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If someone steals your money , spends it and is caught , he is trialed and put into jail , but he is not sentenced to give your money back, unless it's a large sum and he hasn't had the time to spend it completely or to hide it. If you are unlucky, your money will constitute an evidence and you may wait a long time before you get it back ( forget the interests it may have brought !) or perhaps the police or the tax administration could be interested , where you have got so much money !
Justice and laws are not made to help the victims, to reinstall them in their prior rights or to provide them with some kind of moral and financial reparation ...
This could be seen in the Dutroux affair in Belgium . The parents of the kidnapped ( and later killed) girls where pushed around by the judicial administration , they got no information whatsoever, they were lied to , in short they were treated as if they were a disturbance in the whole investigation .When finally another investigating judge (juge d'instruction) discovered the truth, found the murdered girls and arrested Dutroux ( who probably had some protection in higher places) , the parents were still refused access to the investigation files by the general prosecutor ( procureur général) . Later the investigating judge was removed from his position , allegedly his contacts with the victims parents were too close ...
Sometimes the justice acts as if the victims were partly responsible for what happened to them ( after all they were at the wrong place in the wrong time ! ) and if the criminals were not fully responsible for what they did ( he had a bad youth, had emotional problems,had no job, needeed money , was under influence of drugs, alcohol etc.)
There is no need for harder laws , the laws are sufficient but they should be applied correctly . Instead of filling up the prisons with people serving from 6 months to 2 years for minor offences, keep those places for hard-boiled murderers and leave them imprisoned for at least 20 years !
In Germany there were lately several cases of pedophilic sex maniacs , having killed a child , sentenced to 20 years , released after 5 years ( officially for good conduct , in fact because of the overcrowding of prisons) and reiterating their crimes as soon as they were out of prison !
So, who is responsible ??
Hi Dale
Speaking about torture in the USA (now!) :
It is strange that the country which has the most freedomloving constitution has so little respect for the life and the freedom of it's citizens ( except if you are rich enough to pay the best lawyers - see the O.J. Simpson case )
Now let's see the facts : In Europe it would be unthinkable that
someone could be arrested by the police for traffic violations or disorderly
conduct ( or lying on the beach nude or without a bikini top) Unless you
commit a serious crime no one would take you to jail before you have been
able to defend yourself before a judge . Arrestations are something
taken very seriously and the order of arrest has to be issued by
a judge
.
The police has only the right to arrest you when you are trying
to escape from the scene or if you are not cooperating ( giving your identity
..) or to prevent you from hurting people .
So much for the individual freedom of the american citizens ( where
even an 11 year old boy gets arrested and handcuffed and taken to jail
in the middle of the night - without even a warrant of arrest or anything
- just following the insinuations of a neighhbour - in the best
inquisition tradition .
In Hitler's Germany these procedures were called "Nacht- und Nebel
Aktion" ....
Now what has this to do with torture , may you ask .
It shows the state of mind of a society which doesn't live according
to it's own constitution where freedom of thinking and the unviolability
of the individual have been written down 200 years ago.
If you treat every person violating a law like a dangerous criminal
you show no respect for the individual liberty and the step from handcuffing
traffic violators to imprisoning people in concentration camps for having
another religion or philosophy is not very big . In my opinion
Amerca tends more and more to become a faschistic state with
unlimited power for the state , police and other organisations.
In the american prisons there are numerous forms of torture . Not
the the medieaval meaning where torture was meant to get a confession ,
but deliberately used as punishment and humiliation of the prisoner . They
exist in a day by day routine but there are also very significative cases
where it is seen that the state wants to show how much power he
has got . I have the case of a middle-aged woman , quite an inoffensive
housewife who was held handcuffed in her cell 24 hours a day during years
( the cuffs were taken off if she took a shower !) Now what was her crime
? Was she a dangerous murderer ?? No, her only fault was to have not the
same opinions than ther government ( no, this happened in
the USA , not in China !)
She was one of the leaders of a movement who was opposed to the
construction of missile sites in several parts of the Middle West . This
movement committed several "terroristic" acts - destroying federal property
(cutting down fences ) , illegally entering to projected
missile sites . This woman was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment
for not saying OK the state's decisions . The cuffs were meant as an additional
punishment ( allegedly she had once tried to escape !)
> Capital Punishment, on the other hand, does have a similarity,
although very little. The > end result is the same in that the murderer,
serial killer, mass-murderer, etc does not get > a chance to continue their
savage acts.
If this were the only motivation for capital punishment , killing the criminal would not be necessary , there are prisons after all to prevent him from continuing his career . In the USA , the prime motive for CP is REVENGE , the (old) testamentarian " An eye for an eye " It shows also how rotten the system has become : The state ,who was not able to protect the life of the victim beforehand, invites the relatives of the victim to a unique show : the killing of the man ( or the woman) who has killed her daughter (son, husband) This is the summum of perverted thinking and acting !
> Thankfully. In the old days, they burn them, crudely behead
them, draw & quarter them > and burn the remains, disembowel
them, etc. In the USA, they give a lethal injection,
> which puts them to sleep first and then stops their heart,
almost too kind. Other states
> electrocute them with enough electricity to fry them instantly.
To actually try to say the
> two are the same simply because the end result is the same is
ridiculously simplistic.
> An eye for an eye, only today it is done more humanely.
Dale, you are a very humanistic ( or should I say humane ) person
. One hand on the Bible, the other on the Colt ( or the electricity switch
or the hypodermic syringue) .
Now it it also very strange that in a country where religious beliefs
are so high-priced
( there are only 3 % atheists in the USA compared to 17% in Europe!)
, it seems to be that some of the ten commandments have become obsolete
( "Thou shalt not kill !")
If you accept that killing is forbidden ( by the law
and religious beliefs) then consequently ALL killings are forbidden - to
my knowledge there are no exception and amendments to the Fifth Commandment
....
Besides it is strange that a country calling itself "christian"
and where Jesus Christ
is "superstar" , has so little in it's philosophy from the little,
jewish 'renegade' but takes all his sources from the Old Testament ("An
eye for an eye" instead of " Love your enemy")
Best regards
Max