What is justice for?: Retributivists

The line

I’ve been on the bench twenty-two years. My daughter asks me sometimes how I sleep. I sleep fine. Not because I’m callous. Because I’ve watched what happens when people lose faith that the system will say, clearly, this was wrong.

A man drove a van into pedestrians in Toronto in 2018. Ten dead, mostly women. He smiled during the trial. The restorative camp wants encounter, dialogue, the offender facing the reality of what he did. I sat in that courtroom. He was facing it. He was enjoying it. Some people are. The world has those people in it, and a society needs a way to say so that doesn’t depend on the offender’s willingness to feel bad.

Mary Johnson forgave the man who killed her son. That’s her right and it’s extraordinary. But I think about the mother who doesn’t want to forgive. Who wants the system to say her child mattered. The courtroom is where that happens. Imperfectly. But it happens.

What we got wrong

I’m not going to pretend the system I spent my career in is working. The US incarcerates at rates that have nothing to do with proportionality. A man serving twenty years for a nonviolent drug offense isn’t experiencing desert. He’s experiencing leverage. The 97 percent plea rate means most people never get the trial I keep saying matters. I know that.

The distributive camp is right about the conditions. Poverty made it predictable. But the child has already been shot. Fixing the zip code may prevent the next one. It has nothing to say to this one. Someone has to go first, and punishment goes first. Everything else is what comes after.

Where we concede ground: The US prison system is an indictment of our principle. We built it. That’s on us.

What would change our mind: A restorative-only jurisdiction showing lower recidivism and higher victim satisfaction over fifteen years.

Read the full synthesis: What is justice for?