Compensation Culture
This allegedly-American syndrome is much in the public arena at the moment (I say "allegedly" because I rather think that the human desire for compensation for real or imagined wrongs goes back to Gilgamesh), especially in the often very different treatment meted out to victims of crime and victims of "miscarriages of justice".
I'd like to state unequivocally that I believe that victims of judicial balls-ups who spend time in prison for crimes of which they are later found innocent do indeed deserve a great deal of "compensation" for their suffering. Whoever you take for an example, be it Angela Cannings, the Birmingham Six or the Guantanamo Three, what you have in essence is private individuals (often without the means to procure adequate representation - or in the case of Guantanamo any representation at all) who have been pitted against the Juggernaut might of the State Judicial apparatus and who have been chewed up and swallowed in the process. There was a great wave of public sympathy when Cannings was realeased, as indeed there should be; not only did this poor woman lose her children, but was then (unthinkably to her or her family, no doubt) was tried and convicted for their murder. I wonder how many of the sympathetic public really understood how prison life must have been for Cannings.
I have had experience of prison, unlike many people who've nonetheless written at length about this. In the women's prison (not in England) where I had the pleasure of passing two and a half months, there was a Fletch-like attitude that prison was an occupational hazard for the most part. The women who were there for providing false alibis or not testifying against friends or lovers were admired as much as anything, the thieves were fatalistic, the prostitutes and drug-users were accepted. The only loner in our small wing was a woman who (and I never was sure of the truth, so I won't go into too much depth) was accused of having turned a blind eye to the molestation of her daughter. None of us knew the truth, the woman hadn't yet been tried so no salacious details had been turned over to the press, yet this woman was so shunned that none of us theives, whores, murderesses etc., would so much as sit next to her at Mass. So I can reflect and sympathise more than most Angela Cannings' experience of prison life; I find it hard to imagine that that part of her ordeal will ever really fade.
The victim of crime, on the other hand (and I've been there a few times as well), have run up against the anti-social/criminal behaviour of an individual or individuals. We all accept (well, apart from fundamentalists of course, who are inclined to drag Satan into the equation) that humans are - well, human - and that the "human condition" includes cads, rotters, politicians and other stupid and immoral people. It's far easier to live with the idea that one's the victim of what is essentially a coincidence (if I hadn't decided to go to Clignancourt and get ratassed, for instance, I wouldn't have had my passport and money stolen by a drunk guy with a knife) than to come to terms with one's innocence being crushed in the gears of the Machine. Plus a wrongly-convicted individual has none of the resources, emotional and financial, available to the victims of ordinary crime.
Certainly this isn't true of all "victims" of crime, but the majority will have friends and family and even complete strangers, the media for example, prepared to offer support and sympathy. In the case of the media this can amount to large cheques for "exclusive" rights, which can in turn pay for a lot of therapy. All of us are "on their side", and rightly so. A wrongly-condemned "criminal", however, has no such support. Those few people who still believe in their innocence, if there is anyone at all, face long and costly appeals to present new evidence or obtain a retrial. I sometimes wonder at the devotion and tenacity of the campaigners for such unpopular causes as, for instance, Ms Canning must have appeared after Sir Roy Meadows gave his damning statistical testimony. A woman convicted of killing three of her babies is not someone most of us would feel naturally inclined to sympathise with; a mother who has lost three babies and then been handed the guilt and wrongfully imprisoned for their murder is a woman who has suffered far more than most of us could, or should (in a properly ordered world), be able to imagine.
So yes, I think we owe Ms Canning a bit more than an apology. Whether society "owes" compensation to victims of individual crimes is a slightly different question, I think. If we admit that the criminal actions of individuals are ultimately the result of the failings of our society as a whole, then yes, we do. We therefore also owe it to all citizens to tackle those problems of our society which give rise to social disenfranchisement and, ultimately, crime. But criminal law isn't based on that; we emphasise the choice of an individual to go commit a crime. We do accept extenuating circumstances to a certain extent, which is right I believe, but we should also bear in mind that a lot of us (if not most of us) have had less-than-perfect lives and we don't all go around stealing iPods at knifepoint or raping pensioners. None of us, being human, can possibly expect other humans to be perfect, but we can at least expect our state apparatus to make amends when it goes so disastrously wrong.
