Why Do We Need Human Rights? (37): The Right to Life

a scene from Michael Crichton’s “Coma” (1978)

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Of all human rights, the right to life is probably the least controversial. It’s almost universally accepted and it’s supposed to have absolute or quasi-absolute power: most of us have a hard time accepting or even imagining justifiable limitations of this right. Hence, the question of the justification of the right to life seems relatively uninteresting. Compared to some other rights, it’s clear why we need it: we all want to live, or at least decide for ourselves whether or not we want to live.

If, for instance, you ask people why we need the right to free speech, or why violating this right is wrong, then they’ll have a much harder time coming up with a solid answer (even though there are solid answers). They’ll also assume that they would somehow be able to live without it. Life would perhaps not be pleasant or fulfilling, but it would go on. Not so without the right to life.

So why talk about the justification of the right to life? Well, because on closer inspection things aren’t so simple. If you ask yourself why killing is wrong, the answer is surprisingly difficult. The best attempt to answer the question has some unappealing results. We can argue that killing is wrong because living allows you to do things, be someone, become someone etc. (See here for instance). It’s because life is this fundamental prerequisite and this necessary condition for everything else that a right to life is basic, quasi-absolute and easy to justify in the minds of most people. It’s a justification without which there are no other justifications. It’s axiomatic. You can’t not take it for granted.

But if killing is wrong not because it takes away a life – living in itself is not valuable – but because it takes away the ability to act and be, then it’s OK to kill off people in an irreversible coma, harvest their organs etc. The harm imposed by killing can’t be the mere fact that life stops; a person whose life is ended by way of killing can’t experience the harm of absence of life. This person can’t experience anything. Adead person can no longer have any experiences, and taking away people’s ability to experience, in other words their ability to do things and to be someone, is indeed an imposition of harm. A special harm, yes, but a harm nonetheless. Contrary to the usual type of harm, this harm does not imply the experience of harm – how can it? – but rather the harm of absence of experience.

So it’s the imposition of complete and irreversible disability – the complete and final lack of the ability to do things and be someone – that is at stake, that makes killing wrong, and that justifies a right to life. Not the absence or the taking of life as such: the mere absence of life is not a harm. The disability has to be irreversible, because anaesthesia for example has the same disabling effect, but in a reversible manner. That is why killing the anesthetized and harvesting their organs is still wrong.

scene from Tarantino’s “Kill Bill”

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This answer to the question of the wrongness of killing is discomforting. Many of us would shudder at the conclusion that killing off people in an irreversible coma is right because it doesn’t mean imposing harm (the harm – complete and irreversible disability – has already been done). It doesn’t sound right. We sense that we would still impose a harm. But which harm? It can’t be a harm that they can experience, given that they can’t experience anything (so we’re not talking about cases of locked-in syndrome here). Hence, irreversible coma is the same harm as death. Killing people in an irreversible coma does not mean imposing extra harm. It’s not the loss of anything valuable that hasn’t been lost already by the event of the irreversible coma.

And yet, this still sounds unsatisfactory. Many of us would try to keep comatose people alive. After all, what looks like irreversibility may not be so in the future. But even if irreversibility is a certainty, we still wouldn’t be OK with pulling the plug. I’m afraid I have no solution. I’m stuck. And the absence of a solution complicates the justification of the right to life: if killing off irreversibly comatose people is not wrong, then the right to life loses part of its meaning.

More posts in this series are here.

What’s So Special About the Holocaust?

History has seen many genocides and large scale killings. Some of those resulted in more deaths than the Holocaust. So why is the Holocaust special? It’s special because it was the first and last example of the industrial production of corpses. It was, quite literally, a murder machine. The murders were not the actions of specific individuals who did what they did because of their identity, motives or pathologies. They were not like the brutalities of the Roman Emperor Nero, which were clearly his. Nor were they like the crimes of Saddam Hussein or any other identifiable criminal. In the case of the Holocaust, it was impossible to recognize an identity in the deed. The killers were impersonal, insignificant, loyal, conscientious and hardworking civil servants operating together in an organized, efficient, systematic and planned extermination, characterized by division of labor and the industrial production line. Everyone knew exactly what to do, and often that was a very small part of the process. Shared responsibility is often seen as diminished responsibility, and makes it easier to produce corpses. The detailed planning, organization and execution of the project sets the Holocaust apart from other genocides. Eichmann protested against spontaneous pogroms in the east, not because he was a humanitarian but because those unorganized interventions messed up his bookkeeping and made it difficult to count how many exactly were killed by the otherwise machine-like operation.

The Holocaust was not the action of an individual or a small group of people. Nor was it motivated by egoism, the will to power, money, hate, rage, revenge, sadism, war or the elimination of opposition. The victims were not guilty of opposition or even crime. The perpetrators weren’t motivated by self-interest (for example, the Nazis prohibited private confiscation of Jewish goods for personal use). Neither was it primarily the hatred of Jews that led the Nazis to try to exterminate them. It was the love of humanity – or better what they considered to be true humanity – and the need to protect it. The Holocaust wasn’t a war crime either and wasn’t part of the normal atrocities of war. It started well before the war and the German war effort suffered substantially from it: potentially useful labor forces were eliminated, soldiers and other means that could have been used in the war were diverted to the extermination effort etc. The Jews were murdered, not because that would have allowed soldiers to fight rather than guard prisoners, but because they were Jews. The extermination continued even in the final days of the war, when Germany was losing and all military resources should have gone to the war effort. And, finally, the purpose of the Holocaust wasn’t to instill fear. Normal state terror serves to scare the population and convince it to submit and to behave in ways that are acceptable to the rulers. Not in the case of the Holocaust. Fear had become useless because it couldn’t serve to guide actions and to steer away from danger. Danger would have found you anyway. Everyone knew that you were a Jew, and tactical maneuvering motivated by fear could have helped you escape only in very few cases.

Mengele’s twins

Self-interest, power hunger, sadism, revenge or other utilitarian motives were seen by the Nazis as diversions from the genocidal operation that was undertaken for the benefit of mankind. As was the military self-interest of Germany’s success in the war. The project of extermination of the Jews and the protection of mankind was more important than the risk of a possible military defeat of Germany. Pity as well could not stand in the way of the demands of nature and history. The pleas of the victims were not heard and people convinced themselves of the historical and natural necessity of the Holocaust. Like pity, the taking of money from a victim as a bribe for letting him or her live was a betrayal of nature. Germans had to be the superhumans that they were destined to be, free from all that makes us ordinary humans: pity, self-interest, hate and the will to power.

The Holocaust wasn’t a crime. A crime is a deed that goes against social order and established law and that challenges the powers that represent social order. In this case, we have an atrocity that emanated from the state and that had become the moral and legal law. Murder had become a form of government. Evil no longer had to fight the Good, and no longer had to hide and to be hypocritical. Evil ruled. There was only evil. The world was without a horizon, without hope or salvation. Another reason why the Holocaust can’t really be called a crime is the fact that the perpetrators didn’t have criminal motives. They just carried out the verdict of nature and implemented the laws of nature. A deeper legality defined the actions of government. Murder had become the law of nature as well as the legal law and the law of morality.

More on the Holocaust here.

Human Rights Cartoon (74): Kill One Man and You’re a Murderer…

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Brings to mind this famous quote by Jean Rostand: “Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill all and you are a God.” And also the broken window fallacy.

More cartoons here.

Capital Punishment (44): The Retribution Argument Against Capital Punishment

Saint Nicholas of Myra saves three innocents from death

Retribution is the last refuge of those seeking to justify capital punishment, given the failure of other arguments (deterrence, incapacitation etc.). Retribution is a punishment that fits the crime: the severity of the punishment should be proportionate to the severity of the crime. Intuitively, therefore, retribution should justify capital punishment for murder. Only death is a punishment that is as severe as murder. The Latin origin of the word “retribution” indicates that something should be given back or returned: someone “gives” death and hence death should be returned.

