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The punishment isn’t about corrective action, it’s about justice. If you kill off a whole family being a reckless idiot, you should not be able to just go on li

• zamfi 3y ago
  Yes, and neither this article nor I are advocating against justice being served. We are just making the point that this kind of justice alone doesn’t prevent future tragedies. We can have justice, and we should, and then we should also feel a moral obligation to reduce harm from reckless or mistaken action in the future, no? If we only have “justice” in the sense of punishment for harm, but do nothing to reduce the chances that we end up needing “justice” again later, then we’re just setting ourselves up for more future “justice” in the form of multiple destroyed lives: some through negligence, some through state action pursuing justice. Who does that serve? I (and the original article) are advocating that we do more to reduce the likelihood that “being a reckless idiot” causes a whole family to be killed, because “justice” doesn’t prevent people from “being a reckless idiot” — and I for one would vastly prefer that my whole family not be killed, even if I knew that killer would be brought to justice.