The Price of Justice

last updated Sunday August 19 2007

We all want justice, we want to see the guilty punished and the innocent avenged. We want thefts, assualts and murders solved but what's the price and who should pay for it? Two lawyers and a judge, perhaps a victim and a defendant off from work, maybe witnesses. Thousands of per day and at the end of it what? Do we save money or make money for society when someone is convicted?

I really don't know the answer. I'm just thinking aloud but I'm leaning or hoping that a conviction reduces thefts, assualts and murders. If we listen to what Dr. William Deming had to say about organisations and extrapolate to society we get a resounding no. Deming would have said that convictions are just a way for society to find scapegoats for broken systems. This isn't a shock or a news flash, but convicting people seems so right

We look at someone we see that they did something wrong and we punish them. Personally I've always been scared silly of doing something, anything, that takes only a second and finding myself paying for it for years upon years. I've never been in that position and hopefully I'll never be but it seems so scary.

For most criminals though we seem to have some kind of gap in our logical thinking. We know that the person may have been raised under bad circumstances, we know that they didn't learn the lessons in life that they should have but because they're past a certain age none of that matters anymore one day they're a victim of circumstances and the day after they're a criminal. Does it make any sense at all?

I admit I know it's wrong but I want to punish anyone who has ever hurt me. At the same time I want to be understood when I hurt someone else. How can the two things be aligned?