In this blog post, I will consider various perspectives on justice surrounding the punishment of sex offenders and the direction our society should take.
Recently, violent crimes have been on the rise in South Korea. Not only have sex crimes against adult women increased, but also sex crimes against infants and adolescents have become more frequent, and related cases are frequently reported in the news. As a result, the issue of sentencing for sex offenders and the treatment of sex offenders who have completed their sentences is becoming a controversial issue. In particular, the case of Oh Won-chun, who brutally murdered a woman in her twenties, has led to calls for justice, as the court reduced his death sentence to life imprisonment and raised the possibility of his imprisonment in a prison exclusively for foreigners. As such, although there is a growing desire for justice in our society, few people can give a clear answer to the question, “What is justice?” Therefore, before discussing the treatment of sex offenders, we need to know what justice is and how sex crimes are currently being punished in Korea.
In Michael Sandel’s “What is Justice,” he presents three ways to understand justice academically. These methods are the methods of happiness maximization, free market capitalism, and moral political philosophy.
First, happiness maximization is the position that the maximization of the happiness of individuals and society is justice. In other words, it regards it as justice when all choices and their results maximize the happiness of society and individuals. It is based on utilitarianism and assumes that the results can be converted into a single measure of happiness. However, this approach is likely to lead to a number of moral dilemmas. For example, in a situation where five people can be saved by sacrificing one, utilitarianism may judge that sacrificing one is beneficial. This suggests an extreme conclusion that one person can be killed to save five people, and most people find it difficult to accept such a decision morally. Utilitarians see this moral rejection as an emotional flaw in the individual who practices utilitarianism, not a flaw in utilitarianism. Also, the concept of happiness is not absolute but relative, so using it as a single standard can be problematic.
Second, free marketism places the highest value on freedom and tries to understand justice through freedom. It sees justice as respecting the voluntary agreements and choices of adults. However, this approach also has its own dilemma. If all adults’ voluntary agreements are justice, then people can choose to trade parts of their bodies or their entire bodies. For example, the logic is that you can hire someone to do your military service for a fee. However, this is a forced choice for survival, so it is difficult to consider it “voluntary.” The question is whether a “completely voluntary choice” is possible in reality.
Third, the moral political philosophy approach views justice as closely related to virtue and the good life. A just society should be a society with a firm view of virtue and the good life. This approach ultimately leads to the legal definition of virtue and the good life, which is difficult to accept in a liberal democracy. There is also the limitation that it is almost impossible to reach a social consensus when the standards of virtue and the good life are legally defined.
The ultimate goal of punishing sex offenders in Korea is to prevent the recurrence of crimes and to reintegrate them into society. While most countries share these goals, the severity of punishment varies greatly from country to country. In Korea, the sentences for sex offenders are lighter than in other countries, and the maximum prison term is 30 years, but the actual prison term is around 10 years. On average, a child sex offender is sentenced to six to nine years in prison, and there is no additional punishment after serving the sentence. In the United States, however, the sentence for child sex crimes varies from state to state, but can range from 25 years to life imprisonment, and the offender’s personal information is made public and chemical castration is carried out. Switzerland has adopted a law that permanently confines dangerous sex offenders through a national referendum, and China unconditionally sentences to death those who sexually assault children under the age of 14. The only country with a lighter sentence than Korea is Japan, where the statutory sentence is 10 years, but the actual sentence is quite severe.
So, how should sex crimes be punished from the perspective of justice? In the way of maximizing happiness, punishing sex offenders increases the happiness of society as a whole, including victims and their families, and inflicts pain on sex offenders and their families. Therefore, it can be said that justice is to impose a sentence that maximizes social happiness. Considering that the recidivism rate for sex crimes in Korea is about 45%, sanctions that include the publication of personal information, chemical castration, or social isolation, like those in other countries, may be a better option than allowing sex offenders to fully reintegrate into society.
From the perspective of free market capitalism, the punishment of sex crimes is based on the consensus of members of society. In other words, justice is determined by assuming that a member of society may be a sex offender and determining an appropriate punishment. Under this assumption, most people are likely to avoid extreme punishment in consideration of the possibility of becoming a sex offender and choose to have their sentences increased. However, this method has the disadvantage of being almost impossible to objectively investigate. As an alternative, the appropriate level of punishment for sex offenders and non-offenders can be investigated to derive an average, but this cannot be strictly seen as justice derived from free marketism.
If we derive justice from a moral, political, and philosophical perspective, the punishment of sex crimes begins with setting the standards of morality and good living in our society. Sex crimes are morally unacceptable, but considering the moral system of our society that values tolerance, the relief of sex offenders may take precedence. In the case of sex offenders, only those who are not likely to reoffend should be released early and allowed to fully reintegrate into society through a psychological evaluation while serving their sentence. On the other hand, if the general moral climate in our society is to strictly punish crimes and prevent them from reoccurring, then it would be justice to increase the sentence and restrict the offender’s reintegration into society.
From the three perspectives of justice, the justice that our society pursues differs from one another. However, in all of these methods, except for the maximization of happiness, what is important is that each member of society establishes their own view of justice and reaches a social consensus through this. If the ultimate goal of law is to realize social justice, then justice can change according to careful social consensus. There are many cases that are currently controversial in Korea’s trials and sentencing, which is due to the mismatch between public sentiment and legal sentencing. For true justice to be realized in our society, members must carefully consider justice without being swayed by temporary emotions or public opinion, and the law must also change to respect social consensus that is in line with the times.
