We either view Ongwen as an morally culpable human who is capable of making moral choices (certainly by the time he reached adulthood) and hold him responsible for those choices, and likely lock him away for many, many years as punishment for the horrible choices he made.
The other way is that we view him as so broken by his childhood trauma that he has had no moral capacity, even in his adulthood. If that is the case, he still needs to be locked away for many years, because someone with that level of brokenness is not safe human society.
There's a sort of disconnect going on in our sense of justice between gaining explanatory power to describe why a person did something, and that person's culpability. We seem to think if we can understand why they behaved in such a way (for instance, they were victims themselves, they had a mental disorder, etc.) they must merit compassion. The converse is perhaps more troublesome: if we can't understand how someone could have done that thing, it is somehow more heinous.
My view is that this dynamic in our collective compassion does not help us accomplish justice. It seems that to pursue justice we must believe in agency of the individual. Agency to, no matter what their circumstances, make the right choices. As soon as we begin to weigh our explanatory power over individual agency we lose justice. Am I happy this man met justice? No, it's deeply sad and points to an irrevocable brokenness in humankind. Was it deserved? Yes. It was.
I think the short summary is we are coming to understand circumstances where an individual has lost their agency. In which cases the nature of justice changes.
if we can't understand how someone could have done that thing...
If we are not aware of a reason they did not posses agency, then we must assume they still had it.
I think this is conditional, not universal. If someone did a crime for greed, or because they are a "bad person" who is seemingly rational but simply enjoys hurting people, I think you'll find that most people are not sympathetic.
I too feel that rehabilitation, not vengeance, should be the goal of the justice system but in this case, I think it's a moot point. This is an individual with the means and clear history of organizing and wielding violent armed groups which (I hypothesize) requires a level of emotional intelligence that justice systems are not equipped to rehabilitate by design. The ones that try to rehabilitate offenders naturally err towards giving people the benefit of the doubt in order to make the process fairer for the falsely accused which is very easily exploitable, especially for the well resourced.
I think this individual presents a clear cut case where public safety is more important than the individual's right to rehabilitation post-conviction, in a way that even the worst civilian criminals like serial killers do not. There is just no way to reintegrate him to like a POW of an opposing nation in war or a rebel soldier who joined a movement - he was a primary instigator in the conflict and his enemy was the system he'd be rehabilitated into.
He is not a felon convicted for illegal possession of a weapon or drug dealing, he's a warlord that killed a lot of people brutally. Presenting rehabilitation as a possible solution here is laughable and almost insulting to the memories of his numerous victims.
People in Norway rarely grow up in totally deprived, violent conditions. Maybe they respond to rehabilitation efforts better, in the same way that a healthy person exhibits better wound healing than someone with diabetes 2nd type.
One could make a practical experiment by dumping an assortment of, for example, Islamic State executioners into Norwegian prisons and watching how many of them return to their old habits, but Norwegians wouldn't probably want to try that.
how much of that is due to basic social safety net?
on the creek behind my workshop, thieves were running stolen copper. they would use boats to come up into businesses storage yards from the SF bay, then dump the copper in the creek. wait until they had a buy lines up and pull it up at their leisure.
they were caught eventually. 5 years later and out on parole. and guess where they came first - back to the creek. no other way of making a living, no basic support.
i think criminality becomes very different when its just a lifestyle choice and not the only way to provide for basic human needs.
sure, focus on rehabilitation. but it doesn't matter if they throw you back on the street when you're out.
> The French-American author Jonathan Littell happened to be filming a movie in Obo on the day that Ongwen was extradited. Ongwen gave him a rare 30-minute interview
I searched briefly but could not find this footage. Does anybody have access to it?
He did not take prior offers of amnesty, that went back to 2000, and only surrendered when his position in the LRA became untenable.
This seems enough to condemn him. It's a complicated issue, which is why blanket amnesty gets offered in these kinds of situations - to people who want to re-integrate back into society. He did not do so until he had no other choice.
