Between punishment and Reform... Dignity
Dr. Michel E. Abs
Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches
For every crime, there is a punishment!
This is how we have been taught, and this is how laws are enacted and implemented, and this is how justice systems operate in the world.
People understand punishment as a punishment of a criminal act, a retaliation of each criminal according to his crime, and those affected by the crime declare that they have been psychologically relieved after the verdict or implementation of the punishment.
Moreover, in some cases, the affected people find that the verdict is not commensurate with the crime, and thus they express the depth of the damage or pain they have suffered, adding to that their disappointment with the judicial decision.
On the other hand, the perpetrator or his family find that the punishment was severe and harsh, and they give the perpetrator mitigating reasons to justify his criminal actions.
We cannot deny the vindictive dimension inherent in judicial rulings, which, on the one hand, are required to heal the grief of those against whom the crime had been committed, but society and the state have another point of view embodied in the logic of the general right that the state reserves for itself for inflicting punishment commensurate with the enacted crime, even if the affected people waive their complaint. This means that the state, through the judiciary, reserves for itself the right to punish those who committed a crime, not only to satisfy the victim or the aggrieved people, but also to discourage people from committing crimes and actions that harm society.
The state’s approach, then, as a protector of people’s rights and an enforcer of justice, has two dimensions:
The first dimension is therapeutic, which is to rehabilitate the person responsible for having committed a specific crime in order to discourage him from flipping the same ball again and urge him to think for a long time before embarking on doing something similar in the future. Here we find that in therapeutic work, the individual preventive dimension exists.
As for the second dimension, it is preventive par excellence, represented by the punishment inflicted on the perpetrator, in addition to the text of the law according to which the punishment was based, as an educational and preventive act par excellence.
If the punishment of the crime is limited to retaliation, we would return to the formula of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
The great challenge facing humanity, which civilized countries have dealt with, lies in the possibility of transforming the period of punishment into a constructive period, except in rare cases, when the criminal is inflicted with a chronic mental illness from which it is difficult for him to recover.
If prisons are places into which a person convicted of a minor crime or misdemeanor enters and leaves, specializing in several types of crimes, then the measures are ineffective.
If prison is not a place where the perpetrator regains his self-confidence and lost dignity because of what he had committed, then what a miserable place it is.
No one turns to crime and commits it voluntarily, happily and favorably, except in sick cases that do not fall within the scope of this article.
Whoever commits a crime has lost all self-confidence and relinquished all his dignity, otherwise he would not have committed the crime and committed the prohibited act while, in the bottom of his heart, he is aware of the fate that awaits him.
The first approach to rehabilitate a person who has been punished for a crime or misdemeanor is by helping him to regain his dignity along with restoring his self-confidence.
It is a reform program that has its conditions, targets and methodologies.
If the places of detention are not transformed into rehabilitation centers, then they will become de jure crime-training institutes, where a person convicted of a misdemeanor enters and graduates having acquired all the arts of committing a crime.
Profession and work give man his value in the world of modernity in which we live. Therefore, we consider that providing the convict with appropriate vocational training and transforming him into a professional person who is able to earn his living in honorable and respectful ways is the best policy for rehabilitating prisoners and launching them on the road to recovery.
Work is one of the guarantees of civil peace, and it is, a fortiori, one of the guarantees of socio-economic rehabilitation for those who have committed a crime for which they are being held accountable.
It enhances a person's feeling that he has a role in society, and therefore he becomes a useful creature for his surroundings that needs him and respects him.
It is the guarantee that the perpetrator will not repeat what he committed.
It is the means that removes a person from social, professional and economic marginality and places him in the very heart of society.
It is is the means that takes a person out of exclusion and isolation and introduces him into networks of professional relationships and friendships.
All of these are tools of rehabilitation that are reinforced when accompanied by punitive measures, which would be lethal if applied alone.
Society, through the state- as well as through private sector bodies- is responsible for protecting society by rehabilitating these people, not by punishing them.
Perpetrators of crimes, whether they are delinquents, those with misdemeanors, precedents and perpetrators of crimes, pose a great challenge to human society in which economic, social and political mechanisms have concurred to produce them, and is therefore responsible for their recovery.
This is the big challenge.