Misery for Misery’s Sake?

The Scottish Justice Secretary has decided to release the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, and many people are predictably unhappy about it. Before I explain why releasing him was the right decision, let me get a few things straight. First, the decision to release him has nothing to do with the hero’s welcome he received on arriving in Libya. Treating him as a hero sets a poor example, it is terribly insensitive to the families of the victims, and I don’t see what honourable purpose it could possibly serve. Second, terrorism is abhorrent, and terrorists ought to be duly pursued and prosecuted. It was right and just that the bomber, al-Meghrahi, was in jail, if jail is the legitimate thing to do with criminals. Caveats aside, why was it a good idea to release him? I can think of four purposes for incarcerating criminals of any kind, and making him spend the last few months of his life in jail would have served none of them. Here they are in the order in which I think they would be most defensible.

1. Rehabilitation: Sending people to jail for rehabilitation assumes that nobody is incorrigible. With the right intervention, you can turn the lowliest knave into a functioning member of society. Al-Meghrahi was made responsible for the deaths of 270 people, although it would be a mistake to think he acted alone. That’s pretty bad, but let’s assume that he could be rehabilitated given the right treatment. If that were true, could he be rehabilitated within the three months or so he has to live? And even if that’s possible, is that the best way to spend scarce rehabilitative resources, or is that a case of throwing your money into the proverbial pit? If he ain’t got there yet, he ain’t gonna, and we got better things to do anyway.
2. Prevention: This is compatible with rehabilitation, and it’s the idea that we need to keep dangerous people out of circulation in order to deny them the opportunity to do more damage. From the pictures I’ve seen of Al-Meghrahi boarding the plane in Scotland and disembarking in Libya, the guy can barely stand. Besides, you can bet that he will be persona non grata or watched like a hawk for his few remaining weeks. I’d be less surprised if the pope turned to terrorism than if this guy used his last weeks to do more damage.
3. Deterrence: This is the idea that being in jail is miserable, and the example of punishing criminals with misery will make others too scared to commit crime. To the extent that this purpose works at all, I’d say it’s already been served. He was caught, he was put somewhere he didn’t want to be and from which he couldn’t escape. Anyone wanting to follow in his footsteps would have to conclude that they’d have a decent chance of going to jail, and that the best way out would be to contract a terminal case of prostate cancer. Okay guys, form an orderly line, you can’t all be terrorists at once.
4. Retribution: This is the notion of victim’s justice, an eye for an eye, and whatnot. I don’t really see the point of this in general (it rights no wrong, and any evil it prevents can be prevented better otherwise), but let’s run with it for a sec. If you wanted this guy to suffer, why let him sit in a Scottish prison where he gets decent food (as decent as any British food gets, I suppose), proper medical treatment, and relative comfort? Why not torture him? I once saw a documentary about a medieval Uzbekh prince who would wrap male traitors up in an old carpet with a decaying, maggoty sheep’s carcass. Why settle for a decent cell when you can inflict real misery? I’m not saying the retribution idea makes any sense, but if it did, there would be much better ways of going about it.

There are reasons to be upset about Lockerbie: that it happened at all, that it all got hung on just one patsy, that Qaddafi will protect anybody else involved until he dies, when his son(s) will likely take over and continue the tradition. Letting a frail and dying man go home costs nobody anything.