'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

On punishment (contd.)

My big research project these days looks at how societies deal with the multiple legacies they're left with in the aftermath of atrocious violence. In the interests of synergy, the last two columns I've written for Al-Hayat have been applications of this question with respect to Iraq.

Interesting question. De-baathification is the watchword of the day for many of my friends there. But how? Who? Based on what theory?

Well, I've been studying theories of punishment fairly closely over the past three years. My instincts go strongly against the notion, in general, since I deeply believe that in general a healing approach is more effective at dealing with wrongdoing (repairing relationships and right order; making the world whole again) than punishment is. I truly can't buy into the whole retribution thing. The only possibly acceptable rationale I can see for the deliberate application of punishment (=the intentional curtailment of the rights and liberties of another person) is the incapacitation of proven offenders for the protection of society. But even that would need to be done with great caution, and with a clearly compassionate and reformative aim in mind.

Anyway, enough of my Buddhism here. In line with my great new theory or posting interesting out-takes from my articles onto this blog, I thought I'd post the following out-take from the piece I sent to Hayat yesterday:

In the west, "punishment" is often talked about as though there is universal agreement to the idea that this is the only correct response to wrongdoing, and on the general principles of how it should be administered. The assumption of universal agreement on these things then often serves to obscure the very solid fact that any move to "punish" other people is actually a power play. Within a family, parents punish their children, but children do not punish their parents. Within a nation, governments punish citizens, but citizens do not punish governments (except when citizens, through a ballot-box or other more brutal means, get to remove a government from office; and then, too, it is self-evidently a power play.) At the international level, George W. Bush has asserted a right to "punish" any government that he and he alone deems to be "evil"; but no other government in the world-- except perhaps Israel?--agrees that he has the right to do this.

In all these cases, asserting a "right" to punish another party is part of a broader power play.

Then again, punishment itself can be seen as one item on a broader spectrum of actions one party may "structure the incentives" for another party. When my husband and I told my son that he could come on a special trip with the rest of the family only if he got certain grades in school, and he then failed to get them, we did not allow him to come with us. We were not "punishing" him as such. We were just withholding the promised incentive because he had failed to qualify for it. To him, it probably felt like punishment. It is the same at the international level when the IMF establishes an incentive scheme for certain governments and then decides whether those governments have acted in a way that meets or does not meet the IMF conditions. That can certainly feel like punishment.

In all these cases, one party has the resources to be able to offer incentives or to threaten disincentives to the other, and the power to determine whether these incentives or disincentives are delivered. Definitely, multiple power plays are at work!

So nowadays, in many previously war-torn countries around the world, there is a big discussion over who it is who should be in charge of the process of trying and punishing the wrongdoers of the past.

In general, in the system of separate sovereign states that the (western) world has known for the past 350 years, the general idea has been administration of all processes of trying and punishing are the responsibility of the individual national governments. As this system became globalized after World War 2, it led to many painful situations. Inside a country like Maoist China or Stalin?s Russia, the government could politicize the "justice" system very badly and impose terrible punishment and tortures on people from the political opposition. And no outside body could stop them from doing so! But still, within the system of "state sovereignty", many other nations developed justice systems that were much more democratic, tolerant, and accountable-- and no outsiders had the right to stop that from happening, either.