Our ‘rehabilitative’ justice system needs to be put on trial

A justice system centred on ‘rehabilitation’ will never deter potential criminals. It strikes no horror at the heart of the wicked.

For the last fortnight, we cannot be but horrified by the brutal murders of both Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard. The core horror resonates with all of us: evil individuals abusing power over their chosen victims, violating their humanity with utter disregard. However, it seems there is a hidden beast. Even after the public outrage and media coverage and the insistence lessons will be learned, the pursuit of justice will still not be advanced.

It certainly won’t be advanced if the best advice is that we should call the police when approached by…err…the police. The response from activist groups actually get it partly right. Those responses are pathetic because certain men do need their behaviour changed, the men depraved enough to consciously consider committing such heinous acts.

But here is what they don’t say and never will. These measures are pathetic because few heinous murderers are going to be deterred with the justice system we have. No case could make that more evident than the Sarah Everard case. Men whose very duty was enforcing the law had no fear of it. Not Mr Couzens in committing rape and murder (and even indecent exposure on more than one occasion) or his colleagues in laughing off his behaviours and nicknaming him ‘the Rapist’.

A justice system centred on ‘rehabilitation’ will never deter potential criminals. It strikes no horror at the heart of the wicked, for many prisoners reoffend upon release. The only horror produced is to victims, by the criminals it doesn’t deter. A proper justice system would acknowledge that murder is a crime of a gravity met by no other. With different gravity of crime, different gravity of punishment must follow: capital punishment. Mr Couzens’ whole life sentence almost admits the system’s own failures while trying to save face. It implies no length of time could rehabilitate such depraved people.

I think some opponents of the death penalty (not all) believe supporting it comes from unbridled emotion and anger- an ignorance of reason to pursue unbridled passion. In fact, the opposite is true. We recognise the death penalty and its gravity. The gravity of such a punishment demands us to reason with it, and it is from its gravity we conclude it the only proper response. For surely if no length of prison time could rehabilitate, the thought of losing one’s life just might? The death penalty should not take life for the sake of taking life as a murderer does. Instead, it should be done such that it may conduce to remorse and repentance in the wrongdoer. That by the gravity of the punishment, they may recognise the equal gravity of the crime.