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To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (3832)	3/20/2002 8:17:38 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

And there is at least one thing that can be said for capital punishment: That murderer will never murder another person. Very true. Of course that might be seen as either a form of deterrence, or a form of collective self defense. Both of these ideas are good ones, but they fall outside the scope of the more abstract question about justice. And what is sufficient punishment for McVeigh and bin Laden? Poetic justice would be to have them destroyed by blast, and flame, and being buried under tons of rubble. (This might have actually happened to bin Laden) but now I'm dealing more with personal emotion then philosophy. On a very practical level the answer to my question might simply be that you can't consider the notion of justice as separate from deterrence because deterrence is a vitally important idea, and in the real world you can't ever be sure that either everyone would be deterred without punishment (or would not want to commit such an evil act anyway) or that punishment would be completely ineffective at deterring anyone. The construct I created was to try to isolate justice from deterrence, but it could be argued that justice against criminals is merely deterrence combined with an orderly and measured dose of revenge. (And of course if you don't get it from the state, you will not only reduce deterrence, but you will get more vigilante action as private citizens go for revenge or justice). Tim