On punishment, I’d lock the sod up for 24 years, plus another year for the sum of the years the three children severally spent locked up. I’d consider solitary confinement. He may be human but he has forfeited the right to interact with other humans.

Paul said “forever” and I pointed out that the formula I’d suggested was effectively forever.

The principles are more important than any formulas, but formulas do seem to exist, even in justice within traditional societies. I have a lay interest in justice systems, because manifestly there is room for improvement IMHO.

In the past I’ve thought of the proper punishment for truly unforgivable crimes, such as first degree murder. Full-on murder is truly unforgivable because the primary victim is dead. No form of restitution is possible. I don’t think it’s appropriate for secondary victims, or the state on their behalf, to forgive such a crime.

There are more dimensions to this than I can cover in a short post, but I believe in this case it is logical that the perpetrator forfeit freedom forever.

One of the things you have to worry about is what a prisoner can arrange from behind bars for others to do on his/her (usually his) behalf. So the safety of the public is an issue.

I’m not big on punishment as it works against some of the other purposes of justice, especially rehabilitation. Also I agree with the notion that the state meting out punishment is problematic. Generally I’d favour attempts to rehabilitate even first degree murderers so that they may come to be personally productive in some way, though ‘productive’ isn’t quite the right word. Erik Erikson used the term ‘generativity’ to cover both ‘productivity’ and ‘creativity’.

You can’t keep the state out of these things. One of its roles is to defend the defenceless against the powerful. Judges are not always wise. I’ve just come across the story of miller Christian Arnold and his wife who refused to pay their rent to their landlord, Count Schmettau, in Prussia in 1779 because the local commissioner, Baron von Gersdorff, had excavated a system of carp ponds that had cut off his mill-stream. King Frederick 11 (the “great”) let it be known that the mill-stream should be restored and when the local justice department found against the miller King Fred had the case removed to Berlin to the equivalent of the High Court. When three judges there found against the miller King Fred had them locked up in a fortress for a year to concentrate their minds and ordered the mill-stream to be restored.

King Fred was an unusual bloke and saw his job as working for ‘the state’ which he saw as providing justice for all, independent of station.

Not an exact recipe for our times, but the principle remains. If the judges don’t give justice then the legislators need to look at the laws, the procedures and anything else that needs to be done to fix the situation. But the state is the ultimate guarantor of our rights, which are socially constituted, and has the responsibility for preventing revenge.

In this case the crime is the most serious kind and essentially unforgivable. An appropriate punishment is for the perpetrator to be locked up for life and for his contact with others restricted. That said, he should be treated humanely, healed psychologically insofar as it is possible his age notwithstanding, and a productive, even satisfying life facilitated within the constraints appropriate to his and our safety.

But with the perpetrator appropriately quarantined and treated humanely the viscious cycle ends there.

BTW the ‘Miller Arnold Affair’ was written up by Thomas Carlyle. I read a shorter version in Christopher Clark’s Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947. Also last week Phillip Adams was talking to Jared Diamond about traditional forms of justice. It was interesting but Diamond is going to publish the case history of revenge-based justice in PNG in a book illustrating aspects of what traditional societies do better than so-called advanced societies. In child-rearing and the treatment of the aged he might be onto something, but revenge killing - no thanks!

To call someone “evil” is not to say they’re an ape or a swine, it’s to say their crime was monstrous, excessive, utterly lacking in wit and nuance.

I believe ‘evil’ is a word used to describe the utterly heinous, that devoid of virtue. It is a problematic word as people have pointed out (and on which Nietzsche elucidated) because it renders whomsoever deemed ‘evil’ with no claim on human empathy. Nothing you do to the ‘evil’ person is wrong.
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That said I’m not sure what wit and nuance have to do with whether someone regarded as evil. Many wicked persons throughout history have displayed wit, nuance and excellent taste. Try for example Sigismondo Malatesta also known as The Wolf. But then some’ve see him as a hero.
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“Evil’ is not a particularly useful concept because it seeks to to distil everything we find unacceptable in ourselves and externalize it as if it’s out there. As if some external force, like Lucifer Morningstar or Baal, is respinsible for our shitty behaviour. Fritzl’s behaviour is reprehensible and worthy of the term ‘evil’. But I’m not sure using it will do anything for our understanding of him, nor to prevent further Fritzls.