However, in theory, retribution does not necessarily mean that the punishment has to be strictly equivalent to the harm caused by the crime: some claim that retribution simply means that we must punish severe crimes more harshly than less severe crimes. Yet we see in practice that capital punishment as punishment for murder is defended on retributivist grounds.

Retributivists, ancient and modern, have always been lured by one or another form of lex talionis. (source)

There’s often an element of desert introduced in retributivist arguments. A murderer should be put to death because this punishment fits the crime, and because this punishment fits the crime, the murderer deserves to die.

So, given this “natural” tendency of retributivists to favor capital punishment for murder, how can it be possible to construct an argument based on retribution against capital punishment, as the title of this post suggest? Thom Brooks has made a highly interesting attempt here. It’s based on a decision by Judge Jed Rakoff ( in US v Quinones):

What DNA testing has proved, beyond cavil, is the remarkable degree of fallibility in the basic fact-finding processes on which we rely in criminal cases. In each of the 12 cases of DNA-exoneration of death row inmates referenced in Quinones, the defendant had been guilty by a unanimous jury that concluded there was proof of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; and in each of the 12 cases the conviction had been affirmed on appeal, and collateral challenges rejected, by numerous courts that had carefully scrutinized the evidence and manner of conviction. Yet, for all this alleged “due process”, the result in each and every one of these cases, was the conviction of an innocent person who, because of the death penalty, would shortly have been executed (-some came within days of being so-) were it not for the fortuitous development of a new scientific technique that happened to be applicable to their particular cases. (source)

This should even convince retributivists that capital punishment has to be rejected. Even if you adopt the moral rule that murderers deserve to die you, shouldn’t apply the death penalty in practice because you can’t be certain that a particular defendant is really guilty of the crime and hence deserves to die. And there’s no point arguing that the systematic use of DNA testing gives you this certainty: first, it’s not always possible to use DNA tests, because the crime has to be of such a type that DNA traces are potentially available, and even if they are potentially available they may not be actually available; and second, we don’t know if DNA testing is accurate enough and won’t be discredited in the future.

You could also argue that the same lack of certainty is the case for all types of crime, and that rejecting capital punishment because of a lack of certainty implies rejecting criminal punishment tout court. Not quite: all other types of punishment allow for the possibility to correct mistakes resulting from uncertainty. Capital punishment rules this out.

And there’s another kind of uncertainty that militates against capital punishment and that should convince retributivists to reject it. The desert of a criminal is usually based on more than mere physical evidence of his actions. Intent also plays a part. Take the case of someone who caused the death of someone else by his actions – and let’s assume that we are certain about this, e.g. we have DNA evidence and we know that no future scientific developments will cast doubt on this evidence – but did not intend to kill. Many would argue that he doesn’t deserve to die. However, intent is impossible to prove because it requires reading someone’s mind, and hence we can never be certain that someone intended to kill. A desert based argument for capital punishment is void if desert includes intent.

Moral Dilemma (21): Is Suicide While Pregnant Akin to Murder?

Bei Bei Shuai (AP Photo:Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department)

Here’s an interesting dilemma:

On March 14, Bei Bei Shuai will have spent one full year in jail in Marion County, Indiana. Her crime? The prosecutor calls it attempted feticide and murder. What it really is: attempting suicide while pregnant.

In December 2010 Shuai was running a Chinese restaurant in Indianapolis with her boyfriend, Zhiliang Guan, by whom she was eight months pregnant. Just before Christmas, he informed her that he was married and had another family, to which he was returning. When Shuai begged him to stay, he threw money at her and left her weeping on her knees in a parking lot. Despairing, she took rat poison and wrote a letter in Mandarin saying she was killing herself and would “take this baby with me to Hades”; friends got her to the hospital just in time to save her life. Eight days later her baby, Angel, was delivered by Caesarean section and died of a cerebral hemorrhage within four days. Three months later, the newly elected prosecutor, Terry Curry—a Democrat—brought charges, claiming that the rat poison that almost killed Shuai had killed her baby. If convicted, she faces forty-five to sixty-five years in prison. (source)

The important things to consider are:

• Bei Bei Shuai survived her suicide attempt. No dilemma if she hadn’t, or perhaps a different dilemma. The dilemma we’re considering here is whether Bei Bei Shuai is culpable and this is interesting only because she survived.
• The issue here is not the legality or morality of suicide as such.
• The poor woman was eight months pregnant; had she been two or three months pregnant this would have been akin to abortion, and while abortion is certainly controversial and perhaps even a dilemma, it’s not the dilemma we’re interested in here. Our dilemma is not akin to abortion because most proponents of abortion accept a time limit and abortions at 8 months are generally not accepted, not even by most abortion proponents.
• Time limits on abortion could give way if the child is suffering and has no chance of a decent life. But that is not the case here.

More moral dilemmas here.

Measuring Human Rights (26): Measuring Murder

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Murder should be easy to measure. Unlike many other crimes or rights violations, the evidence is clear and painstakingly recorded: there is a body, at least in most cases; police seldom fail to notice a murder; and relatives or friends of the victim rarely fail to report the crime. So even if we are not always able to find and punish murderers, we should at least know how many murders there are.

And yet, even this most obvious of crimes can be hard to measure. In poorer countries, police departments may not have the means necessary to record homicides correctly and completely. Families may be weary of reporting homicides for fear of corrupt police officers entering their homes and using the occasion to extort bribes. Civil wars make it difficult to collect any data, including crime data. During wartime, homicides may not be distinguishable from casualties of the war.

And there’s more. Police departments in violent places may be under pressure to bring down crime stats and may manipulate the data as a result: moving some dubious murder cases to categories such as “accidents”, “manslaughter”, “suicide” etc.

Homicides usually take place in cities, hence the temptation to rank cities according to homicide rates. But cities differ in the way they determine their borders: suburbs may be included or not, or partially, and this affects homicide rates since suburbs tend to be less violent. Some cities have more visitors than other cities (more commuters, tourists, business trips) and visitors are usually not counted as “population” while they may also be at risk of murder.

In addition, some ideologies may cause distortions in the data. Does abortion count as murder? Honor killings? Euthanasia and  assisted suicide? Laws and opinions about all this vary between jurisdictions and introduce biases in country comparisons.

And, finally, countries with lower murder rates may not be less violent; they may just have better emergency healthcare systems allowing them to save potential murder victims.

So, if even the most obvious of human rights violations is difficult to measure, you can guess the quality of other indicators.

More posts in this series are here.

Limiting Free Speech (47): Incitement to Commit Suicide

heartbreak

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An interesting story in the press some time ago:

A former nurse from Faribault, Minn., was convicted of two felonies Tuesday when a judge ruled he had used “repeated and relentless” tactics during Internet chats that coaxed two people to kill themselves.

Rice County District Judge Thomas Neuville found that William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, “imminently incited” the suicides of Mark Drybrough of Coventry, England, and Nadia Kajouji of Ottawa, Ontario. Drybrough, 32, hanged himself in 2005, and Kajouji, 18, jumped into a frozen river in 2008.

In a 42-page ruling that found Melchert-Dinkel guilty of two counts of felony advising and encouraging suicide, Neuville wrote that it was particularly disturbing that Melchert-Dinkel, posing as a young, suicidal, female nurse, tried to persuade the victims to hang themselves while he watched via webcam….

