Q&A: Taking Remorse for Crime into Account in Modern Law
Taking Remorse for Crime into Account in Modern Law
Question
Good week, Rabbi,
Recently a case was published about a man who set up a stripping-services company that also provided prostitution services, sometimes involving women who were barely of legal age (17). The indictment attributes to him offenses including multiple counts of causing a person to engage in prostitution, causing a person to engage in prostitution under aggravated circumstances (while exploiting economic distress), pimping and supplying drugs, multiple offenses of exploiting minors for prostitution, obstruction of legal proceedings under the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, and various other offenses. That man became religiously observant during the process of gathering testimony against him (before he even knew that the police were aware of what he had done), and he stopped all those forbidden activities. In tractate Makkot there is a comment by Rashi claiming that even someone who confesses to murder is exempt from punishment, because the confession is an indication of repentance and remorse, and such a person should not be punished. My question is whether in modern legal systems there is also logic in relating to offenders who clearly stopped their bad deeds out of genuine remorse (and not in order to evade punishment) as “different” people from the ones who committed the offenses, and therefore exempting them from punishment. Or perhaps, since the consideration of deterring others still exists, he should nevertheless be punished.
Best regards,
Answer
I think that if it is clear that a person has genuinely repented, and this is clear to everyone, there is no reason to punish him. The question is when that can be certain from our perspective. Perhaps even without full certainty, there is logic in waiving the punishment, because that encourages people to repent. That is a positive outcome, which punishment in itself would not bring about. Of course, one must be careful about deception aimed at reducing the sentence.
Specifically here, I am not sure that repentance in the religious sense is repentance in the criminal sense. The person sees his actions as a religious problem, but I am not sure he also sees them as a civic-legal problem. Therefore one should be careful not to interpret a situation like the one you described as a situation of repentance. What is required here is civic repentance (submission to the law), and not only religious repentance. The punishment is given for that, not for the moral-religious issue.