From Indiana defense attorney John Kindley’s blog, People vs. State:

What, after all, does “an eye for an eye,” the paradigmatic principle of justice, mean? One thing it means is to forbid taking two eyes for one eye.

I’ve been reading a lot about jails and prisons lately – see, among others, the Washtenaw County Jail Diary linked here last week – and one thing that comes up so often is that trope about “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime”, and how it’s used to justify any excessive or (frankly) obscene treatment offered to anyone incarcerated or detained for any reason. In the case of the Washtenaw County Jail in Michigan, the comments section (always a mistake to read) features a bunch of people talking about how they refuse to feel sorry for a criminal, even if he’s sleeping on a floor smeared with human waste because, after all, he “did the crime” (we’ll ignore, for the sake of argument, that that guy’s just a detainee who has yet to be convicted). Even if he’s guilty – those proponents of “eye for an eye” justice forget that it’s a call for proportional punishment, not a call for any punishment up to and including gouging somebody’s eye out. It’s not “an eye for a DWI” or “an eye for misapplication of fiduciary property” – or, for that matter, “months of eating green bologna and 150-degree temperatures in desert tent cities and serving on chain gangs for theft”.

It’s easy to use those Old Testament maxims to justify excessively harsh treatment, but maybe those who do should consider what they actually mean.

Labels: eye for an eye, jail, justice, prisoner mistreatment

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