The split personality disorder is a beautiful story, that fails to explain why he didn't surrender at any point in the preceding two decades. If we were to suppose he was not culpable for his actions during his Dominic B states, Dominic A must surely be culpable for not extracting himself from a situation where Dominic B would keep on committing his atrocities.
Processes are important for the simple reason that it's much easier to agree on a process than an outcome.
Processes are generally free of context and confounding factors. Mere mortals aren't capable of juding the entirety of one's life, let alone going back generations. So they simply evaluate the question before them about a particular crime.
Sure there are a few exceptions, like when someone is insane or lacks intent. But those are usually quite narrow.
So justice is following the process, not getting to the heart of a moral issue.
Evil doesn't have to have remorselessness or have awareness of it's evil to be evil. Ongwen is clearly traumatized. But, he is also the trauma. The spread of death and despair by his hand has to be adjudicated. Life in prison is the most morally just outcome for him, regardless of whatever reformations or personal developments he might make. Some things can't be undone and the consequences have to be lived with, forever. Like, he could become an international voice for reforming child soldiers, educating policy makers, and literally every good thing he could do with his experience. Yet, he should still be in prison. Forever.
I feel like we could be way more creative in how we treat prisoners in how they “repay their debt”. Someone like Ongwen could probably be very valuable in finding and converting other people away from situations similar to his. Or from helping security forces secure against the kind of tactics they used...
I don’t know random thoughts, but we can punish someone and have value generated at the same time.
There are traditionally 4-6 purposes of justice. The four most common are deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation, and the other two less common are restoration and denunciation. These purposes are not mutually exclusive, not always possible to achieve (hard to restore dead people to life), and IMO there are valid reasons for all of them, even retribution (although of course it is possible to go to far).
Deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restoration are pretty self-explanatory, and the reasons for those are clear. Denunciation means crimes are punished in order to send a message that such behaviour is condemned. But is there a good reason for retribution?
The meaning of retribution is that those who have hurt others suffer real consequences. This isn't necessarily something sadistic, as there are a number of reasons why this can be a valid purpose. You want people to have faith in the justice system, to not believe that people are getting off with slaps on the wrist, that mass murderers aren't being pampered, and so on, so that they don't turn to vigilante justice. It could be the case that, e.g., Brock Turner was unlikely to ever sexually assault a woman ever again after three months' jail time. But the perception that he was let off lightly could undermine faith in the justice system.
In a case like this, it may be that his victims need to see that he is punished so that they can have faith in their justice system. Whether or not that is the right call here, I don't know enough to make a judgement. But I don't think one can entirely ignore retribution as a purpose.
Its purpose is not just those, another is protecting society. I actually think that is its primary function, rehabilitation can be done in better ways.
I think jail should only be considered where a threat to the public is posed. This case is an open and shut example of a dangerous threat.
Even if that were possible, Ongwen may be too damaged to be very effective at such a "punishment." And it would be very cruel to expose him to the same environment which traumatized him enough to make him into a brutal commander.
If it is possible to do so much evil that no amount of good can overcome it then it is not also possible to do so much good that no amount of evil deserves consequence?
It is curious how the trauma from his kidnapping is considered different than if he had been a 2nd generation war criminal.
Presumably the child of a war criminal would also have suffered trauma in youth, but there would no consideration of mercy, or sympathetic longform articles for the 30something 2nd generation war criminal. They would be simply be treated as evil.
Readit News
The other way is that we view him as so broken by his childhood trauma that he has had no moral capacity, even in his adulthood. If that is the case, he still needs to be locked away for many years, because someone with that level of brokenness is not safe human society.
My view is that this dynamic in our collective compassion does not help us accomplish justice. It seems that to pursue justice we must believe in agency of the individual. Agency to, no matter what their circumstances, make the right choices. As soon as we begin to weigh our explanatory power over individual agency we lose justice. Am I happy this man met justice? No, it's deeply sad and points to an irrevocable brokenness in humankind. Was it deserved? Yes. It was.
if we can't understand how someone could have done that thing...
