The opposite of justice

Of all the bizarre insults ever levelled at me over the years – and there’ve been quite a few, some more deserved than others – the one I never got my head around is… ‘do-gooder’.

So I’m a ‘do-gooder’, huh? I kind of like that. ‘Do gooders’, by definition, ‘do good’. And last I looked, people who ‘do good’ were regarded as more beneficial, in the general scheme of things, than those who ‘do evil’… or, for that matter, nothing at all.

For that reason alone, I hardly think the cap fits when applied to yours truly. But what the heck? Some people clearly think I do some good in the world, otherwise they wouldn’t call me that. So why not just nod in acknowledgement of the compliment, and move on?

Oh, and it often comes accompanied by other equally anomalous ‘insults’… such as ‘bleeding heart’ and ‘tree-hugger’. Which of course raises the question: on what grounds, exactly, are any of those epithets supposed to be insulting? 

Take ‘tree-hugger’, for instance. I don’t recall ever physically taking any tree in any warm embrace… (and before Birnam Wood comes marching towards me with an army of saplings: please note I’ll insist on DNA testing before acknowledging paternity in any of your claims, thank you very much).

But even if I did hug the occasional tree here and there… who knows? I might have been drunk at the time… well, so what? The most you could say for that sort of activity is that it is kind of pointless, really. Trees do not crave human contact like humans do; indeed they lack the sort of nervous system that would be required to actually appreciate a good old-fashioned cuddle anyway. 

As for ‘bleeding hearts’… well, one has to actually have a heart for it to bleed. Far better for your heart to bleed, than to lack both heart and blood in your veins. (Just ask the Tin Woodman, he’ll tell you all about it…)

In any case: whichever way you look at those ‘insults’, they are all ultimately complimentary. The qualities they infer – altruism, philanthropy, sensitivity, environmental conscience, etc.– are all universally acknowledged to be positive things: the possession of which actually makes one a better person, not worse. 

It is failure to possess those qualities that most intelligent, sensitive people would find offensive. And the first people to admit this are none other than their detractors themselves. 

Look at it this way: if such expressions are hurled as insults, what does it tell us about the qualities admired by those doing the hurling? They must, by their own reasoning, be people without a trace of altruism or philanthropy anywhere in their bodies… people without the capacity for empathy or emotion… people with no sense of responsibility for (or affinity with) the other living things they share this planet with.

That, by the way, is the textbook definition of a psychopath. Call me a ‘do gooder’ all you like: but without even thinking about it, I automatically know which side of the fence I’d rather be on. 

OK: by now you will have realised that this is building up to a response to some of the (expected) criticism I got this week over an article published last Wednesday. In case you missed it, it was about the use of solitary confinement as a punitive measure embedded in our legal system… with particular reference to the sentence handed down to Nizar El-Gadi for the murder of his wife in 2011.

First off I must acknowledge a mistake in that article: El-Gadi was actually sentenced to 10 days of solitary confinement five times a year (not every five years, as I erroneously wrote). The error is regrettable, but at the same time it only dramatically underscores the astonishing severity of the sentence. That’s 50 days of solitary confinement a year… when the maximum urged by the EU (and even then, as an internal prison disciplinary measure… NOT as a sentence handed down by a court of law) is 14 days.

The sentence was therefore infinitely more barbaric than I at first surmised. It is not just redolent of the 19th century… it is positively medieval. I said it last Wednesday, and I’ll repeat it here. Solitary confinement, as a punitive tool wielded by the administrators of justice, has no place whatsoever in a 21st century EU member state. 

But let’s not repeat arguments: the original article is still online, you can read it for yourselves. It is the feedback I intend to respond to here… starting with the first of two endlessly repeated ‘arguments’.

1. What about the victim’s children? Did you look at it from their perspective?

The short answer to this one is… no, I didn’t. And I don’t intend to, either, because it happens to be entirely irrelevant to the argument at hand.

There is, however, a slightly longer answer. From a justice point of view, the very last eyes through which one should look at this case – or any other – are those of the surviving loved ones. Why? For the same reason that none of those categories would ever be allowed to sit in judgement over the case.

