In response to a recent Edmonton Sun editorial advancing the view that capital punishment should be reinstated in Canada (click).
I used to be in favor of the death penalty. An eye for an eye as the Bible states, wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but to instil the value of life in a would-be murderer I was convinced that a ‘life for a life’ would make the world a better place. It would be the ultimate deterrent. If you somehow came to the conclusion that ending someone’s life was so necessary, then you should rightly forfeit your own. Only then would life’s importance be fully realized. An eye for an eye was somehow sloppy, but a cold-blooded murder in exchange for your own existence on this planet was something I could get behind. Sure, it would be messy at the start, but after we tweaked the system a bit …well, we’d see some progress.
The Sun columnist isn’t advocating anything as drastic as myself though. S/he seems content with the death penalty being decreed for only those murderers who have nothing more to give society other than a pricey bill for their jail time. Jail time that, in case you need reminding, we tax payers must reluctantly cover. These murderers after all, serve no other purpose, and us keeping them alive to enjoy all those jail house freedoms and perks that many goodhearted poor and homeless might only dream about, amounts to a slap in the face. It’s as if they got away with murder …and are laughing at us from the confines of their cozy cells. The lives of hardened killers like Paul Bernardo, Robert Pickton and Russell Williams (whom the columnist mentions) are essentially a write-off, and in the majority opinion of the law-abiding, moral members of our society, their absence would not only be of good fortune, but a blight finally removed from the upstanding citizenry this country is known and respected for.
Or something to that effect.
The problem is that society is more than appearances, and there’s a core that kinda binds us together. Consider a few questions for example …how is it that Russell Williams, through so many years of service, arrived to the prominence he did as a Colonel in the Canadian Military without showing any signs of his criminal tendencies? How was it that Robert Pickton was able to murder and depose of as many people as he did (throughout all those years as well) without any suspicions being raised between those who came in contact with him? How was Paul Bernardo able to persuade his wife to help him torture the girls he killed… and what enabled him to lure them and the many he raped in the first place? You might argue that these men were killers who simply outwitted us, but there’s far more to it than that. There’s questions about military secrecy for example, or how its chain of command possibly lacks certain checks and balances. There’s questions about neighbors, friends and acquaintances turning a blind eye or not recognizing important aspects in a persons’ character, or even remaining silent while noticing something is amiss. There’s questions about the subjugation of women and the assumed role of power and influence men have over them. And let’s not forget the question of our role in these killer’s actions as well …because as removed as these men may seem from most of us, they still share much of our way of life. They do after all, come from that same core.
But deeper questions like these, possibly answered in some obscure and remote paper years after our collective interest has waned, aren’t really on our minds for long …and who among us isn’t silently thinking to themselves “If I was around, these guys would never have gotten away with what they did …not on my watch!” But the truth is it does, and all the time. And the truth is that these types of questions get glanced over in our haste to assign blame and bring about a quick resolution so we can get on with our own lives. Killing is simple ….killers, not so much. They were, after all, ‘normal’ – just like us at one time, and their path to the dark side wasn’t sudden or premeditated but instead a gradual and apparently undetectable decent. When we don’t take the time and consider the details behind their actions and how it is that they go astray, we only allow similar situations to recur further down the road. We fail to learn from our past and become destined to repeat our mistakes. Destined to allow more killing. Seldom are things black and white during that transition to a cold-blooded killer, and saying ‘he’s evil’ after the fact just isn’t good enough …we have to attempt to understand why. Locking them up and throwing away the key is convenient, but doesn’t help as persons with similar lifestyles and habits will eventually replace them and force us to issue more locks and keys.
