Justice Shouldn’t Be Revenge by Another Name

If we moved from a punitive system to a rehabilitative system, we’d be a safer, fairer, kinder, and wealthier nation.

It would seem the mind reflexively rejects the idea that revenge and justice bear even a passing resemblance. The word “revenge” conjures images of vigilantism, asymmetrical responses, and violence — each of them having the feel of a cultural atavism. Justice, on the other hand, seems defined and sturdy, an objective and deliberate process serving to uphold our values and protect human rights to property, life, and the like.

Yet, in manifestation, what is justice but a state-sponsored form of revenge? If someone took a loved one from me, in the throes of rage commingled with dejection, I’d want them killed — locking them up in a cage for decades would have an attractive, savorous cruelty to it as well. This looks like revenge, does it not? Yet, one can, of course, be granted this under the auspices of justice.

In our conception of justice, we profess to aim at upholding the values of fairness and rightness, but how does it get us there? The only tool of justice is punishment. It doesn’t even so much as pretend to be any other way. “You will suffer as your victim has suffered,” declares the law: an eye for an eye. In this way, justice is most often the doubling of suffering.

If there is any distinction between justice and revenge, other than better organization and the prevention of asymmetrical responses, it would be in the intended consequences. Revenge makes no claims of being productive of a larger stability that will allow people to live better lives. Revenge is, in of itself, quite anarchistic and doesn’t concern itself with anything beyond its singular aim. Justice, however, has the noble goal of establishing a set of precepts that prevent the strong from wantonly subjugating the weak and those with malicious intent from wreaking havoc on the peaceful — in a word, it is the great protector and equalizer, ensuring safety and fairness. It is because of this higher calling that justice needn’t be comparable to revenge.

The aim of justice is not the aim of revenge, but for too long societies have errantly acted out revenge under the appellation of “justice.” True acts of justice would be carried out in the best possible way to meet that end goal of creating “safety and fairness.” True justice would put aside slaking the human impulse for vengeance and focus solely on achieving its goal. It would exchange as its method retribution for rehabilitation. Retributive justice is backward-looking; it does not aim to prevent further wrongs, but to right prior wrongs. As humans, we know intuitively that threat of the stick can be a strong dissuader, but this is a corollary: the primary aim of retribution is to punish for past transgressions. Conversely, the primary aim of rehabilitative justice would be to prevent future occurrences of wrongdoing. And, though the semantic differences may seem small, in effect the difference would be a world apart.

If a person is found to have committed a robbery, under a punitive system, they are punished with incarceration. They publicly bear the stigma of having engaged in unlawful behaviors, usually for the rest of their life. This is a proper and effective carrying out of punitive justice. But why did they rob to begin with? Presumably, they had an economic need that went unanswered, and so they resorted to taking someone else’s things by force or threat of force. That stigma of being a convict now prevents them from taking advantage of a large number of employment opportunities. The economic pressure to commit criminal acts may not only persist but intensify. Recidivism is, in this example, made more likely by punitive justice, which means that law-abiding citizens’ right to safety and fairness has been endangered accordingly. As this example intimates, rehabilitative justice would focus on root causes.

Those with drug addiction or alcoholism shouldn’t be punished for what they do out of desperation to get high, or for what they do because they’re high or drunk; they should be treated for their addiction. Those who rob and steal shouldn’t be punished for their violations; they should be offered safer and fairer means for meeting their economic needs. Even those who commit murder shouldn’t be punished by confinement to an environment wherein a willingness to commit further violence is often necessary, as a deterrent, to maintain one’s own safety; they should be treated for the causes of their anger, impetuosity, and indifference to the value of life. All of the above examples still require removing someone from society until such a time that they can be credibly deemed rehabilitated, and so none should fear for their safety because punishment isn’t being exacted. Rather, the standard for someone being readmitted to society should be that they are less likely to commit further offenses, not simply that they have paid their due of suffering. By that standard, we will all be safer. Those who are incapable of being rehabilitated must, by definition, suffer from a psychiatric disorder, and so their being treated as such is warranted.

I assume objections will arise to this reorientation of justice on the ground of it being overly idealistic. It is certainly ideal, but idealism only becomes a fault when it has ceased to be pragmatic. I will then rephrase the advantages of rehabilitative justice in terms of the favorite criteria of pragmatists: good financial sense. It should be obvious that decreasing recidivism would confer great economic relief on the justice system. If every “criminal” that enters the system ceases to be a criminal thereafter, no further money need be spent on policing, prosecuting, and imprisoning that individual in the future — the avoidance of enormous expense for taxpayers. However, the economic advantages of practices focused on lowering recidivism are clear even before an offender is readmitted into society. For example, nationwide the average cost to imprison someone for a year is just over $31,000. In New York State, the most expensive, it is $60,000. In New York City, the average has gone as high as a whopping $168,000 a year per inmate. For perspective, according to the U.S. Department of Education, the average cost, before aid, of attending Harvard for a year is $50,420. The average annual cost for in-district students to attend a two-year public college is $3,440. For in-state students, it’s an average of $9,410 a year to attend a four-year public college. This means it would be cheaper for us to give an inmate three years of college-level schooling during their incarceration and then release them, than to keep them incarcerated without the schooling for four years. For those offenses stemming from drug abuse, how much less would it cost to offer addiction treatment instead of lengthy imprisonment? How much less would targeted therapy for sporadic or violent actors cost than the one-size-fits-all, punitive answer of prolonged confinement?

I’ll close out this article with a story: Before I was born, my father went to prison for armed robbery. He was released some four years later. He spent only four years in prison, as he was released for good behavior three years before the end of his original sentence of seven years. After he was released, he worked for a time as a car salesman, but commission-based pay can often leave you high and dry when either your performance, for whatever reason, wavers in its effectiveness or the environment ceases to be conducive to making sales. In time, without consistent opportunities to provide, he returned to questionable methods of meeting his and his family’s economic needs. That mode of conduct continued for some time. It took years before, after supporting my then stepmother through university, she was able to in turn support him through university. He graduated nursing school in an accelerated program that took half the time, worked hard enough to be recognized as “Nurse of the Year” at his hospital, and, finally, was promoted to nursing supervisor for an entire emergency department. The path he set out on shortly after his release from prison and the path he followed shortly after his graduation from university led to very different lives. The choice on which path millions of American’s lives will take is in our hands. The former represents the sequelae of retributive or punitive justice, and the latter represents the product of rehabilitative justice.

I can’t speak for you, but I, for one, have no desire to pay more for the perpetuation of suffering and a less safe and less fair society. We should tear down this system of sham justice and in its place erect one that aspires to true justice — rehabilitative justice.

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