Neuville, in rejecting the free-speech defense, noted that inciting people to commit suicide is considered “Lethal Advocacy,” which isn’t protected by the First Amendment because it goes against the government’s compelling interest in protecting the lives of vulnerable citizens. (source, source)

I guess that’s correct, even though the case doesn’t really fit with any of the commonly accepted exceptions to free speech rights. We’re not dealing here with incitement to murder or a death threat – standard exceptions to free speech, even in the U.S. And neither is it speech that incites illegal activity – another accepted exception. Suicide isn’t murder and isn’t illegal (anymore). Abstract and general advocacy of crime and violence is – or should be – protected speech, but not the advocacy or incitement of specific and imminent crime or violence if this advocacy or incitement helps to produce the crime or violence. If speech intends to produce specific illegal or violent actions, and if, as a result of this speech, these actions are imminent and likely, then we have a good reason to limit freedom of speech. Examples of such speech:

• solicitation of a murder
• some types of death threat
• cheering on a criminal
• speech that constitutes aiding and abetting of criminal conduct etc.

None of these forms of speech should be protected, and laws making them illegal are perfectly OK. On the other hand, claiming that all politicians deserve to die or that people shouldn’t pay their taxes are, in most cases, forms of protected speech because they probably do not incite or help to bring about imminent lawless activity.

The problem is that none of this is applicable here. Suicide isn’t illegal, and neither is it violence as we normally understand the word. So, the commonly accepted exception to free speech rights that I just cited can’t possibly justify the conviction of Melchert-Dinkel. He did of course advocate, incite and cheer on his victims, and his advocacy, incitement and cheering probably helped to produce their suicides. But a suicide is not a crime or an act of violence. At least not as such. One could argue that the encouragement of a suicidal person should be viewed as a form of murder. And if that statement goes too far for you, you may want to consider the fact that causing someone else’s death is in general a crime, whichever way you do it. Moreover, if the victims in this case were suffering from depression or a mental illness, the state has a duty to provide healthcare, and allowing someone else to worsen their depression or illness to the point that they kill themselves is not consistent with this duty.

So, while the encouragement of suicide in general, the teaching the methods of suicide or the claim that non-suicidal people should go and kill themselves (“you don’t deserve to live”, “why don’t you just go and kill yourself”) are all forms of protected speech, the same is not the case for speech that encourages specific suicidal people to kill themselves.

More on the related topic of “assisted” suicide here. More posts about limiting free speech are here.

As a bonus, I can’t not post this image of what some have called the most beautiful suicide (a description that is in no way meant to glorify or encourage suicide):

suicide of Evelyn McHale, photo by Robert Wiles

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On May 1, 1947, Evelyn McHale jumped to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, landing on a car. Here is a close-up of her face:

Read the whole story here.

Human Rights Maps (157): Homicide in NYC is Primarily a Problem of and for Male African Americans

Apparently, it’s more dangerous to be a male black person in NYC than a person of any other race or gender:

(source, where you can find an interactive version of these maps)

African Americans represent only 25% of NYCs population, but 61% of murder victims. The racial distribution of the perpetrators is strikingly similar to the racial distribution of the victims; and men are not only the main victims but also the perpetrators in 92% of cases.

A note of caution: correlation doesn’t imply causation. In this case, this means that the race of most of the perpetrators shouldn’t lead you to the conclusion that black people are more likely to engage in murder because they are black. A third element, hidden in the correlation and more common among blacks, is most probably the cause of the high murder rate (perhaps poverty). In which case, distorted homicide rates may be a symptom of racism and discrimination.

Another note of caution: a common feature of a lot of statistical data in map form is that they exaggerate the prevalence of the phenomenon that is measured, and so it is with these images of murder in NYC. The town is full of it, if you can believe the images. But that’s obviously not true. 500 or so homicides per year, on a total population of 8 million, amounts to one murder per 16.000 people, only slightly higher than the 1 in 18.000 for the US nationwide (it’s not surprising that it’s higher for a densely populated urban area).

Also, the numbers have trended downwards in NYC:

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Apparently the same pattern can be seen in Chicago:

(source)

And Washington DC as well – data are here:

(source, where you can find an interactive version)

More maps on violence are here, and more human rights maps in general are here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (80): Solitary Confinement for 28 Years

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Thomas Silverstein, who has been described as America’s “most isolated man,” has been held in an extreme form of solitary confinement under a “no human contact” order for 28 years. Originally imprisoned for armed robbery at the age of 19, Silverstein is serving life without parole for killing two fellow inmates (whom he says were threatening his life) and a prison guard, and has been buried in the depths of the federal prison system since 1983. …

Silverstein [has been held] in a series of what constitute the most secure and isolated housing in the federal prison system: in the notorious Control Unit at Marion, the supermax prototype; at USP Atlanta in a windowless underground “side pocket” cell that measured 6 x 7 feet (“almost exactly the size of a standard king mattress,”); at Leavenworth in an isolated basement cell dubbed the “Silverstein Suite”; on “Range 13″ at ADX Florence, where the only other prisoner was Ramzi Yusef; and finally in ADX’s D-Unit, where he can hear the sounds of other prisoners living in neighboring cells, though he still never sees them.

The following is from Tommy Silverstein’s description of his life at USP Atlanta:

The cell was so small that I could stand in one place and touch both walls simultaneously. The ceiling was so low that I could reach up and touch the hot light fixture.

My bed took up the length of the cell, and there was no other furniture at all … The walls were solid steel and painted all white.

I was permitted to wear underwear, but I was given no other clothing. …

During my first year in the side pocket cell I was completely isolated from the outside world and had no way to occupy my time. I was not allowed to have any social visits, telephone privileges, or reading materials except a bible. I was not allowed to have a television, radio, or tape player. I could speak to no one and their was virtually nothing on which to focus my attention.

I was not only isolated, but also disoriented in the side pocket. This was exacerbated by the fact that I wasn’t allowed to have a wristwatch or clock. In addition, the bright, artificial lights remained on in the cell constantly, increasing my disorientation and making it difficult to sleep. Not only were they constantly illuminated, but those lights buzzed incessantly. The buzzing noise was maddening, as there often were no other sounds at all. This may sound like a small thing, but it was my entire world.

Due to the unchanging bright artificial lights and not having a wristwatch or clock, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Frequently, I would fall asleep and when I woke up I would not know if I had slept for five minutes or five hours, and would have no idea of what day or time of day it was.

I tried to measure the passing of days by counting food trays. Without being able to keep track of time, though, sometimes I thought the officers had left me and were never coming back. I thought they were gone for days, and I was going to starve. It’s likely they were only gone for a few hours, but I had no way to know. (source)

More on solitary confinement and prison conditions. More absurd human rights violations.

Human Rights Maps (116): Life Without Parole For U.S. Teenagers

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Currently, over 2,500 prisoners sit behind bars in the US without the possibility of parole for crimes committed while they were children.

In May 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the 8th Amendment‘s ban on cruel and unusual punishment means juvenile offenders who haven’t been convicted of murder shouldn’t be sentenced to life in prison without any chance of parole.

A few years ago, the Court already banned the death penalty for juvenile offenders. See also here.

(source, click image to enlarge)

More on the death penalty, and on juvenile incarceration. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• Judges Weigh Fairnes of Juvenile Life Without Parole (blogs.wsj.com)
• Florida Drags its Heels on Juvenile Lifers (criminaljustice.change.org)

Capital Punishment (33): It’s Not What You Do, But What You Do to Whom

the hanging of Rainey Bethea, the last public execution in the U.S.

In the U.S., and probably also in other countries that still use the death penalty, not all murders are alike. Ostensibly, the death penalty is the supreme punishment for the supreme crime, i.e. murder. But some cases of the supreme crime are more likely to result in the supreme punishment than others. For example, it’s well-known that a black person who has committed murder is more likely to be executed than a white person, even if the details of their crimes are very much alike.

It seems that the moralistic justification of capital punishment – that the worst of crimes should be met with the severest of punishments – is just talk, applicable in some cases but not in others. This inconsistency is incompatible with moral talk, since morality is precisely about general and blind rules. The inconsistency becomes even more clear when we consider that it’s not just the race of the perpetrator that makes it more or less likely that horror is answered with horror. People who murder whites are much more likely to be executed than those who murder blacks:

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I don’t want to sound conspiratory, but it does seem like the death penalty is an instrument in the continued subjugation of blacks and the protection of whites.

