we don’t accept any justification for murder from criminals, why do so from the state, a judge or a jury? Because of justice?

 

Or because of our need to force the world into something just, understandable or linear?

 

Can Justice even truly exist? And in this context can punishment truly exist? Metaphysically so? As a perfect yin to yang, as a consequence to action, as punishment to crime? 

I’ve come to the radical conclusion that this may in fact be an existential fallacy: Justice cannot be real. Courts are real, the implementation of the law is real, with its faults and all. But we mistake laws and courts, or judicial justice for Justice: a law of nature, of reality itself. And our belief in this “Justice” serves as the very core of our societal fabric. It is embedded into our social order and even behaviour. I don’t do this, because I will be punished for it. But is that how the real world actually works?

Does the death penalty stop heinous crimes in America, or any country that engages in legalised murders? Clearly, not even remotely. 

If anything I suspect it might fuel the crime rate, rather than stopping it, because, well, if the Government murders people, why shouldn’t I? Obviously I’m magnifying a flaw in the system to prove a point, and I doubt this very question has ever entered a criminal’s mind, but I will argue that it has entered the moral atmosphere. And this is important. If you live in a country where the state can decide, by whatever means, that life itself, human life can and will be ended by any measure, metric, justice or law, that ethical landscape is corrupted. Designing this system whereby only the institution of the state has the right to kill and thereby pretend it is ethically justified is a corruption of the moral fibre itself. It ultimately teaches that killing can become righteous if done by the proper institution.

And the corruption already happens at the level of belief: I believe in the ability to determine someone else's fate. Whether as an individual, or an institution. This is an existential fallacy of highest order, in other words: we are playing God. And playing God is not only problematic in a religious context, but also in a practical, ethical and also metaphysical way. If this ability is assumed to exist, the only question left is the negotiation of when and how to use it! This is now beyond mere seduction. This is being drunk with power: godly power. We decide who lives, because we decided that this act is deserving of death. 

And we do this all in the name of the victims, or so they say. Without it, the victim’s loss is not respected enough. Or so they say.

This goes back to the idea, or the belief of Justice as something real that can and does in fact exist, and it’s therefore only a matter of negotiation, again, how and when to apply it. 

 

I’m not denying the existence of courts, jails, trials and judges. I am dissecting the practical reality from the illusion of divine power. Courts may be real, but Justice as such is not, and should not. 

Because how do you repair a wound? A lie? A betrayal? A lost daughter? 

We all know, inherently, that we can’t bring back the dead, or restore even a broken vase. We may mend it, but it will never be the same again. And this is my argument: a trauma or even a simple lie has such deep and deeply abstract consequences that these cannot be repaired. Certainly not by linear measures. Sure, we can pay stolen money back, or buy and replace broken goods, but where do you buy a heart to replace a broken one? How many years of jail sentencing does it take to feel that the loss of your child is now ethically resolved? 

So why then, do we play this social game of imaginary Justice, where we give into our emotions and desperation and hold on to the belief that “we won”, or that “Justice was served?”. 

Why do we have mechanisms to give in to our worst selves? 

Also notice how I’m not talking about “forgiveness” and “growth” and any of these other delusional landscapes. Evil must be met where it is. Evil must be pointed out, and spoken plainly. Evil must be contained! “Forgiving” evil is turning a blind eye and doing a disservice to all the future victims, none of whom are any more deserving of that evil than you were to begin with. So evil must be stopped in its tracks and we must agree on this fact. That being said, I do not put the burden of it onto the victims of evil, I think they’ve been through enough. But, if they so choose, there is something meaningful, truly meaningful in the stopping of evil and if you’re the one to witness it, you have at least that possibility. 

I am therefore not implying nihilism: that nothing can be done. Everything is futile. Quite the contrary! A lot can be done and a lot is usually done. But context matters, and the usefulness of it matters too. 

And having said that, we must address grandiosity. There is grandiosity everywhere: in committing a crime, in “doing justice”, in “revenge” or even in the aforementioned stopping of evil, or worse still “forgiving your wrong-doer”. This too can just as easily turn in a play of God if not done for purely practical reasons. Victims of abuse know this all too well. Victims of rape who find it in their hearts to come forth, knowing that they will be ridiculed, dragged through the press and smeared all over. They know that saving a potential future victim from the horrors they themselves lived is tangible, practical, real, and because of it, meaningful. There are no “bragging rights” about it, just the belief that I am preventing something terrible from happening yet again.

And in this case, this is not an existential fallacy, because it happened to you! That alone brings this into existence, into reality. It sets a precedent, and chances are pretty high that you weren’t the first, nor the last victim. 

Now the problem with the illusion of Justice is also present in this case! If we are “oh so able” to play God, surely, we could have seen this coming! Surely, we, out of all people, would be able to spot a serial killer, a rapist, a child molester. In spite of all evidence to the actual contrary, we do in fact hold these rather delusional beliefs.

