Harsh retribution for violent crimes might feel right, but does it do more harm than good?
and also added to the kinds of offences that attracted whole-life orders. Sentence lengths have continued to swell ever since.
It is hard not to think that harsher sentencing reflects a wholesale wish for revenge, a rise in a kind of socially sanctioned outrage, which is fanned by increasingly populist impulses in the press and political arena. But the job of the law is actually to prevent revenge, not enact it. As the philosopher: “Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
I think revenge may also be a way of dealing with grief. I vividly remember a patient I worked with who had killed a stranger when mentally ill and was sent to the hospital for treatment. His victim’s family were indignant that he wasn’t in prison, perhaps believing that secure hospitals are a softer option. They barraged us with phone calls and threatened legal action against us if we released him .
Concerns about the corrosive effect of vengeance on the individual can also be applied to the public at large. A society obsessed with revenge is not a healthy, resilient one. And there are also pragmatic considerations – can we really afford the kind of vengeance manifested in lengthy or whole-life sentences? The average cost is about £40,000 a year per person. Keeping so many people incarcerated for longer will ultimately cost taxpayers millions.
That does not mean using extreme sentencing as a form of revenge against such people is sound, either practically or morally. Giving judges greater flexibility in sentencing and increasing investment in rehabilitation programmes – while at the same time providing more support for victims of violent crime – look like wiser uses of precious public funds. Let us follow Bacon’s advice and turn to the law to “weed out” revenge, not amplify it.
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