On top of the race issue, there’s also a class issue:

A defendant is much more likely to be sentenced to death if he or she kills a “high-status” victim, according to new research by Scott Phillips, associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver (DU).

According to his research published in Law and Society Review, (43-4:807-837), the probability of being sentenced to death is much greater if a defendant kills a white or Hispanic victim who is married with a clean criminal record and a college degree, as opposed to a black or Asian victim who is single with a prior criminal record and no college degree.

“The concept of arbitrariness suggests that the relevant legal facts of a capital case cannot fully explain the outcome: irrelevant social facts also shape the ultimate state sanction” Phillips says. “In the capital of capital punishment, death is more apt to be sought and imposed on behalf of high status victims. Some victims matter more than others.”

Phillips research is based on 504 death penalty cases that occurred in Harris County, Texas between 1992 and 1999. (source, source)

More on capital punishment is here.

Related Articles

• The Incapacitation Argument For Capital Punishment (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Human Rights Facts (209): Capital Punishment in Japan (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Illinois House Votes To Abolish Death Penalty (huffingtonpost.com)
• Should States Abolish Death Penalty to Cut Costs? (abcnews.go.com)

Capital Punishment (31): The Incapacitation Argument For Capital Punishment

Capital punishment is usually defended on the basis of a theory of deterrence or retribution, but another common argument is incapacitation: killing criminals guarantees that they cannot commit further crimes. It’s likely that this argument plays an important role in many decisions to impose capital punishment, since members of juries may fear, mistakenly, that life imprisonment without parole actually means something like “on average 10 years in prison” (see here).

The obvious counter-argument is that life imprisonment, when it really means “life”, is equally incapacitating. True, say the proponents of capital punishment, but criminals may kill when in prison. In particular, they may kill fellow inmates. OK, so let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine that we don’t use the death penalty for murder, but incarcerate murderers for life, together with only fellow murderers. The only killing they can do is of their fellow incarcerated murderers.

The former gas chamber in San Quentin State Prison

Would that kind of killing be objectionable to proponents of capital punishment? I think it shouldn’t be, since the victims of this kind of killing would also have been killed under a regime of capital punishment. Maybe opponents would object that this system doesn’t treat all murderers the same: some get killed, others not. However, I fail to see what difference it makes to a murderer if she is killed by fellow inmates rather than by the state, or if she is killed while others aren’t. She’ll be dead, and in no position to complain about others being still alive. (And don’t tell me murder by the state is preferable because it’s more “humane“). Moreover, our existing regimes of capital punishment don’t manage to kill all murderers either. And finally, non-murderers can also kill while in prison. Should we execute them preemptively?

For opponents of capital punishment, it does make a huge difference whether murderers are killed by the state or by their colleagues: murder by the state means the instrumentalization of human beings, whereas murders between inmates are regrettable and to be avoided, but not more or less than murders in general.

More on capital punishment here.

Related Articles

• Why I don’t believe in the death penalty (psychologytoday.com)
• Capital Punishment is Unnecessary (socyberty.com)
• The death penalty should be abolished (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Stevens’ Powerful Anti-Death-Penalty Views (time.com)
• Op-Ed Columnist: Broken Beyond Repair (nytimes.com)

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (54): Oklahoma Bombing

The image of firefighter Chris Fields holding the dying infant Baylee Almon won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1996. Two people, Lester LaRue and Charles Porter, standing just three feet apart, took almost the same image yet it was Charles Porter’s image that won the Pulitzer.

Read the whole story here. More on terrorism here and here. Other iconic images of rights violations are here.

The Ethics of Human Rights (34): Human Rights, Moral Universals, and Cultural Relativism

The universality of human rights is arguably their most important attribute. I won’t repeat my arguments in favor of this claim (if you’re interested, go here, here, here and here). “Universality” here obviously means something like “universal value”, “universal importance”, “universal moral claims” or “universal desirability”, not factual universality. Human rights aren’t universally protected. If they were, we would hardly need them. I also won’t repeat what I’ve said before on the means to go from merely moral or legal universality to actual universality (some posts here, here and here).

Now, I’ve gone so far as to claim that human rights not only should be universal values (for reasons specified elsewhere), but in fact are universal values (see here and here for instance). The fact that they are regularly violated doesn’t change the equally salient fact that they are universally recognized as important moral goals.

However, claims of the existence of so-called moral universals, and especially claims that some moral values should be universals, immediately provoke the counter-claim of cultural imperialism. Supposedly, different cultures have developed their own moral codes, adapted to their own identity, circumstances and history, and moral diversity is a more important goal than moral universals. This counter-claim is often categorized under the heading of cultural relativism.

Personally, I believe that moral diversity and cultural identity are indeed important values, but also that moral diversity and relativism can be and often are used as a justification for rights violations that are contingently rather than culturally motivated (see here, here and here for my criticism of cultural relativism). And anyway: the existence or the promotion of moral universals in some areas of life doesn’t have to exclude moral diversity in other areas. It’s not because some values are or should be moral universals that all other values, cultures or identities are in danger of disappearing altogether. We can have both: moral universals and moral diversity. And both can reinforce each other if we manage to argue convincingly that some moral universals aren’t just export products, or the result of colonialism or of the omnipresence of the western type of state. Indeed, I believe that globalization, assimilation, colonialism, trade and universality of the modern nation state all contributed to the existence of moral universals, but also that some universals are the product of a global convergence of genuinely local moral rules. (I’ll try in a future post to give an overview of the origins of human rights in different cultures of the world). If we can show that all or most cultures in the world have independently arrived at the same or similar moral rules, then we have moral universals that are build on respect for moral diversity and not just on the export and imposition of one morality on the rest of the world.

However, that’s extremely difficult to prove. It’s relatively easy to show that some moral values are in fact moral universals, but it’s much harder to show why they are moral universals: are they because they have been imposed through colonization, promoted through trade etc. or because they have grown “organically” from within the different cultures that have converging rules? Still, what we can argue is that when there are universals, the burden of proof is on those wanting to argue that they are not genuine but the result of external imposition. The existence of universals is a prima facie argument for their “genuineness”. Also, what’s genuine? Even values that have been imposed or imported a long time ago can have become the genuine morality of the people concerned.

Some evidence of the actual existence of moral universals comes from a paper about a comparative law investigation into the universality of the prohibition of homicide. Such a prohibition is an indication of the moral value of the right to life. The paper shows that this prohibition is in fact universal. Of course, the paper focuses on the law, and the law is at best an imperfect witness of morality (Marx would argue that it is rather an instrument of immorality). But the law is easier to find than morality. And – again – the burden of proof is on the opposing side: if the law indicates universality – as it does in this case and in many others – then it’s up to those claiming non-universality to give counter-evidence.

More posts in this series are here.

Moral Dilemma (15): Separating Siamese Twins

There was a famous case in the UK some years ago, of a pair of Siamese twins (not in the image above) joined at the waist and sharing a heart and lungs. By the nature of their condition, only one of the pair – the one with the fully developed heart – could survive an operation to separate them. Doctors insisted that the girls be separated, because both would die within three to six months if nothing was done. The heart of the one of the twins could not go on to support both of them forever.

The parents, however, refused to go through with the operation, claiming that they could not save one of their children by killing her sister. They wanted nature and God’s will to take its course. The doctors challenged the parents’ decision, claiming inaction meant death for both girls. The case went to the courts and a judge ruled in favor of the doctors. The operation went ahead and, predictably, one of the girls died. The other one now leads a healthy life.

