Can revenge be justified?

“Sleepers” is a shocking movie, dealing with the sexual abuse of four boys in a New York state reformatory in the 1960s. Fifteen years later, two of them, who have turned into criminals, encounter by chance their main tormentor and kill him. The other two, by now successfully integrated into society, conspire to get their childhood friends off the hook. Is this justifiable?

What is revenge? According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is “retaliation for an injury or wrong”, or “the desire to inflict this”. I want you to suffer the same pain (injury, insult) that you have inflicted upon me. This is not just justice; it is personal justice, tit for tat. Revenge emphasizes emotion, not necessarily reason.

The expression “an eye for an eye” has religious roots (the Bible). It was meant to limit revenge, going back to some ancient societies where, to deter murder, the victim’s family was allowed to avenge the killing. There was an additional advantage: only God had the moral authority to exact revenge. Today, despite the fact that most civilized societies consider this barbaric, there still exists religious punishment the old way (cutting off the hand of a robber, public stoning). The problem is difficult to challenge this is “approved” by God or reflecting his will. As we also (unfortunately) know, religions can further encourage revenge as they clash or if one feels his religion has been insulted. In all fairness, most religions do teach forgiveness, which is the opposite of revenge.

Contemporary judicial systems are no longer built around personal revenge, the latter having been replaced by societal justice. Righting a wrong in a fair way has shifted its focus from the victim to the crime. A sentence should deter a criminal to do it again and make others think twice. I read the following example which explains this. A couple of years ago, a Canadian farmer got enraged with a teenager damaging his garden. Trying to arrest him, he accidentally shot the teenager in the neck. His sentence was 6 years, later reduced to 4 years. The victim’s family, referring to the killing instead, was outraged. Yet there is no need to go back to a legal system centering on revenge.

Unfortunately the legal system has its limitations. It is not free of human error. Sometimes a sentence is not fair, creating a new wrong in place of the one that it is seeking to rectify. A criminal feeling that way can hardly wait to get out of prison and is likely out for revenge. An innocent person might be sentenced, which in the case of the death penalty cannot be corrected. As “Sleepers” so painfully demonstrates, there is also the very real possibility of corruption. It is painfully understandable that in such a circumstance a wronged individual wants to take the law in his or her own hands. In a way, society has wronged him (her). On a one-time basis, I can see justification for revenge. My fear however is that once you start to generalize there is the real risk of undermining the whole judiciary system. Systematic approval or use of revenge outside the law is not justifiable. This is obvious in the case of gang culture, family honour killings but less easy to accept when there is systemic corruption. Using once an orchestrated trial to establish the truth is one thing, a systematic manipulation of the legal system is a different matter.

Can revenge be a constructive force? There have been a lot of killings in the black community in London. Confronted with the death of her son, a mother was asked if she felt any revenge. Her answer was no, she could not; how could she if she had no hate in her heart? At the same time the girlfriend was overheard saying that she hoped that “they would rot in hell”. Can the suffering of the killer provide closure to the victim’s family? I respect the mom’s opinion, but I’m afraid that my heart too would be temporarily filled with anger and hate; this is nothing to be ashamed of.

One final thought about the movie. It took 15 years before revenge happened. The reason: no one was looking for it, each one having decided, after their release from the reform house, to go on with their life. By suppressing that part of their past, they also left no choice for whoever was sent to the reformatory (and similar places!) after them, but to be abused too. Could Lorenzo, a newspaper reporter, and Michael, an assistant district attorney, have done anything earlier instead of writing until chance brought upon them the opportunity for revenge?