[solutron]

Evil doesn't have to have remorselessness or have awareness of it's evil to be evil. Ongwen is clearly traumatized. But, he is also the trauma. The spread of death and despair by his hand has to be adjudicated. Life in prison is the most morally just outcome for him, regardless of whatever reformations or personal developments he might make. Some things can't be undone and the consequences have to be lived with, forever. Like, he could become an international voice for reforming child soldiers, educating policy makers, and literally every good thing he could do with his experience. Yet, he should still be in prison. Forever.

[onethought]

Is prison to punish? Rehabilitate? Or both?

I feel like we could be way more creative in how we treat prisoners in how they “repay their debt”. Someone like Ongwen could probably be very valuable in finding and converting other people away from situations similar to his. Or from helping security forces secure against the kind of tactics they used...

I don’t know random thoughts, but we can punish someone and have value generated at the same time.

[mannerheim]

There are traditionally 4-6 purposes of justice. The four most common are deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation, and the other two less common are restoration and denunciation. These purposes are not mutually exclusive, not always possible to achieve (hard to restore dead people to life), and IMO there are valid reasons for all of them, even retribution (although of course it is possible to go to far).

Deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restoration are pretty self-explanatory, and the reasons for those are clear. Denunciation means crimes are punished in order to send a message that such behaviour is condemned. But is there a good reason for retribution?

The meaning of retribution is that those who have hurt others suffer real consequences. This isn't necessarily something sadistic, as there are a number of reasons why this can be a valid purpose. You want people to have faith in the justice system, to not believe that people are getting off with slaps on the wrist, that mass murderers aren't being pampered, and so on, so that they don't turn to vigilante justice. It could be the case that, e.g., Brock Turner was unlikely to ever sexually assault a woman ever again after three months' jail time. But the perception that he was let off lightly could undermine faith in the justice system.

In a case like this, it may be that his victims need to see that he is punished so that they can have faith in their justice system. Whether or not that is the right call here, I don't know enough to make a judgement. But I don't think one can entirely ignore retribution as a purpose.

[DaedPsyker]

Its purpose is not just those, another is protecting society. I actually think that is its primary function, rehabilitation can be done in better ways. I think jail should only be considered where a threat to the public is posed. This case is an open and shut example of a dangerous threat.

[jschwartzi]

Even if that were possible, Ongwen may be too damaged to be very effective at such a "punishment." And it would be very cruel to expose him to the same environment which traumatized him enough to make him into a brutal commander.

[vkou]

I have doubts that a Dutch prison is quite the same environment as a child being kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to fight in the LRA.

[jschwartzi]

I must have misread OP, because it sounded like they were suggesting Ongwen be sent back to try to rehabilitate other fighters.

[mulmen]

If it is possible to do so much evil that no amount of good can overcome it then it is not also possible to do so much good that no amount of evil deserves consequence?

[anonAndOn]

If we can agree that he is the destroyer of many lives, how would he ever overcome that debt? I suppose organ donation is one way...

[t-writescode]

People tend to define retribution and the scales in a way that they themselves can be forgiven and return to good standing, but people they don’t like cannot.

[swinnipeg]

It is curious how the trauma from his kidnapping is considered different than if he had been a 2nd generation war criminal.

Presumably the child of a war criminal would also have suffered trauma in youth, but there would no consideration of mercy, or sympathetic longform articles for the 30something 2nd generation war criminal. They would be simply be treated as evil.

[bigfudge]

Totally agree. It's a kind of narrative/availability fallacy.

[anm89]

>The spread of death and despair by his hand has to be adjudicated. Life in prison is the most morally just outcome for him

Well I'm glad that solutron from Hackernews has figured out the one true morality for everybody. Thanks solutron from hacker news!