One of the judges deciding the case even stated that an operation to save the most viable of the pair – the one with the fully developed heart – would also be in the interest of the other girl. This other girl’s life would be hurtful and short anyway and to prolong it would be “very seriously to her disadvantage”. Killing her would not be an act, but an omission – the interruption or withdrawal of the supply of blood

which she received from her sister. As such, the surgery could go ahead by analogy with those cases where the courts have authorized the withholding of food and hydration. Ultimately, however, this reasoning wasn’t followed by the court when upholding the decision to operate. (source)

This is reminiscent of the trolley problem, a famous moral dilemma in which people are asked if they would push a fat man on a track in order to stop a runaway trolley or tram heading for a group of five people unaware of the danger. When you answer the question below, you should know that in most surveys about the trolley problem, people refuse to push the fat man. We also had another dilemma in this series that featured a similar problem: should a surgeon sacrifice some innocent people in order to harvest organ for a dying patient?

And you can still vote on our previous moral dilemmas here.

Capital Punishment (28): Extreme “Tinkering With the Machinery of Death” in the U.S.

The title of this blog post refers to a famous quote by former US Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. It’s my belief that the U.S. Supreme Court, in its desire to both uphold capital punishment and simultaneously limit its scope, has maneuvered itself into an incoherent position. It has “tinkered with the machinery of death” to such an extent that the application of capital punishment in the U.S. should be viewed as a complete mess, even by those of us who don’t have an instinctive repulsion for capital punishment, who don’t make a philosophical or moral argument against it, and who don’t agree that there are so-called “systemic problems” in the application of capital punishment in the U.S. (as opposed to the moral problems of capital punishment per se), such as

• the racist component
• the discussions about non-cruel methods
• the failure of legal representation
• the extensive appeals procedures
• the sadistic death row phenomenon
• or the lack of deterrence.

(For irregular readers, I’m personally convinced that there are moral reasons not to apply the death penalty, and that these are sufficient reasons. I view both the systemic problems cited above and the inconsistent reasoning of the Supreme Court discussed below as supplementary reasons for those who are difficult to convince with moral reasons alone).

Here’s an overview of some of the contradictory judgments of the Supreme Court. There’s a tendency, among many supporters of the death penalty in the U.S., to extend its reach beyond homicide. (I believe that’s a natural tendency, especially for those counting on a deterrent effect. If the main objective of capital punishment is the deterrence of crime, then why stop at homicide? There are many other heinous crimes that could possible be reduced with an effective deterrent and if it can be argued – but I doubt it – that capital punishment is such an effective deterrent, then why shy away of it?).

In Coker v. Georgia, the Court had to decide whether the crime of rape of an adult woman warrants the penalty of death. The Court argued that it doesn’t, since rape does not mean taking a life. Again, in Enmund v. Florida (does a homicide accomplice who does not kill or attempt to kill deserve the death penalty?), the Court judged that capital punishment should not be a possible punishment for crimes that do not involve the death of another human being. (This is part of the doctrine of proportionality, see below).

And yet, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court stated that crimes against the state, such as treason and espionage, but also terrorism and drug kingpins etc. may be deserving of death even if no loss of life was involved. I find this distinction highly arbitrary. From the point of view of an opponent of capital punishment such as me, it’s obviously good that the Court imposes some restrictions on the sentence, but doing so in this arbitrary way just serves to undermine the legitimacy of these restrictions and opens the door to future reversals.

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Another restriction imposed by the Court is based on the degree of culpability of offenders and their capacity to evaluate and control their actions. In Thompson v. Oklahoma for instance, the Court examined the constitutionality of executing child offenders (under the age of 16). The Court decided that children are generally less culpable for their crimes because, compared to adults, they are

• less able to judge the consequences of their actions
• more emotional and less able to control their actions
• less prone to “cold calculation” and therefore there is less reason to assume a deterrent effect.

Moreover, the Court assumed that offenses by the young represent a failure of society, school and the family:

youth crime as such is not exclusively the offender’s fault; offenses by the young also represent a failure of family, school, and the social system, which share responsibility for the development of America’s youth. (source)

Again, nice to see the Court limiting the scope of the death penalty, but why assume that adult criminals don’t also represent a failure of society? If young people offend because of failure of the educational system for instance, is it safe to assume that these causes magically disappear after a certain age? (Of course, I don’t assume that “society” causes all crime, but crime does, in certain cases, have causes beyond the decisions of the criminals). And are there really no adults who are relatively less able to judge the consequences of their actions and act in a non-emotional and calculated way?

Yes, says the Court, but at the same time it limits this category of adults in a somewhat arbitrary way to the mentally retarded (for example Atkins v. Virginia). I believe the reduced culpability of the mentally retarded is obviously a good thing, but why stop there? Aren’t there any “non-retards” who also can claim diminished culpability? And, anyway, where to put the border between the retarded and the rest? There’s always going to be a gray zone, and hence arbitrariness.

Furthermore, recent judgments of the Court tend towards undoing the restriction on capital punishment based on diminished culpability. Scalia for instance (dissenting in Atkins v. Virginia) claimed that culpability and deservedness depend not only on the mental capacity of the criminal but also on the depravity of the crime. One can read this as a justification of capital punishment even for children or the mentally retarded if their crime is depraved enough.

In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court also expressed contradictory views on deterrence. Deterrence has always been an important justification for the Court, but in Kennedy v. Louisiana the Court decided that in the case of child rapists, capital punishment would encourage rather than deter the crime. It claimed, correctly I think, that the death penalty for this crime could encourage non-reporting. A third party, for example the wife of the rapist, could decide not to report the offender for fear of capital punishment, which then leads to the continuation of the crime, and hence the failure of deterrence.

Again, a welcome restriction from the point of view of an abolitionist, but also a highly arbitrary one. The same non-reporting effect of the death penalty can occur in other types of crime. Moreover, the consideration of counter-deterrence effects in this case is very unusual for a Court that consistently ignores evidence against the deterrent effect.

Finally, the argument of proportionality cited above and used against capital punishment for crimes such as rape (see also Gregg v. Georgia) is a welcome limit, but it also is an argument that’s used very selectively and arbitrarily by the Court. In non-capital cases, the Court often refuses to consider the lack of proportionality as a reason to undo decisions of other courts. In Rummel v. Estelle for instance, the Court refused to see anything wrong with a sentence of life imprisonment for obtaining $120.75 by false pretences!

All these inconsistencies and arbitrary limits and restrictions in the Supreme Court’s handling of capital punishment have turned this sentence into a shambles. Many of us think it’s much worse than that, but a shambles may be a sufficient reason for others to review the practice.

Moral Dilemma (13): The Responsibility of Small Contributions

screenshot from the movie "Untraceable"

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In the movie Untraceable, a serial killer rigs contraptions that kill his victims based on the number of hits received by a website (“www.killwithme.com“) that features a live streaming video of the victim dying. Millions of people log on, hastening the victims’ violent deaths. The manner of murder is typically a slow process, for example putting the victim in water and replacing the water with acid. Every single website visit add a tiny amount of acid.

The movie writers assume, quite explicitly, that the serial killer has primary moral responsibility for the deaths and that the website visitors are mere accessories. However, one could plausibly argue that the serial killer is responsible only for kidnapping and hostage taking since he does not himself act in a way that leads to the murder. In that case, the group of visitors of the website is the primary or even sole perpetrator of the murders. On the other hand, one could argue that every single visitor’s contribution to the murder is insignificantly small. When the victim dies or is set to die after 10.000.000 visitors, for example, is doesn’t matter much if the 8 millionth visitor visited or not. Perhaps the 10 millionth visitor is responsible, but the script of the movie doesn’t make it clear that the threshold of number of visitors required for killing the victim is set in advance. On the contrary, the script suggests that even the kidnapper (let’s not call him killer just yet) can’t tell in advance which exact number of visitors is required to kill them victim.

