Q&A: Legal Punishment — The Aspect of Revenge in Ongoing Crime
Legal Punishment — The Aspect of Revenge in Ongoing Crime
Question
Hello.
I seem to recall that the Rabbi wrote somewhere that he sees the justification for legal punishment such as imprisonment only in terms of deterrence of future offenders, and preventing further crimes by the offender himself through incarceration; and if those aspects are absent, it is not the role of the legal system to punish out of revenge or retribution. For example, if it is known with certainty that a murderer will not be able to murder again in the future (he is 100% disabled), and his imprisonment will not become known to the public (he and I live alone on a deserted island), then it would not be morally proper to imprison the murderer, because it is not our role to repay a person according to his deed.
I thought of a situation in which the offender is constantly continuing his harmful act, and taking action against him definitely will not help either deterrence or prevention of his crimes. Is the victim morally permitted to “take revenge” on the offender? For some reason it feels to me that there is something a bit different here, and I can’t quite put my finger on the point.
For example: if people make noise for their neighbors 24/7, and the neighbors can make their lives miserable in return by creating counter-noise 24/7, but it is known with certainty that this action will not bring about an end to the noise מצד the first group (nor deter future unruly neighbors), then in this case is it morally permissible to create the counter-noise? After all, this is really an act of retaliation, not deterrence or self-protection.
Thank you.
Answer
There is such an intuition. It seems to me that this is a right of the injured party, and therefore if they made noise for you, you can do it back to them. But society’s role is not to take revenge, but to maintain order.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t know how to answer questions like that. Intuitively, it seems that in principle a person has a right to revenge. How much and to what extent—you decide for yourself.
I remember that in the past you wrote that revenge involves a moral prohibition:
But I think that when discussing revenge from a moral perspective, one also has to take into account the aspect of doing justice.
In addition, why should it be morally forbidden to refrain from lending my axe to someone who did not lend me his axe? That seems like a pretty just thing.
I would formulate it this way: it is a moral virtue not to take revenge (instead of the less successful phrasing: a moral prohibition against taking revenge), but there is still such a right. The prohibition regarding the axe is a moral virtue that became a requirement in Jewish law.
So according to this, even if the offense against me is not ongoing, am I still morally allowed to take revenge? (They deliberately made noise for me as a one-time thing on Sunday, so on Monday I’ll make noise for them as a one-time thing.)