Crime and Punishment

I have now had 2 different podcasts discussing the same idea, so I am taking it as a hint from the universe and discussing it here.  Yes, The Universe has specific blog requests.


Just to get this out of the way, here are the links to the two podcasts.  The first one I've already linked to in a previous post, but it's so good it gets a double-link.


1) Radiolab's "The Bad Show" episode.  Discusses the Milgram experiments, sociopaths and other bad people type issues.
2) Start the Week's "Justice" episode.  Discusses a new play about an international criminal, a survey about the youth's view of the police and the state of the prisons in the UK.


Both of these podcasts deal with this issue: what does justice look like?  And both come to a similar conclusion: at the end of the day, most people don't care about a specific punishment, they care about understanding why a crime was committed.  


This makes a lot of sense to me.  Even as kids, when we're falsely accused, we're mostly interested in getting an apology, being vindicated - finding out why our parent or our teacher or whoever assumed we were the guilty party.  I know as an adult, when I recently had my phone stolen, I was more fascinated with the psychology of how someone just takes something that isn't theirs than I was with reporting them to the police or anything like that.  


A friend and I were recently watching this youtube video that Casey Anthony put out.  It is really, really weird.  Mostly because you can't see into her head at all.  When OJ released his "how I did it" book, it was frustrating and kind of shockingly ballsy, but at least it confirmed that he did see what he did as a big deal.  He was somewhat on the same page as the rest of us, in that sense.  If you watch that video, you'll see...she is not even vaguely on the same page as the rest of us.  She's chatting about her computer, about her day, about her new haircut.  It's like she's just another one of those teenagers doing a really bad vlog.  A vlog. But the point is, it is truly bizarre to feel like someone committed this horrible crime, and there was just no reason behind it.  No floods of rage, no political aspirations, nothing.  Just 100% random and a year later, she's over it.  That is extremely unsatisfying and unsettling.


All of this also makes me think we need to take another look at our justice system.  We focus 99.99% of our energy on making sure the punishment is correct - we refer to this as victim's rights, as true justice.  But maybe true justice is getting to the bottom of why crime was committed in the first place.  If someone commits a murder in the midst of a drug deal, is justice putting that person away for life, or figuring out and addressing why he or she was involved in a drug deal in the first place?


I should add, I feel a little weird writing this, given that I've never had anyone close to me involved in a violent crime.  I'm sure I would feel differently if I did.  But when I read how much money and time and energy we put toward punishing criminals, and how unsatisfied most victims' families end up feeling, I just think there has to be a better way.


And then I think for .15 seconds about going to law school.


And then I laugh at myself and get back to watching Brothers and Sisters.