The sanctity of life?

He was in his mid-twenties.  The little boy several houses down the street had caught his fancy some time ago.  Then, one night, he could not restrain himself any longer.  While the child's parents were watching television in the lounge, he entered the four-year old's bedroom through the window, and carried him, still half asleep, out to a nearby thicket.  There he sodomised the child, mutilated his genitals, strangled him with his pyjama trousers, and left him for dead. 

The little boy survived.  He was found the following morning, wandering through the thicket, dazed, distressed, bleeding, half-naked. 

The police swung into action.  Their files revealed a surprisingly high number of known child-abusers living in the vicinity.  The culprit was found, arrested, tried, and convicted.  At the conclusion of the trial it was revealed that he had a long list of prior convictions.  Not six or seven, but over fifty!  Numerous convictions for serious assault and sexual attacks, as well as routine crimes against property. 

He had spent a high proportion of his adult life behind bars; he had received many hours of counselling; he had been "rehabilitated" time and time again.  Over the years, the State had spent a small fortune on his case. 

Clearly the State, the penal institutions, the social workers, the man's family and friends^[1], had failed society.  They had failed to rehabilitate the antisocial individual, again and again and again; and they had failed to protect society from his excesses, again and again and again. 

Above all, the man himself had failed society; he had demonstrated himself incapable of contributing to the commonweal; of exercising the restraint^[2] and discharging the obligations that are the price each of us has to pay for the rights and benefits of living in community with others. 

Sadly, his was not an exceptional case.  The pattern is repeated for a high proportion of serious offenders, and it is repeated across the globe - most societies share the problem. 

How long must the charade continue?  How long do we keep pretending that our efforts to rehabilitate the intractably antisocial make any difference?  Is this part of loving our neighbour, of continually turning the other cheek, of our childlike faith in the basic goodness and redeemability of human beings?  Or is it a numbers game?  Is the cost of permanently incarcerating the antisocial higher than the cost of the suffering of his statistically insignificant number of victims?  Are both costs less than the social cost of putting down the habitual antisocial, as a mad dog is put down?  Is the dog's right to life inviolable? 

Human life is not sacred.  It is precious, but it is not inviolable.  Human life should be protected at great cost and effort, but there are times when the taking of human life is necessary for the common good.  We each also have the inalienable right to take our own lives^[3], or to request that it be taken. 

A dead man does not re-offend.  He cannot be released back into the community at a later time by a penal system under budgetary pressure, or by rehabilitation professionals too eager to pronounce their charges socialised.  He cannot go forth and procreate, further moulding his genetically handicapped scions in his own image^[4], through his probable neglect or abuse.  A dead man costs nothing to keep; he does not eat, and neither does he need to be guarded.  The considerable resources now directed at maintaining the intractably antisocial in the lifestyle to which they have grown accustomed, could be redirected to much more positive activities, if only we were willing to adopt a more "liberal" attitude toward the death penalty. 

But there is always a risk of justice miscarrying, and it is not an insubstantial risk; in some jurisdictions it may almost be expected.  A person might be framed.  They might fall victim to prejudice and circumstantial evidence.  There might be a bent cop or a crooked judge perverting the course of justice. 

Also, any one of us may be provoked to murder or atrocity.  A single act does not necessarily point to a predisposition to offend and re-offend.  It is perhaps only when there is incontrovertible evidence of a disposition to re-offend, despite repeated attempts at rehabilitation, despite the best efforts of professionals, family, and friends, that the imposition of the death penalty should even be considered.

Perhaps only on the third occasion that a person has been convicted of a serious offence, not against property, not against the State, not against morality, but against other persons, should the death penalty be given?  This is not to punish the unremitting criminal, not as vengeance, not as a deterrent to others, but to cost-effectively protect society from the known recidivist. 

Three strikes and you are dead.  Such a penal policy would virtually assure that only the irredeemably antisocial would be put to death.  Justice may miscarry once, even twice, with the same individual.  But thrice?  And for those properly convicted before, the third conviction would probably represent only a small fraction of the full extent of their prior criminal activity - so hard is it to obtain a conviction in many contemporary jurisdictions. 

Unfortunately, once the door to the taking of life by the State is opened, there is a significant risk that the power will be abused later; that the line between what is justified and what is not will creep over time.  Can we trust our politicians and ourselves not to abuse it?  Probably not.  That, and not the sanctity of life is the reason for opposing capital punishment. 

With appropriate due process, and safeguards against arbitrary justice^[5] such as the presumption of innocence - having to be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt - and the other checks and balances that operate in a modern State, it is highly unlikely that innocents will be found guilty.  But that is insufficient reason to yield to the atavistic appeal, and the clinical efficiency of the death penalty. 

Most states around our world are quite incapable of consistently delivering justice of a quality sufficiently `fail-safe' to admit the death penalty.  To ensure that such states do not use the existence of capital punishment in advanced democracies as their excuse for their own continued use of the death penalty, it is necessary that the death penalty be universally proscribed.    

There are no doubt many white South Africans who are now relieved that Nelson Mandela was spared the death penalty in 1964, as they might then have wished, receiving instead life imprisonment without possibility of parole. 

To give the State the power to put individuals to death is to give it absolute power.  The State is corruptible; we can guarantee that no matter how well it has been constructed, a time will come when it will be captured^[6] and its powers abused; and many of us will not know when that time has come because we will be accessories to the time. 

The State, a fallible human creation bound to fail, ought never to be delegated the power to put individuals to death. 

But each of us as sovereign individuals^[7] can, under exceptional circumstances, have a duty to kill.  Had the four year old boy been your son, you would have been entirely justified in killing the aggressor to protect your child.   Knowing that your State's judicial and rehabilitative system was ineffective, you would also be justified in acting after the event.  But equally, each of us as the fellow citizens of the aggrieved family, would be justified in taking action^[8] against  the aggressor.  Far better in fact for one of us to do so, because we would be more able to take action surreptitiously and dispassionately, whereas motive would immediately implicate any member of the boy’s family, and grief and hatred would impair their ability to act effectively. 

Know your enemies - the enemies of society, of morality, and of our long term civilised survival^[9].  Know their families and associates also because criminals rarely act without support.  Be patient, bide your time, and when the moment is opportune, act.   While we each have the potential to be criminals^[10] and to commit atrocities, the difference between you and the recidivist criminal, is that he has repeatedly shown himself to be incapable of controlling the animal within.  There is a high probability that he will re-offend, and that his offspring will follow in his footsteps, unless you act effectively upon him.

In war also^[11], you will have a duty to act hard-heartedly^[12].  Regrettably there will be times when war will be justified.