To call someone “evil” is not to say they’re an ape or a swine, it’s to say their crime was monstrous, excessive, utterly lacking in wit and nuance.

In Victoria (at least) a prisoner likely to be assaulted by other prisoners is kept away from them.

The result (until recently) was that many convicted paedophiles were kept together at Sale Prison. There, the rumour goes, they “networked” to plan for future collaborations in kiddy-fiddling upon release. That’s partly what I meant about cunning, devious, methodical, etc (in an earlier post)

But I still think they deserved prison terms.

They wouldn’t be the only offenders who used Prison as a Training College.

Not much to ask is it? So sad. I hope she gets to feel that rain on her face soon.

Paul, I’m fine with all that. And the punishment needs to be commensurate. Under my scheme Fritzl would have been due for release when he was 140.

From a layman’s perspective:

How prison terms are calculated so precisely almost to the nearest day/minute truly escapes me. Like somebody’s criminal act can be measured like in an exact science! Like you’d put vegetables on a scale to be weighed or something like that!

The fact that F kept his captives in a windowless room for 24 years, deprived them of sunlight, and from ever seeing the moon with their own eyes, is actually far worse than holding hostages captive in a five star hotel, in the top floor penthouse with a swimming pool onsite for a hell of a lot longer. Yet there’s talk of suing him X amount of euros a day for kidnap, based on the Austrian penal code. We’re talking apples and oranges here. How do they ever come up with these ridiculous formulas?

Now which legal code and what clause actually mention anything about windowless rooms or, deprivation of sunlight, or the moon? Even from birth! How can deprivation such as this ever be quantified?

In an attempt to make justice all black and white, codify everything, and lay it all out very neatly, they’ve lost sight of what’s really important. The legal establishment needs to throw away all their mould ridden legal books, and just focus their attention on the “humane” aspect – so starkly absent from jurisprudence today. What we need are Solomonic judges, who use wisdom and common sense. Not ridiculous formulas.

Now to the whole business of putting people away in prisons, this for the most part is a criminal and pathological act in itself. (That’s what they often are in most parts of the world.) Putting F in the same cage with another pathological case like himself, who will take revenge on him isn’t an indication of how much society chooses to rid itself of the scourge, but rather is a sign of society’s unhealthy love affair with evil itself. That in fact is what normally goes on. That in fact is how most people are reacting to this issue. The pedophile is removed from society; only so that bad or worse will be done to him in return in prison. The vicious cycle is never broken.

What does that say about society? How can society pass judgment when it uses criminal methods to mete them out? I take the R.D. Laing view, and I’m afraid society is as much part of the problem, as the problem itself.

I agree that “evil” has a secular meaning which long ago derived from a widely held religious worldview. I believe the two meanings have by now separated sufficiently that a non-believer may use the word “evil” when speaking to other agnostics, and none of them are likely to think he’s suddenly converted or believes (in President Chavez’s phrase) “the Devil was here yesterday.”

But I could be wrong.

PC: I admire immensely the King James Bible’s language and abhor the new versions of the last 50 or so years in English.

PC: I didn’t assume you never go near any church.

Bush’s cartoonish use of such language, unfortunately, also serves as a roadmap to his mind. He not only uses this language, he also believes in its explanatory power.

Progressives are compelled to believe that metaphysics do not provide the truth. Moreover, they usually believe that knowledge is power and that knowledge is tested by its ability to be used to enact beneficial change. Beneficial change is what defines progressivism.

Thus, a man like Fritzl serves as a test case to understand the tensions of society and the blind-spots of culture which drive a man to behave in such an irrational and atavistic manner.