They are, by definition, interested parties. They have an automatic (albeit entirely understandable) bias in the proceedings. And in any case, their point of view does not impact the most important question of all: was the suspect guilty, or not? 

A man does not become guilty of murder, simply because the victim’s loved ones believe he was. The victims could be wrong… indeed they are far likelier to misjudge than disinterested parties, because their judgment is clouded by powerful emotions. 

Besides: entrusting that category of person with any form of contribution to a final verdict would be grounds for instant dismissal of the entire case as a miscarriage of justice. And please note that this not an opinion of mine, but one of the most basic, entry-level, fundamental requirement of any modern criminal justice system. 

But of course, you have to actually have a modern criminal justice system for that to work in practice. Malta evidently doesn’t, which might explain why half the reactions I got were from people who actually believe the victim’s children are the best-placed to judge their own mother’s murderer.

Honestly, it takes an exceptionally backward country to produce so widespread a misconception about the most fundamental cornerstone of justice. And yet, there you have it: the majority opinion in 21st century Malta is that the most biased members of society should be the ones to judge, in bald defiance of the rest of civilisation.

But having said all this: let us, by all means, look at it from the perspective of the surviving children. How do they actually benefit from the additional 50 days of solitary confinement a year, to the life imprisonment already handed down to their mother’s murderer? Anyone care to explain how carrying this knowledge for the rest of their lives is expected to actually help with the healing process?

No, I figured nobody would. For the people urging others to ‘look at it through their eyes’ have obviously never done so themselves. Or if they did, they came away with the twisted notion that revelling in the cruelty of punishment can somehow assuage the long-term suffering caused by the crime.

I have yet to encounter a single authoritative psychological study, published anywhere in the world, that didn’t prove the precise contrary. Nursing grudges interminably, delighting in the pain of others as compensation for one’s own loss… these are all recognised symptoms of a malingering psychological tumour that does nobody in the world any good.

Oh, wait, I forgot: ‘doing good’ is now a bad thing, right? Have to keep reminding myself that I live in a country where moral standards are set by self-professed ‘evil-doers’….

Moving on to argument number two:

2) What if it was my mother (or other comparable family member) who was murdered?

Yes, well… what then? Obviously, the exact same considerations would apply. The principles of justice don’t in any way change, simply because I (or anyone else) happen to have a close rapport with the victim of any crime. And the principle in this case is so utterly fundamental, that in foreign jurisdictions it is even inscribed on the wall in every court of law: ‘La legge e uguale per tutti’ (The law is equal for all).

Not, however, according to the cream of Malta’s online commentators. Oh no. For them, it’s a case of different laws applying to different people… depending whether or not they are related to the victim. Even a kangaroo – the animal that gave its name to the logical flaw inherent in this reasoning – would find it hard to come up with a more complete and utter perversion of the course of justice than that.

But to answer the question anyway: in that scenario, I would then become the surviving loved one demanding justice for a crime. And as a citizen of a 21st century country (which I’d like to think I am: in my own mind, if not in physical reality)… for that reason alone I would expect to be automatically ineligible to sit on the jury... still less to assume the role of judge, and dictate the sentence handed down to the murderer. 

I might succumb to violent impulses of revenge, yes… but even in that extremity of emotion, I would hardly conflate those impulses with anything even remotely resembling ‘justice’. Revenge is not justice, and justice is not revenge. The two concepts are actually the perfect antithesis of one another.

And herein lies the problem. What emerges from both these ‘arguments’ is nothing more or less than the opposite of justice. It is the mentality of a lynch-mob, and as such represents exactly how a court of law is not supposed to function. 

Lynch-mobs are swept off by a current of tidal (and entirely irrational) emotion, which blinds them to the formative principles of justice. It is precisely to avoid the same fate that the law-courts are expected (and legally obliged) to banish all emotion from proceedings.

Again, we are at the level of fundamental legal principles here. These include that a suspect is pronounced guilty or innocent only on the basis of the evidence presented before the court… and NOT on the emotional hysterics of any angry mob. They also include that penalties are dictated by the demands of justice… and this, by definition, cannot be achieved by pandering to the public’s baying for blood.