Introduction
The following is an essay on criminal justice based on the case of Lieutenant Lotem that has presented moral as well as ethical dilemma on the issue of administrative justice. Lieutenant Lotem was a soldier in the Israel army as a prison guard of Palestinians who was arrested in Palestinian militias after Palestinian suicide bombers attacked Israel killing more than three hundred people. Lieutenant Lotem found it hard to imprison the innocent Palestinians detained without trials by the Israel authorities.
Due to his refusal and disobedience to authorities, he was sentenced for twenty-nine days in prison (Greenberg 6). This case heightened discourse on the role of criminal and administrative justice. The case poses a dilemma on what to follow: Is it the conscience or the set rules and procedures even if they are morally wrong. This essay explores the case from two perspectives, which include Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham.
Discussion
Immanuel Kant’s Perspective
As one of the founders and arguably the most prominent philosophical defender of retributive justice, Immanuel Kant will have an opinion on the case of Lieutenant Lotem. Retributive justice considers the past, which means that the system advocates for punishments of offenses committed in the past.
The criminal should be proved guilty before the administration of the punishment. In the case of lieutenant Lotem, the detainees were political prisoners as well as suspects who were supposed to be brought to court for trial. However, the suspects were detained for long period without trial, which is deemed inappropriate as it punishes suspects who are not proven guilty (Guyer 56).
Retributive justice requires evidence such as who committed the crime and the harm or damage that the crime caused. The punishment must be proportionate to the amount or effect of the crime committed. In this case, the crime committed is murder, those who committed the crime died, and therefore those detained did not commit the crime. Punishing the detainees was wrong and When viewed from the perspective of Kant the detentions violated human rights and were illegal (Herman 32).
Retributive justice calls for the punishment and severe punishment on the person who has committed a crime irrespective of who they are in society. It calls for punishment without looking at or considering the mitigating factors that led to the crime. This means that this perspective ignores the fact that this is a time of war and there were enemies whose aim was to inflict harm on the State of Israel.
It also ignores the fact that if the suspects were released they were likely to cause more harm to the state than when they were detained. They were victims of the bombings who deserved justice. The pain was inflicted on the Palestinians for the agony they had caused (Guyer 48).
Jeremy Bentham Perspective
Bentham is one of the proponents of deterrence forms of punishment. This is where the punishment is administered not because a crime is committed but as prevention, the mechanism to prevent the occurrence of such criminal activities.
The perspective of deterrence does not look into the immediate punishment or pain to the offender but the consequence of the pain to future occurrences. When the case of Lieutenant Lotem is viewed from this perspective, the actions of the Israel government may be morally right, as the intention of the arrests is to deter further occurrences of similar suicide bombings.
The aim of the arrests is to get information from the detainees on what they know about the bombing and the terrorists. The eventual arrest and imprisonment of Lotem is also a deterrent mechanism to prevent other military officers from engaging in acts of disobedience when summoned to duty by their seniors. Failure to punish Lotem may have led other soldiers to such acts of rebellion (Bentham 44).
The deterrence punishment mechanism also looks into the mitigating factors that led to the crime. Bentham indicates that it is not necessary to punish the criminal without dealing with the cause or the mitigating factor of the crime. Is the criminal a thug? In case of murder, was it intentional?
Alternatively, it can be manslaughter, or the crime of passion. Looking into the mitigating factors makes it easy to have moral decision as well as an effective punishment. In the case of Lotem, one has to look into the mitigating factors, which led to the arrests of the Palestinian youth. The first factor is that both nations the Israel and the Palestinian were in a state of war and Palestinians were deemed enemies of Israel.
It was therefore appropriate to arrest enemy groups and punish them accordingly. The other factor is that taking the criminals to the country would lead to disclosure of vital intelligence information putting the country at a risk of further terrorist attacks (Herman 46).
The deterrent perspective also views the punishment as a means to deter others by inflicting fear on those who may be planning to engage in a similar criminal act. In the case of Lotem, the purpose of the arrests on Palestinian was to inflict fear on the suicide bombers against committing such a crime again. However, on the other side, the arrests of innocent individuals may lead to increased resentment of the Israel nation and therefore make the punishments ineffective (Souryal 73).
This view however ignores the basic human rights that they are entitled to freedom unless otherwise in a situation where they are suspected of a crime. The freedom should be denied for the shortest time possible unless they are proved guilty of the crime. This perspective ignores the basic human rights and advocates for restrictions and disrespect of human rights as a way of deterrence.
Punishing and detaining individuals who were not guilty involved the Israel government in human right violation. In addition, there is further complication as per whether an action is a crime depending on the person who does it. According to Lotem’s arguments, when the citizens of Israel were in Russia they were arbitrary arrested and jailed for no reason and they highly protested. Why is it that it is right when they are the ones who are arbitrary arresting and jailing other innocent individuals?
Lotem Case, Morality, and Ethics
This case of Lotem presents a dilemma on what is ethical or moral. Both Bentham and Kant would have opposing view on whether Lotem’s actions were ethical or moral. The seniors would be disobeyed because what they were doing was not ethical according to him. Kant would support Lotem actions because the punishments according to Kant’s retributive justice were inappropriate, as they did not punish the actual person who was involved in the crime.
Bentham on the other hand would term the lieutenant actions as wrong or unethical because the mitigating factors behind his seniors’ orders demand for a deterrence course of action to prevent such cases of crime where suicide bombers would attack the innocent civilians. For Bentham it would be appropriate to punish Palestinians innocent civilians to inflict similar pain inflicted on the innocent Israel civilians (Sheleff 32).
Conclusion
The two opposing views present a dilemma on the mechanism of justice to use when applying ethics and morality in cases of criminal justice. The arguments offered by both parties are valid and the challenge for every criminal justice practitioner is to balance between the two opposing sides. The solution would be to apply deterrent measures on the actual criminals or the persons who have been proved guilty or confessed involvement in crime.
It is morally and ethically wrong to punish innocent individuals in the name of deterrence. It is inappropriate to use deterrence measures to punish innocent people. Deterrence is applied to people who have been proved guilty of the crime. However, it is necessary to look into the mitigating factors when applying justice to ensure that the measures taken in deterrence are proportionate to the crime committed.
The deterrence measures are appropriate for civil and economic crime such as seizure of property in case of economic crime or taking consideration of the social economic status of the individual when appropriating fines on the individual who is guilty. In criminal cases, application of retributive justice to the actual individuals who committed the crime is the best way of justice. However, deterrence need to apply when using the retributive justice by examining and considering the mitigating factors that led to the criminal act.
Works Cited
Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. Print.
Greenberg, Joel. Lonely Israeli Fights Israel’s Treatment of Arabs. 1997. Web.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Justice. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997. Print.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1993. Print.
Sheleff, Lindsay. The Relevance of Classical Criminology Today. The Mad, the Bad and the Different: Essays in Honor of Simon Dinitz. Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1981. Print.
Souryal, Sam. Ethics in Criminal Justice; In Search of the Truth: The Theory and Practice of Criminal Justice Ethics. Florida: Anderson Publishers, 1992. Print.