Here’s the thing: laws, even when executed fairly across the board, will never be just.
This is because laws applied uniformly assume people are uniform in their capacities.
To the law’s credit, some underlying and prevailing conditions may lead the law to adopt a bias geared towards making the punishment more JUST.
Let’s quickly look at two:
First time offenders get more lenient sentences than repeat offenders.
If you commit a crime in a moment of temporary insanity, you get it easy.
In the second example, a father once found his daughter in bed with a boy from the neighborhood and hit the girl with what would end up being a fatal blow. The man was given a very mild sentence owing to the argument that he acted in a moment of temporary insanity.
Now to the juicy bits:
Some psychopaths aren’t genetically wired to control aggressive impulses. You and I having the same set of laws applied uniformly to them is akin to having a match played between able bodied and disabled people.
You need to overcome psychological inhibitors (given to you by your genetics), to act criminally aggressively or in a manner disapproved by society. A psychopath has no such inhibitions.
As a result, the law will never be just to them because it treats them as having committed crimes while under the influence of normal human emotions. Which is far from the truth.
But then again, nothing is just in this world, why demand that of the law?
And since when are laws just anywhere on the planet?
First off, the example you have presented on a moment of temp’ insanity when a father dealt a fatal blow is wanting as you are narrowing the outcome of an eventual sentence based on ones genetic as a function of comminting a crime. You serm to forget there are many other things leading to comission of a crime and not just genetic (psychological effects).
Peoples behavious are formed by the enviroment they live in but also here there is no uniformity in socio political and economics especially in metriocracy and overly religious societies.
Then there is the phylosophy of excersing law in different societies and what informs these in the culture and law of enforcement and excecusion of law through as in socio political or economic. Is the culture of law in a society punitive and or rehabilatory?
These are all issues that define the culture of law in a society.
Majuzi huko kwa biden, a 10 yr old is currently facing a 60yr long sentence.
Why?
He needed his VR kit but the mother had denied him these, so as his mother is in the basement doing laundry, the child gets the mothers gun from her bedroom and commits murder!
He goes up to the sisters bedroom, wakes her up and informs her of his deeds. She disls the 911
The next day the child is on record using the mothers mastercard, ordering a new VR kit from the amazon.
Shetani ashindwe!
Not the laws being JUST per se, but the very philosophy behind them can’t be just.
I mean, genetic predisposition is probably a bigger predictor of some criminal behavior than many things we take into consideration.
In a perfectly just legal system, if you commit a violent offense, you should be treated as being worse than a psychopath. For he can’t help himself, you can