For two reasons. Firstly, I don’t know if any system can achieve justice because systems work by simplifying complexity, organizing chaos, and justice is such a complex concept. That’s not to say that it’s not worth attempting, but I know for a fact that our current system isn’t “just” (for my reasoning as to why, refer back to that old blog post I linked, even after 11 years, it’s still relevant).
Secondly, the purpose of legal systems is not one of “justice”, but “law”, a slight but nonetheless significant distinction. It’s about maintaining order moreso than fairness. Today, I want to discuss that distinction, because I think it’s one that some people fail to.
I’ve been in my fair share of philosophical discussions, particularly around morality—for those of you who don’t know, I believe it is an objective fact that morals, by definition, are subjective. It seems as obvious to me as the fact that the sun is a star [If you don’t think that’s true, I think this blog post is above your reading level, go talk to a parent or guardian before being exposed to philosophy].
Some people, for reasons beyond my comprehension, can’t see this fact. But, during discussions on the subjectivity of morality, a common refrain will be brought up, by people who agree with me. It’s even a topic that was discussed in my philosophy class, when I was in high school:
Surely, morality is subjective because countries have different, often contradictory, laws. There are millions of examples: the Age of Majority; Capital Punishment; the sale and use of Drugs; Homosexuality; Jaywalking; Polygamy; Piracy; Prostitution; & Rape, just to name a few.
If morality were so objective—to the point that some think “the absolute truth of good and evil is written on your heart” or whatever Christian apologists say—surely, laws would be less arbitrary?
Whilst it has some merit, I think it has flaws, but feel free to argue in your own time whether it’s a “good hypothesis”, because I’m less interested in the focus of this hypothetical position and more in its implication. There is a direct connection being made here, between Law and Morality, and it’s not the only one.
Just look at film and television. In the earliest days of television, when television loved its horses and cowboys, it was common to distinguish between the good guys and bad guys in Westerns based on their hats. Good guys had white hats, and bad guys had black hats. Usually, the guys in black hats were criminals, outlaws, and the men in white hats were either victims of their crimes, or lawmen themselves. I’m not going to pretend that criminals were never heroes in old stories, because some of the best Westerns are all about the blurred line between good and evil, man and animal, right and wrong. But, after the censors got their hands around its neck in the 1930s, that was undeniably the case, because television and film had to follow regulations ensuring that sex, drugs and violence (as well as atheism, queerness of any sort, interracial relationships, and other minority rights) were demonized, or they wouldn’t be distributed. Very quickly, in America (the leading film industry of the time) no good guy was allowed to commit a crime, and all criminals had to be depicted as bad guys. Now it wasn't just the hats, the rules themselves were written in black and white:
“No plot should by its treatment throw the sympathy of the audience with sin, crime, wrong-doing or evil. [...] Crime need not always be punished, as long as the audience is made to know that it is wrong.”
—The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, (Appendix 1, §2 “Working Principles”)
It says a lot more than that, and I suggest you read it yourself not just to see these words in their full context, but also as an irreligious person myself, a regulatory document discussing “sin” as much as this one as though it is an uncontroversial fact, is honestly disturbing.
But this is where I’m actually approaching the crux of the matter. Not only have we, historically, associated crime with immorality, we’ve also associated it with sin. Hell, it’s not just historical...
In America, because of the machinations of the Marmalade Man, at time of writing, women’s rights have regressed. Roe v Wade—a legal precedent that upheld a woman’s right to an abortion—was overturned by the Supreme Court. This is an outrageous success of Christian Conservatives who, for years, have been explicitly targeting politics in the hopes of enshrining their values into law and governance. Whilst I find it horrifying, it makes sense that every person would want their value to be reflected in their society, even though I find the methods being employed underhanded.
Once again, we must turn away from the big, juicy subject at hand to focus on its periphery – because whilst the encroaching power of the alt-right on American Politics matters, I’m not equipped to discuss it. Perhaps my volatile disinterest in politics is a detriment, but I can’t change the way I feel, so I’ll leave that to the political commentators. But “crime as sin”, that’s a fascinating concept, and once you see it, you start noticing it everywhere.
Consider, the last post I wrote... commentators are getting upset that criminals are being released onto the street. And unless every single one of those commentators was a racist (possible, but improbable), their disgust towards crime was less judicial, and more biblical.
