[Hitman]

Today's modern concept of justice is to repair damage that has been done (if this is possible, we talk about compensation), or to"resocialize" offenders and until then try to alter their behavior by expose them to aversive simuli, like preventing them freedom ba locking them away. Modern laws were explicitly meant to overcome the old concept of revenge.

Oh, you obviously lack the legal formation needed to discuss this from a more technical perspective....I already pointed out the necessary division that is done in the concepts of justice in civil versus criminal laws. Yet you talk about a single concept of justice as if it were only one, which is possible in philosophical theory but impossible in practical applications of the law and legal systems.

The root of the criminal systems is in the assumption by the state of the revenge formerly in hands of particulars, not just as a monopoly of force, but also as a monopoly of revenge in the sense of retribution of an offence. There is a subtle but very important distinction there: There are legitimate forms of use of force and violence as response to an ilegal criminal action (Self defence), which are particularly problematic in certain crimes (Offences against honor). Interestingly, it was the honor crimes what entered last into that monopoly of revenge (Duels were allowed even if killing someone in general was punished), and that shows clearly that it is not just a monopoly of force but also of revenge as retribution for an offence. Conceptually speaking, revenge was absorbed separatedly of how force monopoly was absorbed. There could be revenge without use of force and that is also unaccepted; revenge as retribution for a socially unacceptable action is now institutionalized.

In the first year of criminal laws studies you learn the whole theory of the crime definition and of the punishments definitions and nature, plus the objectives they serve in modern and ancient societies. The german doctrine is the one who has made stronger and better contributions to that (Mayer, Mezger, Binding), and it is widely accepted that the punishment has following functions in the criminal system:

1) General Prevention: In that everyone sees the threat the state makes to anyone who commits a crime that he will be punished

2) Individual Prevention: In that he who is found guilty will suffer a retribution for his crime. That in turn has two objectives:

2a) Plain retribution of the crime, as

A) Socialiced form of revenge, compatible with the human rights. This is how cultural and religious tradition is socialized and introduced in the law. The law does not exist or is born unconnected to cultural traditions, it simply regulates them and when applyable, adequates them to a superior frame (Constitution, Human rights)

B) Disuasive effect to prevent that the individual commits more crimes

2b) Paralell reedecuation of the individual to supress the psychological and logical thinking process elements that took him to commit the crime.

It is not about revenge, eniether for the state, nor for the ones who received harm.

Yes it is. You fail to understand that retribution for an offence is what popularly is known as revenge. Only it loses its primitive uncontrolled form and gets regulated and socialized. Society makes revenge in an acceptable form through the punishment, in the sense of retributing an action to restablish a balance in theoretical terms (Which is what we call justice). The fact that a criminal gets a punishment is something that calms the society "beruhigt" says the german doctrine.

You know very well the reeductaion part of the punishment system, -much better than me- but that part is in fact accesory to the sociopolitic means of the criminal systems. Your perspective ignores the sociocultural formation of criminal systems and what exactly was taken away from society and put into them, and why. If you consider the punishment of crimes just as a mean of general prevention (Through the threat of punishment) and reeducation of offenders, you are no less than forgetting the religious and cultural background of the society in which that system has to be applied.

In Germany, the rejection of taking revenge, often, time and again, is explicitly reiterated by lawyers, after a lawcase that found public interst and was covered by media cam to an end.

The rejection of taking INDIVIDUAL and popular revenge, yes. But as long as you are retributing a crime you are doing institutionalited revenge. Do you think the society would accept a criminal system were only reeducation is done? Obviously not. A sense of retribution is inside the criminal system because it is applied after all in a society with a culture, tradition and religions.

You are creating an artificial distinction between retribution and revenge, while they are in fact conceptually variants of the same principle (civilized and uncivilized).

In germany the monopoly of the criminal action is in the hands of the prosecutor (Staatsanwalt), while here in Spain it is not like that, and any citizen can exercise criminal action wether offended by the crime or not, to ask the court to punish the offender. That's the main difference, but aside from that the principles behind criminal legal systems are similar.

Never mind, we agree anyway in that practically the death penalty has too many problems, so excuse if I stop discussing this, because I feel we are hijacking the thread.:hmm: