Justice Part 1

I saw an article in the Pitt News about anti-death penalty activists. I used to wholeheartedly support the death penalty. It is called for in Genesis 9 and is in fact part of the agreement God makes with Noah not to flood the entire earth again. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood shall be shed. Indeed, it seems theoretically morally justified, especially in light of this well-known thought experiment. If a murderer destroys the life of a victim and there is a life-transfer machine, we can agree it would be fair for the life of the murderer to be transferred to the victim so he could live again. I will later touch on why exactly this is fair.
When talking about justice for a crime, we first have to agree on the nature of what crime is. I probably defined it in an earlier blog entry, but again a real crime has a victim who suffers harm to his body or property. True justice for a crime is in the restitution of what rightfully belonged to the victim. That is why the previous thought experiment is morally justified. Practically, though, that is not how the death penalty works. Even if it were applied perfectly, there could be no restitution to the victim and therefore no true justice. Even worse is the fact that in real life, there are wrongful convictions and racism and such that result in the death of innocents. When an innocent man dies for a crime he did not commit, not only has justice not been attained, but now another injustice has been committed.
This same consequence of wrongful conviction could be applied to other crimes, with of course not nearly as devastating a loss. With property crimes, there can always be restitution to replace things that have a monetary value. However, in crimes of violence, how can true justice be attained? Pure monetary restitution as a punishment for this crime is not sufficient, as I will explain in another entry, because irreparable damage may occur. I will also explain why our current "justice" system does not attain justice and explore some ideas about what can be done.