As an atheist, I think the simplest definition of Sin is “a thing your God really doesn’t like”, which is accurate, if a bit flippant; but if you follow such a god’s religion, you are evil – and, in Christian belief especially, it means you will be disallowed into his super-special-awesome afterlife ghost rave, “Heaven”, and thus you’re associated with Hell and its denizens... demons. With this magical sort of thinking, doing the wrong thing isn’t just bad, isn’t just evil, it’s inherently demonic and corrupt.
I see this all the time, people not only tarring people with the same brush, but rather scarring them with the same scalpel, cutting them with the same unhealing wound of “criminal”. Certainly, some criminals commit more than one crime. Serial criminals, be them rapists, killers or thieves, commit more than one crime, and that’s one potential justification for putting people in prison for a long time. You could argue that they are “corrupted” by a desire to commit multiple crimes. But, I’m discussing a difference of degrees here. Because whilst it is true that some criminals are dangerous, because of the nature of their crimes, when people treat a crime like a sin, they aren’t acting like a criminal is potentially dangerous, they're acting as though they are eternally damned.
There is a certain benefit in viewing crime and law this way, and that is part of the magical thinking. Whilst I recognize morality as subjective, including “God’s” (or more accurately the bible writers’) morality of “Sin”, those objectionable folks the moral objectivists, see it as Objective, Definite and Solid. This is useful as it is simple. It’s easier to deal with crime and criminals if you can simplify it, it requires less mental effort to deal with crime in this way.
Of course, the problem with this view, is that it is wrong. Not just wrong, but it’s a wasteful distraction, and contributes to a Sunk Cost.
Any “Sunk Cost” is a price that you’ve paid which cannot be recovered, but humans tend to have a bias referred to as the Sunk Cost fallacy. See, we don’t like to waste our time. Time only goes in one direction, and we can never get it back if it’s wasted. So, if a person spends an hour of their life doing something, they want to achieve something—and not just something, most people would want to achieve an hour’s worth of something. Whether that be “cooking dinner”, “watching a movie”, “having sex” or whatever—we value our time.
So, if we ever do waste time, it creates a cognitive dissonance “I value my time, and yet I chose to spend my time on something I don’t value”, and that’s not easily resolved, thus we encounter the fallacy. For you see, the problem is that when we do end up wasting our time, it’s hard to get us to realize it.
Look at “slacktivism” for example. Slacktivism is an attempt at activism (often for the sake of social justice) that does nothing, yet the slacktivist feels like something has been done. You see an article about how people in Ethiopia don’t have easy access to water, so you share that tweet to your 36 followers... job done, you feel like you’ve made the world a better place by “raising awareness”. Don’t get me wrong, raising awareness isn’t pointless for some issues, like corruption – but for a physical, tangible issue like “I cannot access water”, the solution is water, not awareness.
Another example of a sunk cost is “security theatre”. My favourite example is your signature. We sign official documents, contracts and declarations... but, 99 times out of 100, when you sign something, it’s meaningless. Nobody knows what your signature looks like. Why would they? And more importantly, how could they? Every single person in your country has a (supposedly) unique signature, it’s not like they keep them all in a database, yet when something is important, we sign it anyway as though it’s somehow more secure, because we realize that any person with a pen can write your name, but we like to believe that nobody can write your name with the same "penmanship" or "flourish" as you, meaning your legal contracts are safe and binding, even though they’re definitely not.
And being “tough on crime” is just another form of sunk cost. Because, we believe that if we simply demonize criminals, punish all crime, never let them go and treat anyone that commits a crime like garbage, we solve the problem of crime. But, that’s just wrong. Because the problem of crime is, in simple terms, suffering. Criminals suffer when we treat them like sinners, but even if you don’t care – because you’ve decided they deserve it – so do the “innocent”. When you waste time, effort and money into inflating the courts, the police departments and prisons so that you can punish all these filthy sinners, you actually fail to recognize that crime is a social issue. It’s not demons that commit crimes, it’s people, and sometimes it’s because those people are poor, uneducated, mentally ill, discarded, disenfranchised, abused or neglected. You can actually stop crime before it occurs, if you recognize criminals as human beings, first, before hunting them down.
And that’s actually the final twist in this tale. Because I started this blog post after realizing a sociological connection between Crime and Sin, but it’s not really about Crime and Sin... Abortion isn’t even a Sin, in the bible, so my example is flawed. The issue isn’t that we’re treating Crime as Sin, it’s that we’re treating Criminalization as Dehumanization. People don’t view criminals as demons, they just don’t view them as humans. And, whilst it feels like that’s the best way to stop crime, it actually makes it worse...
I’m the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, make sure you don’t get caught out there, sinners.
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