https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/opini...ional.html
EXCERPT: [...] I was raped repeatedly during a three-year span from age 13 to 16. I was also subject to physical and emotional abuse during that time. I’ve since undergone years of traditional talk and group therapy with trauma specialists [...]
I’m not a proponent of the death penalty primarily because the flaws in our criminal justice system are egregious and increasingly well-documented. The thought experiment’s framing, however, circumvented my usual concerns about unjust sanctions. I know what my rapist did to me, so I know he is guilty. Worries about the inhumanity of capital punishment were also blunted in part because this was purely hypothetical and in part because of the inhumanity he exhibited those long years with his penchant for violence.
Although the death sentence seemed wholly appropriate, I still considered how I would feel if a judge gave my rapist a less severe punishment: a natural life sentence — a life sentence with no chance for parole without a successful appeal. In this scenario, my feelings were just as clear: I would be slightly disappointed, but I would still feel mostly satisfied. Anything less than a death or natural life sentence, I knew, would seem inadequate.
[...] After reporting back to my therapist, she offered another thought experiment. “What if,” she said, “your rapist had been sentenced to death, but then had been pardoned?” I did not have to mull this question over. I knew I would feel exactly as I do now, exactly as I have felt for the past two decades: that the world is a terribly unjust place. It is a place where my life can be irrevocably transformed because a man could exert control, manipulation and violence over me for years without repercussion. It is a place where my rapist and others like him are enabled at both societal and local levels. His mother, for example, simply told us to quiet down whenever she heard my screams — a response as horrifying as it is understandable given the many ways society tolerates violence against women. A hypothetical pardon would allow him to escape repercussions just as he has escaped them in reality. Nearly 20 years later as I began trauma therapy again, he has a secure job, an accomplished and beautiful wife, and a healthy daughter [...]
[...] the philosopher Jennifer Lackey published an opinion piece in The Stone. In the article, she uses her experience teaching philosophy to inmates to argue for the irrationality of natural life sentences.
[...] I read Lackey’s article very soon after the thought experiments with my therapist. I noticed that Lackey’s argument easily applied to the death penalty, and I realized that the sentences I desired for my rapist were precisely the ones Lackey condemns as irrational. Since nothing in her argument prevented me from applying her logic to my own desires, I had to wonder if her argument also concluded that I was irrational for desiring permanent punishments. If it is irrational for the state to prescribe a permanent punishment given our epistemic limitations and prisoners’ likelihood for change, wouldn’t it be similarly irrational for victims to ignore these considerations?
There are, of course, crucial differences between victim’s desires and punishments carried out by the state. While sometimes the criminal justice system considers the wishes of victims and their families, the criminal justice system’s central aim is to protect the interests of the state and the community. This aim does not always coincide with the interests or wishes of the victim. Admittedly, there are often very good reasons for the state to ignore the wishes of victims. But my concern is less about what the state should do in practice and more about what arguments that prioritize transformation say about victims who desire permanent punishments.
Here I will be blunt: it matters very little to me whether my rapist is transformed at some point in his life. It matters to me only to the extent that I will readily agree that it would be better if he became the sort of person who did not inflict violence upon others. I would be very happy hearing that no other women would be harmed by him. But in terms of the punishment that he deserves? Transformation does not matter to me. And this is not irrational: There are many carefully considered reasons one might want a natural life sentence for perpetrators of egregious and irrevocable harm.
Desiring death or a natural life sentence for those who inflict traumatic violence is a rational response because whether or not my particular rapist transforms is irrelevant to whether or not I will ever have the chance to be the sort of person I might have been. His transformation is irrelevant to whether or not I will be able to live the sort of life I could have were it not for the injustice done to me. I desire a death or natural life sentence for my rapist because that is what seems appropriate given the amount of damage he wrought in my life. Rape is itself a transformative experience. I will never be the same, and I have no idea how my life might have been different without the experience....
MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/opini...ional.html
EXCERPT: [...] I was raped repeatedly during a three-year span from age 13 to 16. I was also subject to physical and emotional abuse during that time. I’ve since undergone years of traditional talk and group therapy with trauma specialists [...]
I’m not a proponent of the death penalty primarily because the flaws in our criminal justice system are egregious and increasingly well-documented. The thought experiment’s framing, however, circumvented my usual concerns about unjust sanctions. I know what my rapist did to me, so I know he is guilty. Worries about the inhumanity of capital punishment were also blunted in part because this was purely hypothetical and in part because of the inhumanity he exhibited those long years with his penchant for violence.
Although the death sentence seemed wholly appropriate, I still considered how I would feel if a judge gave my rapist a less severe punishment: a natural life sentence — a life sentence with no chance for parole without a successful appeal. In this scenario, my feelings were just as clear: I would be slightly disappointed, but I would still feel mostly satisfied. Anything less than a death or natural life sentence, I knew, would seem inadequate.
[...] After reporting back to my therapist, she offered another thought experiment. “What if,” she said, “your rapist had been sentenced to death, but then had been pardoned?” I did not have to mull this question over. I knew I would feel exactly as I do now, exactly as I have felt for the past two decades: that the world is a terribly unjust place. It is a place where my life can be irrevocably transformed because a man could exert control, manipulation and violence over me for years without repercussion. It is a place where my rapist and others like him are enabled at both societal and local levels. His mother, for example, simply told us to quiet down whenever she heard my screams — a response as horrifying as it is understandable given the many ways society tolerates violence against women. A hypothetical pardon would allow him to escape repercussions just as he has escaped them in reality. Nearly 20 years later as I began trauma therapy again, he has a secure job, an accomplished and beautiful wife, and a healthy daughter [...]
[...] the philosopher Jennifer Lackey published an opinion piece in The Stone. In the article, she uses her experience teaching philosophy to inmates to argue for the irrationality of natural life sentences.
[...] I read Lackey’s article very soon after the thought experiments with my therapist. I noticed that Lackey’s argument easily applied to the death penalty, and I realized that the sentences I desired for my rapist were precisely the ones Lackey condemns as irrational. Since nothing in her argument prevented me from applying her logic to my own desires, I had to wonder if her argument also concluded that I was irrational for desiring permanent punishments. If it is irrational for the state to prescribe a permanent punishment given our epistemic limitations and prisoners’ likelihood for change, wouldn’t it be similarly irrational for victims to ignore these considerations?
There are, of course, crucial differences between victim’s desires and punishments carried out by the state. While sometimes the criminal justice system considers the wishes of victims and their families, the criminal justice system’s central aim is to protect the interests of the state and the community. This aim does not always coincide with the interests or wishes of the victim. Admittedly, there are often very good reasons for the state to ignore the wishes of victims. But my concern is less about what the state should do in practice and more about what arguments that prioritize transformation say about victims who desire permanent punishments.
Here I will be blunt: it matters very little to me whether my rapist is transformed at some point in his life. It matters to me only to the extent that I will readily agree that it would be better if he became the sort of person who did not inflict violence upon others. I would be very happy hearing that no other women would be harmed by him. But in terms of the punishment that he deserves? Transformation does not matter to me. And this is not irrational: There are many carefully considered reasons one might want a natural life sentence for perpetrators of egregious and irrevocable harm.
Desiring death or a natural life sentence for those who inflict traumatic violence is a rational response because whether or not my particular rapist transforms is irrelevant to whether or not I will ever have the chance to be the sort of person I might have been. His transformation is irrelevant to whether or not I will be able to live the sort of life I could have were it not for the injustice done to me. I desire a death or natural life sentence for my rapist because that is what seems appropriate given the amount of damage he wrought in my life. Rape is itself a transformative experience. I will never be the same, and I have no idea how my life might have been different without the experience....
MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/opini...ional.html