If we are not aware of a reason they did not posses agency, then we must assume they still had it.
Or rehabilitated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_(penology)
> The effectiveness of Norway's methods is evident as they hold the lowest recidivism rate worldwide at 20% as of December 2014.
I think this individual presents a clear cut case where public safety is more important than the individual's right to rehabilitation post-conviction, in a way that even the worst civilian criminals like serial killers do not. There is just no way to reintegrate him to like a POW of an opposing nation in war or a rebel soldier who joined a movement - he was a primary instigator in the conflict and his enemy was the system he'd be rehabilitated into.
People in Norway rarely grow up in totally deprived, violent conditions. Maybe they respond to rehabilitation efforts better, in the same way that a healthy person exhibits better wound healing than someone with diabetes 2nd type.
One could make a practical experiment by dumping an assortment of, for example, Islamic State executioners into Norwegian prisons and watching how many of them return to their old habits, but Norwegians wouldn't probably want to try that.
on the creek behind my workshop, thieves were running stolen copper. they would use boats to come up into businesses storage yards from the SF bay, then dump the copper in the creek. wait until they had a buy lines up and pull it up at their leisure.
they were caught eventually. 5 years later and out on parole. and guess where they came first - back to the creek. no other way of making a living, no basic support.
i think criminality becomes very different when its just a lifestyle choice and not the only way to provide for basic human needs.
sure, focus on rehabilitation. but it doesn't matter if they throw you back on the street when you're out.
I searched briefly but could not find this footage. Does anybody have access to it?
This seems enough to condemn him. It's a complicated issue, which is why blanket amnesty gets offered in these kinds of situations - to people who want to re-integrate back into society. He did not do so until he had no other choice.
The split personality disorder is a beautiful story, that fails to explain why he didn't surrender at any point in the preceding two decades. If we were to suppose he was not culpable for his actions during his Dominic B states, Dominic A must surely be culpable for not extracting himself from a situation where Dominic B would keep on committing his atrocities.
Processes are important for the simple reason that it's much easier to agree on a process than an outcome.
Processes are generally free of context and confounding factors. Mere mortals aren't capable of juding the entirety of one's life, let alone going back generations. So they simply evaluate the question before them about a particular crime.
Sure there are a few exceptions, like when someone is insane or lacks intent. But those are usually quite narrow.
So justice is following the process, not getting to the heart of a moral issue.
I feel like we could be way more creative in how we treat prisoners in how they “repay their debt”. Someone like Ongwen could probably be very valuable in finding and converting other people away from situations similar to his. Or from helping security forces secure against the kind of tactics they used...
I don’t know random thoughts, but we can punish someone and have value generated at the same time.
Deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restoration are pretty self-explanatory, and the reasons for those are clear. Denunciation means crimes are punished in order to send a message that such behaviour is condemned. But is there a good reason for retribution?
The meaning of retribution is that those who have hurt others suffer real consequences. This isn't necessarily something sadistic, as there are a number of reasons why this can be a valid purpose. You want people to have faith in the justice system, to not believe that people are getting off with slaps on the wrist, that mass murderers aren't being pampered, and so on, so that they don't turn to vigilante justice. It could be the case that, e.g., Brock Turner was unlikely to ever sexually assault a woman ever again after three months' jail time. But the perception that he was let off lightly could undermine faith in the justice system.
In a case like this, it may be that his victims need to see that he is punished so that they can have faith in their justice system. Whether or not that is the right call here, I don't know enough to make a judgement. But I don't think one can entirely ignore retribution as a purpose.
Presumably the child of a war criminal would also have suffered trauma in youth, but there would no consideration of mercy, or sympathetic longform articles for the 30something 2nd generation war criminal. They would be simply be treated as evil.
Well I'm glad that solutron from Hackernews has figured out the one true morality for everybody. Thanks solutron from hacker news!
Deleted Comment