I've been telling my progressive friends for years that the reason the "law & order" pitch works so well for the GOP is precisely because our justice system lacks a proper form of accounting. Punishments are abstract and incoherent, e.g., spammers can get more prison time than rapists. People sense this at a very instinctual level.

Professor Miller intuits that reciprocity and proportionality are biologically based concepts that stem from our evolutionary history as primates -- they're not going to be eradicated from our nature overnight and civilization needs to recognize that. Better to accept the need for revenge and integrate it into society rather than endlessly attempt to transcend it.

That as the value of an individual whacked person is worked out over time, a lot of innocent people get whacked subsequently in an asymptotic tit for tat that approaches, but never meets the perfect value. vide Northern Ireland.

Of course there are some advantages to the other system.

But there are disadvantages the interviewee does not pay attention to, he speaks as an advocate for the other system.

Look at how the other revenge cultures were and are still capable of mass wars with each other. Look at the factions in Iraq today, ready to war.

Not that we've solved everything; our system is letting the corporations corrupt our democracy, it's warped as well largely by money. We're vulnerable to demoagogues, to propaganda. And yet who among us wants to give up the individual rights our society treasures - the right to be different - which those other societies could kill you for?

We give great imprortance to 'the rule of law, not of man', and we mostly take great comfort in the protections we enjoy for free thinking and speech.

It's unfortunate that the issue was discussed in such an unbalanced manner, as if it were a better system, rather than looking simply at its advantages as an interesting discussion topic but including more on the downsides for balance.

There are many such interesting topics - another is the idea of arranged marriages, with some surprising benefits - but real downsides too.

In this interview, Miller cites an inherent human desire for revenge, and he extends this to the criminal justice system, implying that this trait of "human nature" is positive and healthy.

"I think they [pro-death penalty crime victims' groups] could be on to some deep moral sense that the wronged party has been undervalued in our fastidious concern not to undervalue the dignity of the wrongdoer", he says.

This line of reasoning not only ignores the reality of the death penalty in the U.S., but ignores what justice actually would mean for crime victims. First, it ignores that many victims of crime do not clamor for revenge. Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights and Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation are two anti-death penalty victims' rights groups. One of the truths they point to is that the justice system does very little for victims' families. Prosecutors hold out the death penalty as the solution to their problems. They exploit these families' pain for the television cameras while they seek a high-profile conviction that will make their careers. Meanwhile, these same prosecutors ignore anti-death penalty victims' families. What all of these families need is counseling and emotional assistance to help cope their loss, not revenge. The idea that these families achieve "closure" after an execution is a myth, one that news reporters never bother to dispel after the sensationalism of a murder has faded. Meanwhile, the families of Death Row inmates also suffer a devastating loss, with the death of their loved ones drawn out over years.

The other problem with Miller's argument is that it paints capital punishment as an abstract moral question over whether retribution is right or wrong. It ignores the more than 120 innocent people released from Death Row since 1977, or the fact that racism, class bias and conviction of the innocent have plagued the death penalty since its inception. Roughly 80 percent of death penalty cases involve white victims, even though blacks and whites are murder victims in nearly equal numbers. More than 20 percent of Black defendants who have been executed were convicted by all-white juries. As for class bias, former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas sums up the history of capital punishment when he writes, "One searches our chronicles in vain for the execution of any member of the affluent strata of society".

Miller suggests that capital punishment, or eye-for-an-eye justice, is about "proportionality", of making the life of a victim equal to the life of a wrongdoer. The facts surrounding the death penalty show that in this society, some lives are more equal than others. It's time to end the barbaric system of capital punishment.

Julien Ball,

Campaign to End the Death Penalty

You have too much of it on hand, if you're interviewing this Ian Miller about his facile and juvenile book. Didn't Wm Shakespeare solve this issue in the 1590s (The Merchant of Venice)?

Honestly, stop to consider merit before sending your reporters out. Sophistry is tenurable in the academy -- but that's no reason to give it coverage.

Only a professor sitting in his ivory tower could come up with something as crazy as this. These "talionic" cultures do exist in the boonies of the world -- parts of Turkey, Northern Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, etc.. etc... -- places that are still tribal-family based and isolated. These are not pleasant societies. These "honour" and "revenge" killings go on for years, and result in the killings of innocent men, women and children. It's completely idiotic to assume that you can keep your crazy distant cousin in line so that you don't get whacked as punishment when he goes off and kills someone.

There's a reason that we moved away from the "talionic" approach -- it results in a lot of senseless killing and people living in fear.

I agree with David - but I disagree with the common idea that 'justice' is the same thing as revenge. Justice implies an accounting that is roughly equal to the transgression. We often, as the author suggests, intuit when justice is done. Conversely, revenge is usually an act that far exceeds the original violence, wrong or harm.

For instance, if a man's child is murdered, and the man kills the murderer, we will take him to court, but he will receive no sentence or a very light one - because we have a sense that what he did was understandable and basically justified considering the wrong.

However, if the man murdered both the killer and the killer's child, society would see the addition of the child not as 'understandable'

justice, but as revenge - 'too much' when

compared to the original wrong.

And although many would still feel some sympathy, he would undoubtedly be sentenced substantially for 'overdoing it'.

As David says, a big problem in the minds of many with the current justice system is that crimes are not punished in measure to what was done - the system is quite arbitrary, and often a rapist or a murderer will 'pay'

very little compared to their transgression

and its effects on the victim and their family, or a non-violent offender will be sentenced more harshly than violent ones.

Our focus on rehab is laudable, but in our zeal to feel sorry for the criminal according to how pc their background is, their own level of life difficulty, and to 'fix them' so they can contribute to society, we have ignored the victims and their families, and given the impression that we care more about the criminal's rights and mental health than anyone else's - a strange, perverted sort of set up. We should strive for rehab,

but also a fair accounting of the 'crime', and for better treatment and attention to victims and their families. (which might include the criminal being required to work and make restitution of some type to the victim and society - a more civilized, helpful sort of eye for an eye)

It would also be beneficial if we dropped the rosy notion that all or most criminals can be fixed or changed. Humanity has always had a percentage of those who simply don't care about others or their rights, who are willing to 'take' what they want regardless of law,

or simply can't/won't control themselves.

While it is tempting to think no one is beyond the reach of better social conditions, therapy and job training, it's not very realistic.

I don't suggest that we start poking out eyes, but surely we can do better than this.