So who do you think carries prime responsibility for the murder? The kidnapper? The entire group of visitors, and equally so (meaning the first visitor just as much as the last)? The last visitor (who can’t possibly know before visiting that his or her visit will be the final straw)? An indeterminate group of visitors who visit near the final moments of the victim (as the progress of the murder is streamed live on the internet, late visitors can see that death is imminent)?

More moral dilemmas (which are still open to votes by the way).

Human Rights Maps (79): Numbers of Firearm Deaths in the U.S.

number of firearms deaths in the US

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And this is the map for 2007:

number of deaths due to injury by firearms US

(source, these include accidental shootings, suicides, acts of self-defense, as well as crimes)

Here are some numbers for the rest of the world:

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homicide by firearm, rate per 100000 population

 

percentage of homicides by firearm

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More maps on violence. View all human rights maps. More textual information on violence here and here. Statistics on violence are here. Something on gun control and the arms trade.

Moral Dilemma (8): The Plank Of Carneades

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There are two shipwrecked sailors, A and B. They both see a plank that can only support one of them and both of them swim towards it. Sailor A gets to the plank first. Sailor B, who is going to drown, pushes A off and away from the plank and, thus, ultimately, causes A to drown. Sailor B gets on the plank and is later saved by a rescue team. Can sailor B be tried for murder? Or did B act in self-defense? (source)

More on murder. You can still vote for our previous dilemmas.

Human Rights and International Law (18): Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

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The ”Responsibility to Protect“, or R2P in U.N.-speak, is a humanitarian principle that aims to stop mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It refers initially to the responsibility of states to their own citizens, but in case states can’t or won’t protect their own citizens, other states can step in, respecting the Security Council procedures. However, this is a last resort, especially if the intervention is of a military nature.

The concept is closely linked to, if not indistinguishable from, humanitarian intervention. Often it’s also called the principle of non-indifference, a sarcastic pun on the principle of non-intervention. Some for whom national sovereignty and non-intervention is still the main and overriding rule in international affairs, see R2P as an excuse for Western interference. Noam Chomsky is a notable if unsurprising example. You can read his arguments here. He is, not for the first time unfortunately, joined by a number of governments that risk being a future target.

Noam Chomsky

(source, art by Robert Shetterly)

However, most in the West aren’t jumping the queue to enter into a legal obligation that can force them to undertake expensive and risky interventions in the name of humanity. The fact that these interventions aren’t only expensive and risky but often also without collateral benefits, doesn’t help either. R2P is not yet a legal rule, more a quasi-legal rule. Some legal or quasi-legal texts include the concept. The Constitutive Act of the African Union includes “the right of the Union to intervene in a member state pursuant to a decision of the African Union assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity”. The same is true for the Security Council of the UN. The concept was endorsed unanimously by heads of state during the World Summit of 2005, so it can be argued that the principle is part of international common law (i.e. international law established by coherent and unanimous state practice).

More here. More on humanitarian intervention here and here.

Human Rights Nonsense (2): “Refugee Run” in Davos

A reminder what this series is about: the ways in which the language of human rights is used to push nonsense. Human rights nonsense devalues the whole system of human rights, and has to be ridiculed mercilessly if we want to preserve what is good about human rights.

This post is about the infamous “Refugee Run” earlier this year in Davos:

Refugee Run Davos

(source, click on the image to enlarge)

From the announcement:

During the coming World Economic Forum, we will co-host a very moving event in which people “step into the shoes” of the world’s 40 million refugees. For a moment in time, participants will be thrust into another environment where they face an attack from rebels, a “mine field”, border corruption, language incapacity, black-marketeering and refugee camp survival. Following the event, a debrief will invite the participants to discuss the refugee situation and explore ways to assist, should they wish so. … (Spoiler alert: no harm will come to you!)

In the words of Bill Easterly:

Can Davos man empathize with refugees when he or she is not in danger and is going back to a luxury banquet and hotel room afterwards? Isn’t this just a tad different from the life of an actual refugee, at risk of all too real rape, murder, hunger, and disease?

Did the words “insensitive”, “dehumanizing”, or “disrespectful” (not to mention “ludicrous”) ever come up in discussing the plans for “Refugee Run”?

This isn’t the best way to raise consciousness and awareness, to make the rich world sensitive to the problems of refugees, or to mobilize support for the activities of the UNHCR. It’s just stupid nonsense at best, and “disaster pornography” at worst, discrediting the activities of an organization that is more important than ever.

More on refugees, including some statistics.

Terrorism and Human Rights (20): Targeted Killing of Terrorists

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Are governments, or even private individuals, allowed to kill terrorists when killing them is the only way to prevent a terrorist attack? Intuitively, I would say “yes”, but only if certain conditions are met: the attack must be imminent, and no other solution is possible. In fact, these conditions limit the possibility to cases such as killing a terrorist with explosives clearly visible, and seen – from a distance - to be moving towards a target.

Most cases will be different and will make it possible for the police or bystanders to disable the terrorist in some other way, short of killing him or her, and without putting themselves at risk. I never understood why the British SAS needed a policy to target and kill IRA terrorists when they were not engaged in an imminent terrorist attack and when they could easily be arrested (see here for the story).

Now, one could reply to this with this question: why should we treat terrorists better than soldiers? In a war, soldiers can be killed almost at will. If an army spots enemy soldiers, it can kill them without violating any law of war, even if these enemy soldiers are not engaged in an imminent attack. So why can’t we kill terrorists in the same way? In fact, we should treat soldiers better, since many of them are conscripts who do not target innocent civilians. Terrorists are (normally) volunteers who target innocent civilians. That makes two aggravating circumstances.

In answer to this, we could state that terrorism isn’t a war; it’s a criminal act. Some things are allowed in a war which aren’t allowed in peacetime. And terrorism is horrible and not peaceful at all, but not everything that is horrible or a breach of peace is necessarily a war. If we are allowed to stop the crime of terrorism with targeted killings - even if the crime is not imminent – then why not normal murder as well? For example, we may know that someone is about to commit (a non-terrorist) murder, but the act is not imminent. If you accept the SAS tactic, you also have to accept the preventive killing of normal murderers.

Some go even further, and accept not only targeted killing in cases without an imminent threat, but also killing after the fact. They would accept the killing of Osama bin Laden, even if he wasn’t planning a non-imminent attack. They would justify this killing based on his past actions. (Another example is the targeted killing by Mossad of the people involved in the Munich Olympics killings, made into a movie by Spielberg). I think that’s just as unacceptable as the targeted killing SAS style. It’s punishment without due process.

More on terrorism.

Capital Punishment (20): The Truth About the Deterrent Effect

Proponents of the death penalty usually show the following famous graph in order to “prove” that capital punishment results in fewer homicides in the U.S., and is therefore a successful deterrent:

First of all, there’s something wrong with this graph. It’s intentionally tweaked so as to highlight the recent rise in the number of executions, and to do so in a way that shows how closely correlated it is with the recent drop in the number of homicides. Compare it to this version:

homicides and executions in the U.S.

(source)

The important difference is that the second graph counts the number of executions per homicide, and not just the total number of executions. From the point of view of deterrence, this is obviously the better measure.

We can see from the second graph that the recent upswing in the number of executions is really quite small, compared to earlier periods (there was moratorium on executions in the U.S. in the early 1970s). Unless deterrence has somehow become much more effective than it was in the early parts of the 20th century – which is doubtful given the relatively low numbers and humane methods – it can’t be the case that such a relatively small increase in the number of executions during the last decades is the cause of the extraordinary decrease in the number of homicides during the same period. We have here a clear example of correlation being not equal to causation. And when we look at the whole time series in this graph, there isn’t even a clear correlation. It’s cherry picking: take that part of the time series that confirms your prejudice, and forget the rest. A common manipulation technique in statistics.

It’s not only cherry picking in terms of the period being considered, but also in terms of sidelining other possible explanatory factors. The same guys who gave us the second graph show how this works by comparing U.S. data with Canadian data, and by comparing the data for different states in the U.S.

