Let’s assume an individual had a really hard time one night and he made a series of grave mistakes. He assaulted 10 different people. Now each of the victims demands retribution of 2 years in jail. A total count would be 20 years and 20 more years will be needed to compensate the victims. So a single extremely bad night had basically cost that individual his entire life. I don’t think it is just. People make mistakes and they have to learn from them, but serving consecutive terms will not enable this opportunity to present itself.
The problem with an individualistic approach to crime is that the criminal is never looked at holistically, so things such as rehabilitation don’t play a role. I think it is wrong. When I imagine a life in a village, that’s not how I see that justice is being dealt with. The village people will probably decide to punish for a single count of assult or maybe 2, but not for all 10. That’s because they will want to see the person rehabilitated. A Rothbardian approach though seems too cold and dogmatic to me.
I think that fairness is very personal subject, if that makes sense. Everybody has different scales of fairness, even though, most scales overlap (or we wouldn’t have civilization at all) and sometimes we can both agree that one thing is fair, other isn’t and so on.
Anyway, I also was a little bit frustrated by Rothbard’s approach, even though, I didn’t disagree with him… Just thought it needed more elaboration. After all, he was a propertarian.
A person always has a chance… to being forgiven of his crimes or part of it.. That’s one thing. Also, life is tough, and trying making everything “fair” isn’t going to work very long, as I stated above, people has different scales. Imagine how the victim would feel.. He was assaulted out of the blue by some stranger and now even doesn’t have a choice of retribution of some kind from the criminal?
By the way, calling criminal actions “grave mistakes” is an intresting choice of words But I would consider a mistake a real accident, where person, for example, is driving a car, gets a heart attack and in a process kills 10 people… that’s sad. And bad. And maybe he shouln’t have driven with poor health but… that’s an acident, or “mistake”.
But assaulting 10 people in a row?
But hey, you can always RUN from justice if you think it’s not fair
From Rothbard’s perspective, justice is retributional justice. However, he also believed that it may be far more likely for the criminals to compensate the victims - to give restitution. If we suppose that this one individual assaulted these 10 people, he needs to compensate the victims for his assault on their property rights. Rothbard suggested that prisons in a libertarian society might force the criminals to work off the money they owe to their victims. I believe that this would be likely, especially since prisons need money to operate (and they would either work on donations or far more likely on money the victims pay for the prisons services).
If any of these victims request 2 years of the criminals life instead of compensation - especially since they would have hospital bills, legal fees, etc - I can only imagine how bad the assault must have been (which of course would make compensation even more important!) For 10 of this man’s victims to prefer paying for this man’s prison sentence instead of receiving money, he must have had one hell of a bad night to assault them so gravely.
But I would consider a mistake a real accident, where person, for example, is driving a car, gets a heart attack and in a process kills 10 people… that’s sad. And bad. And maybe he shouln’t have driven with poor health but… that’s an acident, or “mistake”.