No, it’s never as simple as we think. As far as we’ve come in decoding the mind of the serial killer, we do ourselves a disservice by ridding ourselves of their physical presence and not attempting to further understand the complexities and reasoning behind why they gradually stray from the herd. The death penalty is in effect a convenient way of hiding the problem, but not dealing with it. It’s like a fresh, clean band-aid over a wound that requires extensive surgery. A short sighted fix to something far more complex. And it’s removing a burden, in my opinion, that doesn’t deserve to be removed. In another recent Sun column (sorry for the Sun bashing this time around) a similar take on logic is made when discussing the issue of drug dealing among teenagers. The article is titled Show No Mercy To Dealers Of Death: Pushers of toxic junk drugs to young people should be left to rot in some dark hole. The interesting comments are below…
“While we can’t fathom the mental processes of those who invite their own premature death, we’ve got a good grasp on what motivates the scum peddling this garbage. Pure greed. —[The police] took the unprecedented step of putting out the pictures of two 19 year-olds charged in the seizure of half a kilo of a drug being sold as ecstasy…” pg. 15, Sunday Feb. 12, 2012.
Here the columnist implies that while we can understand the reasoning behind selling drugs, we can’t fathom the reasoning behind those wanting to use them. Well …no, this is incorrect. You can understand why young people gravitate to drug use, but it’s complicated and usually revolves around self-esteem, peer pressure, family situations, school environments, boredom, alienation, calls for help etc., etc. – and to simply throw your hands up in the air and call their behavior unfathomable while at the same time apparently solving the cognitive workings of a similarly aged 19 year old drug dealer is both ludicrous and irresponsible. You’ve solved the problem only by reducing the complexities of the situation ….but in reality you haven’t solved anything, and when this drug disappears and these dealers are eventually placed in the system, those same ‘unfathomable’ kids will have found a new way to find their release and there will be new ‘pushers’ to give them what they want. You buy yourself some time perhaps, but nothing is truly solved.
Just as nothing is solved by prematurely erasing killers like Paul Bernardo, Russell Williams and Robert Pinkton from the face of the Canadian criminal system. There will be others to replace them unless you address the underlying complexities that led to their existence. Sure you’ll save yourself some money with capital punishment, but I’d hope those who make up this country care more about attempting to comprehend the issues of murder over saving a little bit of money by sweeping certain less-desirables under the carpet. There’s a purpose for these unfathomable killers being left alive …reminding you that there will be others to replace them when they’re gone. Reminding you that something is broken. Reminding you that things still need to be fixed. Reminding you that, in some small way, you had a hand in making them who they are. Most importantly perhaps, reminding you that you’re not one of them. You’re not a killer.
It takes far less effort kill off a few bad apples than to have to deal with why they got that way in the first place, and this deceptive appeal is probably similar to what lured those like Pickton, Williams and Bernardo down the dark roads they traveled. I’m not saying we’re like them …but then at some point in out lives we were like them, and it’s imperative that we continuously pursue the reasons that make/made them so different from the rest of us. And erasing their lives from the world doesn’t erase what they’ve done, because as convenient as it may seem and as good as it may look from an appearance point of view …we’re more than appearances. We’re something deeper than that. And as a proud and righteous society, we genuinely care about solving problems that occasionally, we ourselves create.
“It’s hard to be an artist in any culture, especially a North American, capitalist culture. There’s a certain amount of guilt that goes along with it like ….”What? That’s not a legitimate job!?” They actually think the arts aren’t legitimate down here. [---] It’s just hard to be an artist. There’s no support systems. And so you struggle and struggle to put yourself out there and yet there’s always this residual guilt ….like “Maybe I should have gotten a real job? Maybe they’re right? Maybe I’m just an egomaniac and this is just a fools folly?” You’re never given the right support, and if you are given the right support you’re in an ivory tower; some kind of academic bubble. You’re apart from the culture …you loose the sense of the street and the city and the country… The artist that’s in a bubble, completely supported and everything, that’s not interesting. Everybody’s got their own path [---] and there’s a million ways of doing it. It’s a struggle to find your own voice, and there’s no blueprint for it. Universities think they have the blueprint but they don’t. Life experience is the only blueprint for the artist.”
