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Interesting that "an eye for an eye" is a phrase that resonates in the 'mainstream' (but not on the Left). Speaking as a criminologist, I'd say this was the biggest single problem in the public understanding of criminal justice. https://twitter.com/Sabrina_Huck/status/1275362971540209665
The criminal justice system *is* retributive - it's much, much too retributive. The excess of retribution leads to "the disproportionate punishment of disadvantaged groups", as @Sabrina_Huck says, but it's not as if correcting the biases in the system would fix the problem -
- convicted criminals in general are punished disproportionately. While there is a scale (or several scales) differentiating in great detail between crimes of different levels of seriousness (+ or - mitigating or aggravating factors), the lowest rung is very often way too high.
It's very hard to get the bottom rung lowered, and it's very hard indeed to get magistrates (who are generally passing the 'bottom rung' sentences) to consistently use the least punitive, least coercive, least harmful options available to them.
In particular, magistrates and district judges love the idea of deterrent sentencing - sending a message, making an example, showing they take [whatever] seriously. There's lots of research on deterrent sentencing, and very little that shows it works.
So we've got a justice system which (despite efforts to remedy this) still takes two eyes for an eye on a fairly regular basis - even in the ideal situation where no biases of any sort are involved, just a genuine crime that was genuinely committed.
And then you've got a fairly large section of the great British public, utterly convinced that the system is too lenient, and that sentencing doesn't match crimes to the level of retribution which justice would require.
I'm not sure what anyone can do about this. I don't think it qualifies as ignorance or misunderstanding - it's too entrenched and too emotionally loaded for that. I suspect it's displacement for something else - perhaps the sense that life's not fair, if that's not too glib.
But clearly it's not a "Labour value" in any world I can imagine!