Canada and the U.S have had and continue to have radically different capital punishment policies. Canada abolished the death penalty in the 1960s. According to those who believe in deterrence, Canada should have a completely different evolution of the number of homicides; in fact it should have had a steeper increase than the U.S. when the U.S. had an increase, or a less pronounced decrease when they both showed a decrease. In reality, however, the graphs for both countries are very similar (although the absolute levels are lower in Canada):

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These similar movements in the rate of homicides, combined with very different capital punishment policies, indicate that the latter don’t have a real influence on the former. While the moratorium in the U.S. in the 1970s is blamed for the concurrent rise in number of homicides, we see that a similar rise occurred in Canada, where the death penalty was abolished many years earlier. And, similarly, the recent decrease in homicides, said to be the result of the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S., also occurred in Canada where there hasn’t been a reinstatement.

The same is true when we compare states within the U.S. Death-penalty states and non-death penalty states have witnessed very similar movements in homicide rates:

The drivers behind the movements in homicide rates can’t be found in capital punishment policies and hence must be found elsewhere. But then you need to be willing to look. If you believe in deterrence chances are you’re not willing to look.

More on capital punishment.

Political Graffiti (42): War and Murder

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More on war.

Hate (5): Why Do We Need Hate Crime Laws?

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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We punish the crimes of murder, kidnap, and battery. Why isn’t that enough? … It strikes me as weird that the mere utterance of a racial slur during a violent act automatically makes it worse. Ta-Nehisi Coates (source, part of this quote is actually Coates citing someone else)

Doesn’t the concept of hate crime imply a punishment of expression and thought? And isn’t it therefore essentially a thought-crime, and as such objectionable to people who cherish freedom of thought and speech? Shouldn’t someone’s convictions and expressions be immaterial to their punishment? And shouldn’t we just focus on what someone did rather than what he or she was thinking or saying when he or she did it?

Not really. Intent, motive and state of mind have always been crucial to punishment, hence the difference between premeditated murder and manslaughter. Killing or hurting someone because of race, gender or sexual orientation is worse than mere killing or hurting, and should incur a more severe punishment because it is meant not only to harm the victim but to terrorize an entire community.

More on hate crime here and here.

Human Rights Maps (26): Murder Rates

There were about 468,000 intentional homicides in 2010. One third of them in Africa, another thord in the Americas. Globally, the murder rate is 6.9 per 100,000 population, and this has been falling in most parts of the world, but not in in Central America and the Caribbean (the numbers for Africa are not reliable).

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Here’s another version:

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And another version:

More on violence.

Crime and Human Rights (2): Violence, Types and Numbers

(copyright Ric Stultz, source)

Violence is the aggressive exertion of force so as to injure or abuse, physically or mentally. Injury and abuse are inflicted on fellow human beings in order to achieve a certain goal, e.g. profit, pleasure, political gain, revenge, recognition, respect, honor, destruction, exploitation, fear, oppression etc.

In some cases, there doesn’t seem to be a goal and violence is committed just for the sake of violence. This, however, is exceptional. Most violence is instrumental, and the goals which have to be achieved can be:

• Selfish and individual: respect, honor, profit, envy, hate, revenge…
• Communal: respect for a religion, genocide, riots, ethnic cleansing…
• State sponsored: oppression, war, torture, capital punishment…
• Global: utopian violence, communism, terrorism, crimes against humanity…

It’s apparent from this that the concept of “violence” can be broken down into different types of violence, but it can be done according to different kinds of distinctions. The distinction above is only one possibility. Below I will use the distinction between interpersonal violence and collective violence. Others have used other classifications, for example:

• Violence classified by its causes: genetic causes, psychiatric disorders, economic causes (e.g. poverty), ideological causes, political causes, cultural or religious causes (for example female genital mutilation), social causes (e.g. dehumanization)…
• Violence classified according to its effects: e.g. direct or indirect effects. Pornography for example is often called an indirect form of violence because it is violence which is said to cause other violence. Some kinds of violence have more indirect effects than others. Violence in general places a massive burden on national economies, costing countries billions of US dollars each year in health care, law enforcement and lost productivity. But war obviously causes a heavier burden than assault.
• Violence classified according to the type of victims: racial violence, gender violence, ethnic violence, religious violence, domestic violence…

Some numbers

Worldwide, an estimated 1,6 million people lost their lives to violence in 2000. About half were suicides, one-third were homicides, and one-fifth were casualties of armed conflict (World Report on Violence and Health, World Health Organization, 2002).

Violence is among the leading causes of death for people aged 15–44 years worldwide, accounting for 14% of deaths among males and 7% of deaths among females.

Interpersonal violence

Fatal interpersonal violence, i.e. homicide

Here’s a world map with the number of murders or homicides per 100.000 inhabitants during the last years:

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And here are the same data for some selected countries:

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And this is how the homicide rate in the U.S. evolved during the last decades:

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All in all, this is still almost 20.000 murders a year in the U.S. (more data on crime in the US. here). On the level of the World, an estimated 520.000 people were killed in 2000 as a result of interpersonal violence worldwide – a rate of 8,8 per 100.000 population. (source)

Non-fatal interpersonal violence

For every person who dies as a result of violence, many more are injured and suffer other harms (psychological, financial etc.). One example is rape. The following graph shows the number of attempted and completed cases of rape in the U.S.:

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Self-inflicted violence; suicide

Globally, an estimated 815.000 people killed themselves in 2000. (source)

Collective violence and war

This includes armed conflicts within or between states, and state-perpetrated violence such as genocide, torture, repression, some kinds of famine and poverty, and other abuses of human rights.

Since the beginning of recorded history, around 3600 BC, over 14.500 major wars have killed close to four billion people.

During the 20th century, one of the most violent periods in human history, an estimated 191 million people lost their lives directly or indirectly as a result of armed conflict, and well over half of them were civilians. In 2000, about 310 000 people died as a direct result of conflict-related injuries – the majority of them in the poorer parts of the world. (source)

Terrorist violence also falls under this header:

More on violence.

Migration and Human Rights (8): The “Criminal Immigrant” Stereotype

The debate on immigration is an angry one, filled with anxiety, prejudice and extreme positions. Immigration is said to lead to an increase in crime rates, because the immigrants are often poor, undereducated and not well adjusted to their host community. Illegal immigrants, especially, are believed to be overrepresented in crime statistics because they are hard to track down, have no official residence, and can easily escape across the border.

However, none of this stands the test of critical examination of facts, at least when we limit ourselves to the situation in the US.

A study by Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl – Crime, Corrections and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do With It? – concludes that immigrants in California, including “undocumented” persons, are far less likely than their native-born counterparts to commit crime. Additionally, to test for the possibility that immigrants might be simply avoiding incarceration by leaving the country, the study looked at crime rates in California cities with the largest influx of immigrants, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento. The study found that on average, the crime rates in those cities dropped between 2000 and 2005.  (source)

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These numbers are very convincing, even if we accept some dubious caveats (illegal immigrants, when committing a crime, are perhaps more likely to flee abroad and hence not end up in incarceration statistics, and immigrant communities perhaps underreport crime). Politicians should therefore stop exploiting irrational fears about immigrant crime.

More on immigration.

Hate (1): Hate Crime

Al Gore

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We must send a clear and strong message to all who would commit crimes of hate: it is wrong, it is illegal, and we will catch you and punish you to the full force of our laws. Al Gore

A hate crime (or a bias crime) is a crime committed against a person that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s prejudice against

• a race
• a religion
• a sexual orientation
• an ethnicity or national origin.

Hate crimes are traditional offenses such as murder, harassment, rape, violent assault, vandalism, arson etc. but they are motivated by the offenders’ bias.

Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, antisemitism etc. are ideologies, biases or prejudices which foster hate crime.

