In this blog post, we will examine the meaning of human rights in the context of society’s emotions toward violent criminals and the role of the law, and take a deeper look at what justice really means.
Recently, a series of heinous crimes have rocked the nation. The sexual assault of an elementary school girl in Naju, Jeollanam-do, the murder of a housewife in Junggok-dong, Seoul, and the discovery of the body of a missing woman on the Jeju Olle Trail are just a few of the incidents that have plunged the entire country into fear and anger in the past few months. Last year, there were 133,900 cases of seven major violent crimes, including murder, rape, robbery, and arson, and the number has been steadily increasing in recent years. As punishment for criminals, especially sex offenders, has become a hot topic in society, there are many opinions on how they should be punished. Not only the victims and their families, but also the general public are demanding stronger punishment for criminals. There are even calls for chemical castration, physical castration, or even the death penalty for sex offenders. With these arguments gaining traction, the issue of criminals’ human rights has become a hot topic of debate. While some argue that there is no reason to protect the human rights of people who have committed heinous crimes, others insist that they are still human beings and therefore entitled to basic human rights.
The two sides are locked in a tense standoff, with neither side willing to budge an inch. The argument that there is no need to protect the human rights of criminals is based on the following opinion. The basic idea is that criminals cannot claim their rights because they have violated the rights and dignity of others by committing crimes. If they want their own freedom and rights to be respected, they should have respected the rights and dignity of others first.
If so, we need to understand the essence of human rights and human dignity, which are at the heart of the issue we are debating, and where these rights come from. Human rights, as the term suggests, are the rights of human beings, and refer to the minimum rights necessary for human life. The concept of human rights became socially important after the modernization movements in the West, such as the French Revolution. However, even before that, the fundamental rights of human beings clearly existed. Human rights are not rights granted by anyone, but rather rights that arise naturally from being human, and therefore can be considered rights that everyone has without discrimination. Therefore, the concept of human rights is directly linked to the issue of human dignity. Human dignity is a question of the existence of individual human beings and the value of humanity. Society is made up of human beings, and all human beings inevitably live in society. This is because human dignity determines our identity and plays a role in sustaining the society in which we live. In his book Human Dignity, George Katap, a leading liberal political scientist in the United States, argues that human dignity is an existential value inherent in the identity of individuals and humanity as a whole. He summarized human dignity as an important concept that distinguishes humanity from other animals in the natural world, giving all individuals equal value.
Therefore, the dignity of all individuals must be properly recognized and respected in all circumstances, and no powerful authority, including the state, can violate it. This is why even criminals who have committed heinous crimes cannot be denied the human rights derived from human dignity. The rights that all human beings are born with are unchangeable, but the criteria for determining whether they have been violated may vary according to social values. Acts that violate an individual’s human rights, regardless of the standard used, are not limited to their immediate impact, but can damage the dignity of humanity as a whole. Therefore, regardless of who the target is, depriving a person of their human rights simply because they are human cannot be justified.
First, protecting the human rights of criminals does not mean helping them live a comfortable life without any sense of guilt even after committing terrible crimes. The purpose of insisting on protecting their human rights is that denying even the minimum human rights to criminals can have a negative impact on the human rights consciousness of society as a whole. In Afghanistan, North Korea, China, and several other countries around the world, public executions are still carried out in front of citizens, and there are even punishments that involve stoning criminals. However, even if someone is worse than an animal, acts that do not respect their human rights can give a negative impression of the human rights of the socially vulnerable. The socially vulnerable have varied depending on the region and changed over time. There were societies that discriminated against women, children, and the elderly, and until just a few decades ago, there were societies that discriminated against people of color. Since the modern era, the perception that all human beings should be treated equally has gradually spread, but despite this, discrimination has not been completely eliminated, and with capitalism and rapid technological development, new types of socially vulnerable people have emerged. As long as humans exist as social beings, society will always exist, and within that society, differences between individuals will inevitably lead to the emergence of the socially powerful and the socially vulnerable. Therefore, although all human beings cannot live in the same way, at least the minimum standard of living that all human beings are entitled to must be guaranteed. It is extremely dangerous to deny criminals their human rights, as this can lead to the mistaken belief that the socially disadvantaged, who are already at the bottom of the social hierarchy, deserve to be treated in this way.