I'd like to state unequivocally that I believe that victims of judicial balls-ups who spend time in prison for crimes of which they are later found innocent do indeed deserve a great deal of "compensation" for their suffering. Whoever you take for an example, be it Angela Cannings, the Birmingham Six or the Guantanamo Three, what you have in essence is private individuals (often without the means to procure adequate representation - or in the case of Guantanamo any representation at all) who have been pitted against the Juggernaut might of the State Judicial apparatus and who have been chewed up and swallowed in the process. There was a great wave of public sympathy when Cannings was realeased, as indeed there should be; not only did this poor woman lose her children, but was then (unthinkably to her or her family, no doubt) was tried and convicted for their murder. I wonder how many of the sympathetic public really understood how prison life must have been for Cannings.
I have had experience of prison, unlike many people who've nonetheless written at length about this. In the women's prison (not in England) where I had the pleasure of passing two and a half months, there was a Fletch-like attitude that prison was an occupational hazard for the most part. The women who were there for providing false alibis or not testifying against friends or lovers were admired as much as anything, the thieves were fatalistic, the prostitutes and drug-users were accepted. The only loner in our small wing was a woman who (and I never was sure of the truth, so I won't go into too much depth) was accused of having turned a blind eye to the molestation of her daughter. None of us knew the truth, the woman hadn't yet been tried so no salacious details had been turned over to the press, yet this woman was so shunned that none of us theives, whores, murderesses etc., would so much as sit next to her at Mass. So I can reflect and sympathise more than most Angela Cannings' experience of prison life; I find it hard to imagine that that part of her ordeal will ever really fade.
The victim of crime, on the other hand (and I've been there a few times as well), have run up against the anti-social/criminal behaviour of an individual or individuals. We all accept (well, apart from fundamentalists of course, who are inclined to drag Satan into the equation) that humans are - well, human - and that the "human condition" includes cads, rotters, politicians and other stupid and immoral people. It's far easier to live with the idea that one's the victim of what is essentially a coincidence (if I hadn't decided to go to Clignancourt and get ratassed, for instance, I wouldn't have had my passport and money stolen by a drunk guy with a knife) than to come to terms with one's innocence being crushed in the gears of the Machine. Plus a wrongly-convicted individual has none of the resources, emotional and financial, available to the victims of ordinary crime.
Certainly this isn't true of all "victims" of crime, but the majority will have friends and family and even complete strangers, the media for example, prepared to offer support and sympathy. In the case of the media this can amount to large cheques for "exclusive" rights, which can in turn pay for a lot of therapy. All of us are "on their side", and rightly so. A wrongly-condemned "criminal", however, has no such support. Those few people who still believe in their innocence, if there is anyone at all, face long and costly appeals to present new evidence or obtain a retrial. I sometimes wonder at the devotion and tenacity of the campaigners for such unpopular causes as, for instance, Ms Canning must have appeared after Sir Roy Meadows gave his damning statistical testimony. A woman convicted of killing three of her babies is not someone most of us would feel naturally inclined to sympathise with; a mother who has lost three babies and then been handed the guilt and wrongfully imprisoned for their murder is a woman who has suffered far more than most of us could, or should (in a properly ordered world), be able to imagine.
So yes, I think we owe Ms Canning a bit more than an apology. Whether society "owes" compensation to victims of individual crimes is a slightly different question, I think. If we admit that the criminal actions of individuals are ultimately the result of the failings of our society as a whole, then yes, we do. We therefore also owe it to all citizens to tackle those problems of our society which give rise to social disenfranchisement and, ultimately, crime. But criminal law isn't based on that; we emphasise the choice of an individual to go commit a crime. We do accept extenuating circumstances to a certain extent, which is right I believe, but we should also bear in mind that a lot of us (if not most of us) have had less-than-perfect lives and we don't all go around stealing iPods at knifepoint or raping pensioners. None of us, being human, can possibly expect other humans to be perfect, but we can at least expect our state apparatus to make amends when it goes so disastrously wrong.
posted by holojojo at 1:42 AM
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