Lurking behind this notion is the presumption that human beings don’t “naturally” behave like Fritzl. Rather they have to be twisted by exterior, but secular, forces to behave in such a way.

Progressives are then motivated to attempt to change those conditions.

The “draining the swamps” metaphor to combat terrorism is a variant of this progressive worldview. It is here that neocons expose their marxist roots.

Fascinatingly, Bush seems to be wedded to that notion as well, but he doesn’t seem to notice just how contradictory it is to his view of the fallen nature of mankind.

What I said is that I detest the way it’s been used by politicians over the last decade, and no not just conservative politicians, I’m extremely sorry to say, though mostly so. I also did not say that it was something Bush and Howard had introduced; I just noticed it more when they did it.

I know ‘a secular use of evil’ is very common in secular discourse but that is exactly what I’m questioning. The word has a specific meaning: it denotes a supernatural/metaphysical quality of presence or force. I don’t believe the devil made Fritzl do it and therefore I would not use the word ‘evil’ to describe either him or his actions. Pathological, yes; sick, yes; repulsive, yes; criminal, yes; patriarchal, yes yes yes.

Nor was I particularly advocating non-judgementalism, much less equating it with the ‘progressive’. Please don’t put words in my mouth or assume what my motives are. My main concern here, as in most places, is with language and the power of language: power to do things like, oh, say, casually co-opt a religious world view, whether Christian or oh, say, Wahhabi, into political statements and, Goddesses help us, policy writing.

Surely lots of people use terms like “hell” and “devil” and “evil” in secular ways, and indeed religious people use these terms differently as well. Some religious folk might think that hell is literally fire and brimstone and others might think hell is the absence of God.

Yep, we all make judgements all the time.

“I so detest the way that religious terminology has infiltrated public/political discourse. I’m thinking in particular of Bush, of course, but Howard had begun to do it too.”

oh, c’mon PC…..

Detest it you are free to do, of course, but religious (and Biblical) terminology has been in public discourse for centuries. The majority of folk in Australia are not religious believers, but the terminology is deeply embedded in our everyday language. I’d say “it has not been removed yet”, rather than that Teh Bush and Teh Howard are/were introducing it.

In many countries that “old” language is still used, whatever the Church/Synagogue/Mosque attendance figures may be.

I think a case can be made for a “secular” use of “evil” without saying “the Devil made him do it!”

Let’s not go down the hollow path of “non-judgemental equals progressive”. We all make judgements. Life’s replete with them. Personally, I don’t need a God to tell me that Fritzl’s acts were abominable.

Professionals in criminology and the psychology of crime shouldn’t need to resort to metaphor. If they don’t know they should just say so. So I was appalled a few years ago when Paul Wilson, Professor of Criminology and Forensic Psychology at Bond University reserved the term ‘pure evil’ for hard cases that were beyond explanation.

Recently I had a conversation with a friend in Germany who had worked as a Lutheran minister all his working life. What he called ‘original sin’ I tended to explain as a darker strain in human nature, which may have worked quite well in tribal life when the mob over the hill were presumptive enemies. He said we were on the same page with different frames of reference, which was more or less true.

It’s just that I was working in a spirit of inquiry and would have no trouble changing my mind if I was convinced by the evidence that I was wrong. He was dealing with a higher authority for his knowledge with high status gate-keepers, lots of associated baggage and behind it all this character who is all-knowing and all-wise.

I’d rather travel a bit lighter.

These children have every right to hate their father/grandfather. Yet we don’t know whether that is the case.

Should these children be reared from now on as if Fritzl never existed?

Society has a right and a responsibility to draw and to enforce boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

Yet it could be argued that Fritzl’s children/grandchildren are the ultimate victims of Fritzl’s misdeeds. How are they to integrate this story into the story of their lives in such a way as they may have as good a chance as possible to live fulfilling, autonomous lives?

It’s a difficult question, I agree, and I don’t have any answers. Often mothers tell white lies to children when a father is locked up in jail. The public nature of this case makes this option impossible, whether it is ever justified or not.

