Forgive But Don't Forget

How much is enough when you punish people for their wrong doings? How much should they suffer for their mistakes? Should they experience just as much loss and pain as they brought upon others? Or maybe even more that they can learn their lesson? Or should they be given a second chance to get educated and rehabilitated? Can they possibly be brought back to our society as fully functional members? Or maybe they need to be kept isolated from the rest of us because they don’t belong here anymore.

If you have clear answers for all of these questions, you might not be interested in this post. But if you even had a slight moment of hesitation answering any of these questions above, keep reading.

Last week I read an article in The Guardian about an Iranian mother taking a noose off of her son’s killer. Apparently in Iran it’s very common when family of victims determines a type of death for the killer of their loved ones. It all happens through the legal system of criminal justice. After court determines that a person is at fault, family of a victim can choose and pick the way this person will be going to die. The honor of killing the murderer (sounds paradoxical) goes so far that the family can actually put a noose over murderer’s head and push the chair under his feet. To some it may seem as a fair exchange. If you took somebody’s life, expect to loose your life as well. But how far can we go away with that until we run out of people? In The Guardian’s article this procedure went as far as having a noose over killer’s head, but all over sudden the mother of a dead son changed her mind. She changed her mind and didn’t want to bring the same sorrow and grieve to the family of the killer. She said she doesn’t wish her pain to anybody. She said that her vengeance went away after she spared his life and she felt in peace after all these years of suffering. The killer’s life was saved, but he still going to remain imprisoned in a system where he is a lost case. He will be seen as a killer for the rest of his life and won’t ever have a chance to regain any rights or possibilities not even close to other members of society. Or should he?

After reading this article I remembered another article that I read about a year ago in The Guardian as well about very different judicial system in Norway.  In this article, James Erwin talks about his trip to one of the most extra ordinary of prisons that is located in Norway. Bastoy prison is placed on an isolated island, which lies a couple of miles off the coast in the Oslo fjord, just 46 miles southeast of Norway's capital. This prison has people of different ages and with different types of sentences. Prisoners' convictions may vary from stealing to drug smuggling, from single murders to man slaughtering and massacres. One of the first interesting notions that I discovered in this article is the fact that Norway doesn't use life sentences or death penalties at all. Thus, any prisoner after 5 years of being in a regular prison and the ones that show some attempts of admitting and realizing consequences of their crimes, as well as trying to put some effort to become better people, can be potentially transferred to Bastoy.

As mentioned earlier, Bastoy is a very unusual prison, where prisoners have a chance to reconcile and not forget what the free life is about. All the prisoners live in small houses that can accommodate up to 6 people. Everybody in Bostoy is occupied by paid jobs and extracurricular activities. These men have a chance for some education if they wish to pursue such and access to religious establishments. There are 70 members of staff on the 2.6 sq km island during the day, 35 of which are uniformed guards. The main job of these guards is very different from what we are used to. They don’t monitor prisoners; they don’t physically abuse or humiliate them. They simply keep the count of them. It is so contradicting with our mainstream understanding of prison guards, such as punishing, restricting, monitoring and dehumanizing prisoners.

You begin to understand the logic of this prison step by step from the words of different prisoners of Bastoy, when they describe their own experience there, where Bastoy is “an arena of developing responsibility,” where “ they [are] give[n] trust and responsibility” and where the prisoners “treat[ed] like grownups.” Later in the article James Erwin introducers the reader to one of the female guards called Rutchie. After her several words you finally realize what Norwegian government is trying to do with these people. She says, "There is so much to learn about the people who come to prison. We need to try to understand how they became criminals, and then help them to change. I'm still learning." Norway realizes that you don't change people by power. Instead, you give prisoners respect; this way you teach them to respect others, while they are being watched all the time. It is important that when they are released they are less likely to commit more crimes. “That is justice for society,” says a clinical psychologist Nilsen.

Both of these systems of dealing with criminals are so critically different. Bastoy seems like a great opportunity to rehabilitate people, to try and give them a second chance. Maybe even regain our members of society as better people. On the other hand, it is hard to judge families of Iran that are wishing for justice after their loved ones death. Even after writing this, I am still not sure if we can forgive that much. And if we forgive, how much should we forget?