How do you feel about Retribution Theory? Is it a valid form of justice?
This is specifically the idea that because someone has transgressed, they should suffer in turn.
One of the things that turned me away from my childhood Christianity was thinking about Retribution Theory and Hell (of course I had no idea what it was called back then), but this does not have to be a thread about afterlife punishments (though it can be).
I remember thinking that two wrongs don't make a right: because someone has caused suffering doesn't make it just to cause them to suffer in turn purely to cause them suffering. There may be other reasons to cause them to suffer, such as by putting a dangerous person in prison; but it seems to me that should be more about protecting society than specifically to hurt the person in prison. So, for instance, I disagree with making prisons bleak and cruel environments (for multiple reasons, but this is one).
This is a good question and a hell of a complicated one as well.
Also I think, its quite difficult to answer this so it would reflect a person's true opinion on the matter, its simply to huge and complicated topic in that sense, so won't even try to do that
In general I would agree with you that it is wrong, not so much because of the idea behind it,
Eye for an Eye. But because it's an expression of giving up or misunderstanding the root of the problem.
The threat of punishment is a decent way to discourage or make people think twice about doing something and I think that is the main idea behind this. But a lot of issues comes with this, we know that people get wrongfully jailed and should you kill someone as a result of a wrong judgement. You can't exactly reverse it. But in that case, should the judge and lawyers or whoever caused the wrong killing then also be killed? Usually these people are not held accountable for mistakes in that way, they might have to compensate with some money or apologize for making a mistake.
I think most people are aware or would agree that cases in courts are not exactly fair. I mean, imagine that you as a private person feel that a huge company have wronged you, the chance of you winning is fairly slim, because the company not only have the ability to hire the best lawyers, but also have the ability to financially go through a long trial, which could completely ruin someone's life.
Another issue with it, is that justice is served through the idea of Eye for and Eye, and it completely misses the point. Which is that the focus ought to be on preventing crimes in the first place, punishing someone for a murder, doesn't help bring back the person that were killed. So I fully understand that people want justice, but way to much focus is put on this rather than on what can be done to prevent it in the first place.
We already know a lot of reasons why people kill each other or steal from each other. Poverty, humans emotions like jealousy, economic reasons, psychological issue etc. So we might not be able to prevent all, but imagine simply removing or reducing poverty and how much it would affect the amount of stealing that is going on? How many are no longer killed in armed robberies, the reduction in break ins and so forth.
Punishing people afterwards or as a scare tactic is only so effective, completely removing the cause for it in the first place is extremely effective. I mean, how many people gets killed over plastic bags on the street? I would assume the number is extremely low, because they have no value and there is enough of them to go around.
Another issue is that you would have to make some sort of exception to the rule, when it comes to people that suffers from mental illness issues, that they might have been born with and therefore hard to justify that they are to blame for it.