These very beliefs then fuel the suffering in the events of an actual crime, because they directly contradict this concept of Justice: “Why me?”, “How did I not see it?”, “How could this happen?”, “Why didn’t I listen to my instincts?” and countless such circular and traumatising thoughts, all born out of the fallacy that Justice can exist. That there is a balance in the Universe. This is not to be confused with the idea that the world is just, but much worse, the belief that WE can make it just. That we can bend it, twist it and force it into “Justice”, some metaphysical equilibrium whereby we and the Universe itself can find peace yet again. 

This is where law becomes idolatry.

Because peace cannot be achieved through violence, and neither can a scale be brought to balance if the counterweight is non-physical, non-linear, non-descriptive. 

And perhaps we can thank this to the very artist who made that first sculpture of “Justice”, a blindfolded woman, holding a scale. That image has fuelled our moral imagination for thousands of years! 

And the work itself is so seductive, it points to a truth, that we must be impartial, blind. But perhaps the deeper truth is that none of us possess such blindness. None of us is devoid of bias, nor ego, nor delusion, not least of which is the very idea that such a person can exist or be trained to exist. A judge, a jury. “He who is without sin should throw the first stone”. Justice, not merely blindfolded, but bound by the very limitations of reality itself: our own cruelty. 

There is something so insatiable about judging. It’s like trying out heroin for years to study its effects directly but also claiming that you’re not affected by it. Somehow, you’re immune to addiction itself. Even if not yourself, but in the abstract someone surely exists as such, with such powers, and then by some laws of transitivity you can appropriate that quality back to yourself. That is a crime against ethics itself. No one can pass judgement without tasting the power of it. 

Ethical Justice cannot exist. And ironically, confinement or the death penalty may be far more primitive than we imagine, precisely because they are so grossly mechanical. They remove, contain, isolate, kill. They answer the wound with a linear intervention.

But harm is not only physical. Grief is not linear. Betrayal is not measurable. Trauma is not quantifiable. So why do we keep pretending that a linear sentence — five years, twenty years, life, death — can correspond to a non-linear and abstract wound?

We use “Justice” in this idea of ‘giving victims a moment of relief’. There was something so striking about watching the victims feel joy at the death sentence of another human being, even if that person is the murderer of your child. You’re put in a situation where you feel joy for the death of another person, and the sorrows and desperation for the death of the initial victim. That’s a lot of feelings to hold on to. 

I do not believe the answer is having victims watch this person be murdered in front of their eyes, but that they may be given the space where grief can become address: that they can scream, or cry, or shout their grievance, give it form and address it at the perpetrator with the convicted not being allowed to deny it, but only to witness it. Wouldn’t that be more cathartic? 

The victim would be given a space where grief can become address. Not vengeance, not spectacle, not moral theatre — address. A place where the wound is spoken towards the one who made it, without the fantasy that this speech will repair what was broken. 

Because “Justice” will never be served, and what we need is emotional validation and formation. We need our grief to take form and be witnessed. A perpetrator might never understand our grief, but they may be made to witness it, if we so need. If they are merely put away, or killed, how is that “Justice”? Least of all an emotional one. 

A scream might describe grief better than a sentence ever could. And sentences or punishments should not be there to match, nor express, nor compensate for that grief, but to put boundaries and create safety, such that grief can express itself at all! Because how are you supposed to heal, if your rapist is still out in the world? How are you supposed to rest your head at night if a murderer is let loose? How are you supposed to still trust people, if you never stop the same people from lying and hurting you over and over again? 

The solution does not lie outside of ourselves, in the harm that we can inflict onto others. It cannot. We also cannot control the learning curve or awareness of others. Again, we wish we did, we pretend we do, as parents, friends, spouse, jury or judge. But a good teacher would tell you that all you can do is give them time and the right environment, guidance, and a hell of a lot of patience. But we don’t want criminals to learn anything, we want them “to pay” for their sins. And that helps no one. 

The solution lies in creating the safe space necessary for healing and accepting that nothing and no one can reverse the damage that has been done. From small wounds to unbearable anguish like the loss of a child, the grief will need to resolve itself and it is our responsibility as a society to create the necessary spaces for that to happen. Not by pretending that we’re serving “Justice”, but by being practical and clear about it: 

The abuse must be stopped. 

The victim must be given the space to restore their dignity and agency. 

Neither dignity nor agency require revenge, nor murder. 

They require space, safety and an understanding that:

We are not God. 

We could not have foreseen it. 

We are allowed to not have foreseen it. 

We must grieve. 

No one will give us that time back —  neither the time lost to trauma, nor the time lost to grief. 

We may be strong, or we may be weak. 

Do enough to restore dignity and practise agency daily. 

Name the evil clearly, and if there are any practical steps we can take, we should take them. 

It’s not glorious. It’s not justified. It’s not the Universe rebalancing itself. It’s not God. 

Justice cannot exist. God is dead. And this is not nihilism.

Nihilism says: because there is no cosmic Justice, nothing matters. I am saying the opposite: because there is no cosmic Justice we can influence, everything we do matters more. There is no divine scale to complete the work for us. There is only law, care, restraint, truth, containment, grief, dignity, and the terrifying responsibility of remaining human.

Law and order can be performed without the delusion that cosmic Justice is being served. It is not. Law must remain law: practical, limited, sober, careful, bound to human dignity. The moment law calls itself Justice, it becomes a corruptible idol. It begins to play God.