Also the daughter/mother might be so damaged as to not be able to provide adequate parenting.

I’m not up with the current health state of the elder girl whose illness and hospitalisation led to the discovery of what was going on. Earlier reports suggested that she had multiple organ failure and was unlikely to survive. One would think that the older boy would suffer severe psychological and personality problems which would be hard to overcome. It’s a mess.

There is also a problem of the self concept of a child who is the result of incest even of consensual adults because of taboos and social norms.

a language which may always have a place because some things can’t be explained by psychology, sociology etc

Oh OK, that’s where we differ then, because I think everything can be explained, analysed or at least theorised about in secular terms, in this case within some matrix of history, psychology and sociology (which is pretty much what I’ve been arguing all along in this thread anyway), and ‘evil’ is not a secular term: it presupposes some metaphysical entity or force. It’s just a matter of what your world view is. I wasn’t dissing ‘the old language of good versus evil’, merely saying that it belongs to a certain world view and if one doesn’t hold that world view then ‘evil’ is a problematic term to use.

I’m trying to think of a value-neutral analogy that will clarify what I mean without enraging anybody, but I don’t think it can’t be done. If I’m labouring the point here a bit it’s because I so detest the way that religious terminology has infiltrated public/political discourse. I’m thinking in particular of Bush, of course, but Howard had begun to do it too.

“I’d hate to think that a vengeful public response to Fritzl may serve to exacerbate the suffering of these children”.

Oh yes, that’s true. They’ve been through enough, as has the mother of the children. This case just boggles the mind. It’s hard to find the right language for it, which is why, perhaps, some of us resort to the old language of good versus evil, a language which may always have a place because some things can’t be explained by psychology, sociology etc

This man trying to alleviate his guilt just boggles the mind. If he had a shred of human decency (and it’s hard to see that he does which makes the use of the term “evil” apt) he’d simply admit that what he did was horrific and not to try to mitigate his crimes.

Yes, the children have got to come first. If the general public just compounds their suffering, well, that would be horrendous. Perhaps it’s time to allow the justice system to do what it needs to do.

Katz, this man doesn’t have any right to be near those children ever again.

Darlene, can you point to the passage where I asserted that Fritzl should have access to those children?

I was addressing another issue entirely. That is, how is the narrative of the lives of these children to be constructed or reconstructed in such a way as to give them some opportunity for their lives to achieve some integrity?

Perhaps these children already stand at the head of the mob who want Fritzl to be locked up and tormented for the rest of his life.

Perhaps, on the other hand, this man represents something more to them than merely a gaoler and torturer.

We simply don’t know.

Whatever happens to Fritzl should be explained to the children in terms that make sense to them. And given the extraordinary nature of their lives so far (Stockholm Syndrome, anyone?) this task may be quite difficult.

I’d hate to think that a vengeful public response to Fritzl may serve to exacerbate the suffering of these children.

Many of us share your anger. I read that his notes about his actions, which he apparently intended as self-exoneration, may be used by his lawyer in court to prove his insanity.

I agree with you, Darlene: he should not be allowed near the children, nor his daughter. The importance of blood ties must occasionally be put aside, when other more urgent considerations (child safety, rehabilitation, medical care, etc.). A guy who commits incest rape cannot claim “the rights of a father” which are held dear by law-abiding fathers, who respect other human beings.

Should a convicted jailed murderer be permitted to send taunting letters from prison to the families of his victims? Should a convicted paedophile be allowed access visits to his victims? Only in these debased days could such questions be considered for more than a second.

If you “do the crime”, it may be more than just “doing the time” you have to face. No respite for these bastards.

cheerio

However, I am not sure it’s possible to explain the dreadful behaviours of some people (perhaps it’s a modern conceit to think we can) beyond acknowledging that some people are evil.

Katz, this man doesn’t have any right to be near those children ever again.

When he started using language like “addicted” it made my blood boil. What a world we live in when a person can make excuses for such behaviour.