Hate crime statistics

This FBI statistic shows the distribution over the different types of hate crime in the U.S. in 2004:

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In 2004, these percentages cover 7.649 incidents involving 9.035 offenses directed at 9.528 victims. Of course, this covers the US only. About 30% of the offenses involved the crime of intimidation, another 30% assaults, and 35% crimes against property (vandalism etc.). Most of the anti-race crimes were anti-black. Most of the anti-religious crimes were anti-Jewish. Most of the crimes based on sexual prejudice where anti-male homosexual. The anti-ethnicity crimes were mostly anti-Hispanic. Most offenders were white. In 2006 the data were very similar.

After 9-11 there was a sudden increase in the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes, but this was a very temporary phenomenon:

(source)

These are the numbers in the U.K.:

Nationally, in 2006-07, police reported 5,619 hate crimes in which someone was injured, 4,350 hate crimes without injury, and 28,485 cases of racially or religiously motivated harassment. There were also 3,565 cases of criminal damage related to hate crimes. The typical hate offender is a young white male (most homophobic offenders are aged 16-20, and most race hate offenders under 30). (source)

Data on the rest of the world are difficult to come by.

Official crime statistics always understate the true extent of criminal behavior. And in the case of hate crime it is reasonable to state that many hate crimes are not counted separately but disappear in the global crime statistics, because the policeman or woman who records the crime may not be aware of the motivation or may not care.

Hate crime legislation

There is some controversy over the necessity of specific hate crime laws, as most of the actions concerned, if not all, are already illegal under normal law.

In the United States most states have laws that impose extra punishment for crimes that are motivated by hate, in excess of the usual punishment for the same crimes when motivated by other reasons. (source)

Whereas the intention of the criminal has for centuries been a factor in establishing the degree of the punishment, hate crime laws are often seen as punishment of ideas, as an example of the “thought police”. Proponents argue that hate crimes hurt the victims more than the same crimes committed for other reasons because they stigmatize people and erode their self-esteem. Furthermore, hate crimes not only hurt the immediate victims but also other people in the same group because they create a climate of fear. One can even claim that they harm the very fabric of a free and diverse society.

Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights outlaws hate crime:

Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Hate speech

(source)

There is also some controversy over whether incitement to hatred should also be called a hate crime. Contrary to the offenses described above, speech as such is not a crime, even speech expressing or inciting hatred. Speech is protected by the right to free speech. However, this right, like many human rights, is not absolute and can be limited when it endangers other human rights (like the right to life and bodily integrity). It’s a thin line between hateful words and hateful actions. Impressionable people can be led to violent crimes by hate speech.

Examples of speech, in the wide sense of the word, such as hanging a noose in a tree in the front yard of the house of an African-American family, or spraying graffiti on someone’s car or house, is obviously more of a problem than posting a picture of a Koran in the toilet on a blog or a website. The first examples are clearly intimidation and can force people to sell their houses and move somewhere else. This has human rights implications (freedom of residence and property rights), which the latter examples don’t have (it’s difficult to argue that a photo of the Koran in a toilet, although undoubtedly an expression of hatred, harms anyone’s freedom of religion).

Some also call Islamic terrorism a hate crime. Hate and prejudices are certainly motivations behind many terrorist attacks. Examples from history are lynching, cross burning (intimidation), the medieval witch hunt, the many genocides, the Roman persecution of Christians…

More on hate speech. More on free speech.

Religion and Human Rights (9): Honor Killings

Hina Jilani

The right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions. Hina Jilani, lawyer and human rights activist

An honor killing is a murder, carried out by a family to punish a female family member who has supposedly brought dishonor on the family. The acts which are the cause of dishonor can be

• refusing an arranged marriage
• being the victim of a sexual assault or rape
• seeking a divorce, even from an abusive husband
• committing adultery or fornication
• pre-marital sex
• flirting
• etc.

Men can also be targeted by honor killings, but more rarely (for example in the case of homosexuality).

Causes

• The practice is mostly associated with Muslim cultures (sometimes in minority Muslim groups in the West), although there is no support for the act in Islam. And it does occur in other cultures as well. In India, more than 5.000 brides are killed annually because their marriage dowries are considered insufficient. (However, one can argue that honor is not the main motivation in such cases). It also occured in some Latin cultures (“crime of passion” is often still a “mitigating circumstance”). In Muslim countries, the practice is seen by some as a justified enforcement of religious rules, and therefore not strictly a matter of honor. This is corroborated by the fact that sometimes the killings are perpetrated against women by individuals who are not close relatives, but who claim enforcement of religious rules as their motive. In Iraq, for example, honor killings are conducted by armed insurgent groups on politically active women and those who did not follow a strict dress code, and women who are perceived as human rights defenders.
• There is a strong correlation between honor killings and illiteracy rates.
• Men often use honor killings to assert their dominant patriarchal status. Women in the family may support the practice in order to preserve the honor of other female family members and to preserve their chances of getting married in the community. It’s a kind of purge or purification.
• Some claim that the practice goes back to ancient motivations based on anxieties about reproductive power. Women, who were considered by the tribe to be a factory for making men, were forced through “honor” killings to obey the man’s family planning and not to reproduce outside of the tribe or the extended family.
• In a society where marriages are arranged by fathers and money is exchanged, a woman’s desire to choose her own husband is a financial problem, one which can be “translated” in terms of honor.

Consequences

Apart from the obvious consequences (death or lifelong disability), the practice of honor killings also forces women to stay in abusive marriages or to avoid reporting rape. If the women are killed, they are buried in unmarked graves and the community denies that they ever existed. And if they don’t die, the chances of receiving justice are minimal as many governments fail to prosecute the crime. And even when there is a trial, it’s the woman’s behavior that becomes the focus, not the defendant’s. As a result, the women sink deeper into shame and often don’t take the trouble of reporting the crime.

Numbers

Because the murders frequently go unreported and the perpetrators unpunished, it is difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon. Estimates range between hundreds and thousands of women each year. In Pakistan, it is estimated that every day at least three women are victims of the practice.

More numbers here.

What can be done?

Some say that the backwardness of the tribes where most killings take place makes it very difficult to do anything. However, education can work. The fact that the Koran does not prescribe the practice should be explained and taught. Honor killings are just one instance of gender discrimination and education should focus on women’s rights and the equality of women. Where the practice is linked to arranged marriages and dowries, one should first tackle these problems.

The judiciary and the police should be forced to intervene. Penal codes should be modernized, and the economic dependence of women should be dealt with.

Related phenomena

Related phenomena are acid attacks (instead of killing women, acid is poured on them) and honor suicides. People can be forced by their community or by their feeling of guilt to kill themselves. Relatives thereby avoid penalties for murder.

(source, Khalid Tanveer/ AP Photo)

Pakistani women hold protest rally to condemn an honor killing.

(source)

A screen shot from a cellphone video posted on an Internet site allegedly shows Iraqi Doaa Khalil Aswad, a 17-year old girl who was stoned and kicked to death in 2007 after she offended her minority Yezidi community – an old Iraqi sect that is neither Muslim nor Christian – by eloping with a Muslim man, thereby violating the taboo on inter-faith marriages. Her execution lasted two hours. Her killers were members of her extended family, mainly cousins and their friends. Several local people interviewed subsequently expressed support for the stoning, and only few said it was wrong.

More on gender discrimination.

Related Articles

• Honor killings: When the ancient and the modern collide (barbarany_9.blogspot.com)
• John L. Esposito: Violence against women a universal problem, not an Islamic issue? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Honor killings (thehill.com)
• Pakistani women living in fear of honour killings (politics.ie)
• HumanistLife : Getting away with murder – “Honour killing” in Pakistan (humanistlife.org.uk)
• Honor Killings Still Terrorize India’s Lovers (abcnews.go.com)
• The truth about honor killings (salon.com)
• India’s Honor Killings: A Modern Problem (thedailybeast.com)