This is the third in a five-part series where we're guest blogging about our new book Confronting Failures of Justice: Getting Away With Murder and Rape, available here. The last two posts introduced the problem of failures of justice (instances of unpunished or inadequately punished crime) and discussed how the problem is not solving itself. Now it's time to talk about costs. Why should we care about failures of justice? One cost is moral—we, along with most people, believe that there is a moral obligation to punish serious crime. This argument could also be made in social contract terms—the government has a duty to its people to punish those who victimize them.
But in addition to these moral costs, failing to punish serious crime produces enormous real-world harms. These include trauma to victims and co-victims, as well as increased crime through loss of incapacitation, reductions in deterrence, and, perhaps most importantly, the consequences of a decline in the law's moral credibility with the community. Consider an excerpt from our book discussing the harms caused to victims and their families.