The most important issue is that the human rights of criminals and punishment for crimes must be dealt with separately. Human rights are rights that must be protected because criminals are also human beings, while punishment is a different issue altogether, as it is a way of making them pay for their mistakes. Therefore, the logic that a criminal’s human rights can be violated as punishment for committing a crime is like slapping someone in Jongno and then crying in the Han River, which is a wrong way of venting anger that is far removed from the essence of the problem. The pain and sorrow that the victims and their families have experienced as a result of the crime are unspeakably terrible and will continue for a very long time. If you were in their position, you would naturally want to punish the enemy of yourself and your family as cruelly and painfully as possible. However, just because the perpetrator violated the human rights of innocent people, it does not mean that the victim’s suffering will disappear by taking revenge in a tit-for-tat manner that does not even protect the basic human rights of the criminal. If the protection of the human rights of criminals is not clearly distinguished from the severity of punishment, there is a high possibility that punishment will not serve as retribution for the crimes committed, but will instead degenerate into a dangerous situation due to the desire for revenge on the part of the victims’ families and the heated emotions of the public. It would be a very serious problem if potential offenders were to commit crimes without hesitation because they consider punishment to be insignificant. However, this does not mean that criminals should be prevented from living a minimum standard of life as human beings, as this would be a wrongful punishment that violates human dignity. Emotional punishment and punishment by law are clearly different, and while minimum human rights must be guaranteed, heavy and adequate punishment must be imposed for the crimes committed.
It cannot be overlooked that punishment in modern society is carried out by law. This is because the limitations of legal judgments and the purpose of punishment itself are related to the reasons for protecting the human rights of criminals. When an incident occurs, there are still many questions about whether it is possible to distinguish between absolute good and absolute evil as clearly as cutting with a knife. In the past, when everything was decided by the judgment of those in power, there were many cases of injustice, so laws were introduced as social standards to prevent this and ensure that judgments were as fair as possible. All citizens of a country must obey the law and follow judgments made based on the law. If a person is found guilty of a crime according to these standards, they must pay for their crimes by receiving the prescribed punishment. However, we cannot be certain that all truths are the same as the judgments of the law. In fact, there are many cases that have been proven to be miscarriages of justice after a long period of time. A representative case of miscarriage of justice in the United States is the 1984 William O’Dell Harris case. During the trial, evidence was contaminated, and an innocent student was convicted of a rape that occurred in his neighborhood and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
No matter how fair and just the law may be, the process of enforcing it is based on human judgment and therefore cannot always be perfect. Therefore, it is unreasonable to grant legal judgments absolute power to the extent that they can violate the most basic human rights. The purpose of punishing criminals is not to make them suffer the same pain as their victims. Rather, it is to make them pay an appropriate price for their crimes and reflect on their actions.
Being punished according to the law does not mean that the wrongdoer’s past mistakes disappear in an instant. However, treating criminals as less than human does not mitigate their mistakes. The crimes they have committed will remain with them for the rest of their lives, like a label that follows them around, but it is not realistic to expect that all criminals, past, present, and future, will disappear. Therefore, once they have sufficiently paid for their crimes according to social standards, they must be accepted back into society as members of society. If the basic human rights of criminals are not guaranteed, then they are not guaranteed a minimum standard of living as human beings, which defeats the original purpose of punishment.
Article 10 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea states that “All people shall have human dignity and value.” It is the dignity of human beings and their unique value that all people, regardless of reason, should be treated equally without discrimination. Even criminals who have committed heinous crimes that make them worse than animals have the minimum rights as human beings, and no one has the right to take those rights away from them. Emotional anger cannot be a solution to any problem, and it only creates victims in another sense. Rather than criticizing the protection of human rights for violent criminals, it is more important to prevent lenient punishments for serious crimes. It is the duty of the state to create a safe society where all citizens can live with peace of mind, but that does not mean that the state has the absolute right to violate the human rights of individuals.
