{"id":425,"date":"2005-12-21T23:07:01","date_gmt":"2005-12-21T12:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/2005\/12\/21\/a-strange-question\/"},"modified":"2005-12-22T00:13:26","modified_gmt":"2005-12-21T18:43:26","slug":"a-strange-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200512\/a-strange-question\/","title":{"rendered":"A strange question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amit asks<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“This leads me to wonder why people in jails should not be allowed to throw parties and suchlike with their own money, if they disturb no one else in the process. Sure, jails are meant to confine criminals, but besides free movement, should all the other rights that an individual normally enjoys also be suspended?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Umm.. as long as he is talking of convicted criminals, is “Because we want criminals to suffer”<\/i> a sufficient answer?
\n
\nAmit’s question betrays a strange sort of clinical detachment. The question assumes that the only reason we put people in jail is to keep them out of circulation for a period so that they cannot commit crimes for that period. That is of course one reason why we put people in jail, but there are other reasons too. We want their stay in jail to be unpleasant, so that they are deterred from committing crimes in future. We also want it to be unpleasant so that others<\/i> see their unpleasantness and are deterred from committing crimes. <\/p>\n

But apart from these pragmatic points, isn’t there a real human imperative to seek justice for those they have wronged? I know that people frequently look down upon this very human desire, and its supporters often use the term “retributive justice” and try to distinguish it from “revenge”. But I don’t see the difference and which is more, I don’t see it as wrong. I was watching NDTV yesterday and they were carrying an interview of Manjunath’s parents, and his mother said between tears that she would not rest satisfied till her son’s killers were hanged – and I couldn’t bring myself to see anything wrong or despicable about her very human desire. <\/p>\n

I am not offering her emotions as a rational justification for my point – ultimately it is a clash of value judgements. I see the need for revenge as completely human and you probably find something indecent about the desire. Neither of us can give logical justification for our positions. In addition, it is not that I feel no revulsion at all at when I look at the desire for revenge. I can understand both points of view because I can in fact “feel” both sides. I would be horrified if someone suggested that we should torture our prisoners. In fact, I know that criminals and undertrials are routinely mistreated and tortured in our jails, and I am disturbed at that. But I cannot share the cold-blooded view Amit takes to analyse if prisoners can have parties in jail.<\/p>\n

(edit<\/b>: through an oversight, I had not linked to Amit’s post.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amit asks: “This leads me to wonder why people in jails should not be allowed to throw parties and suchlike with their own money, if they disturb no one else in the process. Sure, jails are meant to confine criminals, but besides free movement, should all the other rights that an individual normally enjoys also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}