Civilize justice

In response to Shar Lichty’s May 25 letter: We need to take steps beyond execution, life without parole and the entire punishment model. People who have done things that make us want to execute or permanently lock them up need compassion and understanding.

We have a bad habit of clinging to the human Dark Ages idea that the people who do the most ugly, most violent, most abhorrent things are sanely thinking individuals who need to be punished to demonstrate to them the consequences of their actions, even though the punishment means their permanent removal from society.

So the consequence is purposeless as a tool of reform, and ends up becoming only a violent act to exact revenge. If someone has acted in such a way that others desire that person’s death or lifetime confinement, then we have all failed the offender, as our collective cultures, economics, politics, biases, ethics, morals – everything we are – produced the offender; someone who, through their trials of life and experiences, has been made into someone that we want to blame, cage and kill.

Aaron Robert Kathman

Spokane