Should justice always be sought?

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2014taylorj

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If everyone, were seeking justice for every minor transgression that someone commited, wouldn’t this create a disfunctional society. For instance, if someone were to steal a chocolate bar from a shop, should the shop owner hand him in to authorities, or could he be merciful, and just let the person go? I guess my question is really when should justice be sought, and when is it appropriate to respond to people’s transgressions mercifully and let them go?
 
You’re assuming justice and mercy are opposed to each other. They’re not.
 
Using your analogy, there would soon be no chocolate because everyone stole it.
 
St Paul said it is better to suffer injustice than to sue your brother. You have to practice discernment on a case-by-case basis.
 
One small bar of chocolate stolen by 1 leads to an effect that sees the price of goods increase, store owners shutting down etc.
Jesus did say give the robber your cloak, so to let the robber go, what options are there,

pay for his chocolate, take it and give him real food, send him to vinnies…
 
IdaCatholic said:
Using your analogy, there would soon be no chocolate because everyone stole it.
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No, that is not true.

There is a difference between mercy and forgiveness and excusing offenses with no recognition of the violation of trust that was committed. If someone was caught stealing and was not turned in the police but the thief made no effort to make amends for the offense, it would not be unmerciful of the shopkeeper to treat them as unworthy of trusting them in the store. It is not unmerciful to watch for theft and to prevent people from stealing. More to the point, most people will not steal from someone who trusts them, even if they know they can get away with it. Most people have more empathy than that.

Remember that the father of the prodigal son told the elder son, “My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.” (Luke 15:31) The inheritance that the younger son had squandered was gone; his actions had consequences. The father had no intention of replacing the wealth that had been squandered with another inheritance. He was saying he was reconciled with his younger son, not that everything the younger son had done was forgotten in the sense that it was excused with no consequences.

The truth is that a lot of petty theft is not prosecuted even when the thief is identified, it has always been like that, and our economy has not collapsed. The question of whether or not the authorities ought to be called usually depends on whether or not the person responsible for the store believes the thief will (a) be likely to amend their choices if they do not face legal consequences and (b) will pose a significantly greater threat to other possible victims if they are not dealt with by the courts.
Dan_Defender said:
St Paul said it is better to suffer injustice than to sue your brother. You have to practice discernment on a case-by-case basis.
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Yes. It just depends on the situation.
Sometimes, after all, we have to admit that if we were to have become thieves, the best thing that could happen to us is to have to face the law, so that we would have to confront what we have become, and so amend our lives. In other situations, maybe we would be more likely to amend if our misconduct were taken as evidence of desperation rather than a bad character. It is a matter of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
 
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When my son was 7, he stole what equaled 50 cents from the snack bar at a bowling alley.

He felt guilty and fessed up. I did not punish him.

I did call a friend of mine, a cop. He came by the house the next day in full uniform and in his patrol car and talked about stealing.

After that, I drove my son to the bowling alley and he had to go make retribution to the person behind the snack bar counter, pay back the money and apologize.

He never, ever stole anything after that. He is an adult now and has thanked me many times for that, he did not cheat in school, he is an honest man who has been sought after as an employee because of his work ethic.

So, I would say, justice should always be TAUGHT.
 
Justice should always be sought. Period. But the justice should match the offense or else it isn’t really justice is it?
 
  1. It’s your own judgment whether you want to “turn someone in” or be “merciful” in any life situation. (You could be turning them in to your teacher, your boss at work, etc., not just to law enforcement)
  2. In making the decision of (1), you need to also keep in mind whether their behavior is likely to hurt others or be a general danger to society, and whether you might end up being partly guilty for not turning them in. For example, if you knew someone was committing a felony and you didn’t tell the police, then you could be charged or sued yourself, and the criminal might hurt other people. If you attend a school with an honor code, it might require that you report anyone else who you catch cheating or else you yourself have violated the code. On the flip side you also have to think whether you turning somebody in is going to put you or your family in danger, “snitches get stitches” etc. You might also think of the consequences to the person you’re turning in, like if they have 10 kids at home maybe you don’t want to see them get fired.
  3. Usually decisions like (1) are made on a cost-benefit basis depending on things like the seriousness of the offense, the possible consequences for whistleblowing or not whistleblowing, and whether it’s something that can be handled through an informal means, like if a kid is stealing candy from your shop you can stop letting him in, hire a security guard, put the candy out of reach etc. There are all kinds of economic and ethical and philosophical scholarly analyses of this sort of situation. Obviously the bigger and more major and more awful the crime, and the more chance that the criminal will repeat the crime (like a serial sexual abuser or domestic abuser), the more likely it is that the analysis weighs on the side of turning him in.
 
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