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Do Crime Victims Have a Right to Get Even?
| Article
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19921 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1991 |
4,836 Words |
| Author
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Jeffrie G. Murphy
Jeffrie G. Murphy is professor of law and philosophy at
Arizona State University. This essay is adapted from the
author's much longer essay, "Getting Even: The Role of the
Victim," in Social Philosophy and Policy, volume 7, no. 2, and
is used with the permission of the copyright holder, Basil
Blackwell Ltd. It also builds on some ideas developed in the
author's book Forgiveness and Mercy (co-authored with Jean
Hampton and published in 1988 by Cambbridge University Press). |
“Not if his gifts outnumbered the sea sands or all the dust grains in the world could Agamemnon ever appease me--not till he pays me back full measure, pain for pain, dishonor for dishonor.”
The Iliad (IX.383-386)
Achilles is vindictive; he wants to get even with Agamemnon. Being so disposed, he sounds like many current crime victims, who angrily complain that our system of criminal justice will not allow them the satisfaction they rightfully seek. These victims often feel that their particular injuries are ignored while the system addresses itself to some abstract injury to the state, or to the rule of law itself--a focus that appears to result in criminals being treated with much greater solicitation and respect than their victims receive. If the actual victims are noticed at all, they will likely be told that there is another branch of law--tort law--that has the job of dealing with private injuries and grievances and that if they will pursue this route at their own expense, they might ultimately get some financial compensation for the wrongs done to them.
However, just as Achilles felt that mere compensation was inadequate to the kind of injury done to him by Agamemnon, many of these victims will often claim that the injuries they have suffered (brutal rape, perhaps) do not admit of financial compensation. How, they might ask, can a dollar value be set on the humiliation and degradation they have experienced? They might also note that those who injure them tend, unlike Agamemnon, to be poor--so lacking in financial resources as to be unable to make any meaningful contribution to and compensation package that the victim may win. From such a perspective and from such feelings has the "victims' rights movement" in part been born.
Desire For Vengeance
This essay will address simply one of the many issues raised by this movement--namely, the legitimacy of hatred and the desire for revenge as operative values in a system of criminal law. It is widely assumed--as a part of liberal Christian culture--that such psychological states are either unambiguously evil or unambiguously sick, and that, in either case, they deserve no place in the moral and legal outlook of civilized people. Thus, opponents of the victims' rights movement will often portray it as simply the institutionalization of vindictiveness--where such a characterization is supposed to hold the movement up to justified contempt and ridicule. Proponents of the movement will
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