Justice isn’t defined by what we take from the sinner, only by what can be returned to the wronged. Dignity is not lost in the victim, but rather their life. Dignity is lost in the offender. And there isn’t a single second spent in prison on Earth that will satisfy atonement.
Actually, that is part of Justice. Justice in criminal law is separated into four parts; retribution (you are being punished because your crime was too heinous for you to be allowed to get away with it), rehabilitation (you are being punished so that you can learn the error of your ways and never commit your crime again), deterrence (you are being punished as an example to others so that fear of this punishment prevents them from committing your crime), and incapacitation (you are being punished so that you will be physically unable to commit your crime again). All four of these apply to premeditated murder.
As for dignity, the victims dignity CAN be lost if the victim is dehumanized or treated by the law as unworthy of protection. Every law sends a message to society and to the people in it. Punishing a murder with imprisonment sends the message that the victim’s life had value, that the crime was a transgression against all of humankind, and that the crime is intolerable. Meanwhile allowing a murderer to go free, or otherwise giving a murder an overly lenient punishment, sends the message that the victim’s life was worthless, that nobody really cared about the victim, and that society doesn’t even consider the murder to really be an offense.
And for atonement, Imprisonment can and often does produce that. That’s why they are called Correctional Facilities, because they are (or at least originally were) meant to rehabilitate the prisoner. Make the prisoner feel remorse for his/her crime, or at the very least make the prisoner never want to commit that crime again.
What dignity can be restored to the mother or life restored to her unborn child by imprisoning her? How do you measure that? With what quantity of time and severity of solitude can we restore anything to the child? How may the mother work to restore her dignity?
The convicted murderer can regain some of the lost dignity through accepting punishment. That’s why somebody who was released from prison after a sentence often speaks of having paid their debt to society or of having become a changed person. Additionally, if a prison system is working properly, then it will be designed to encourage rehabilitation among all the prisoners and to ensure as many learn their lessons as possible.
To assume they child requires justice on our behalf is a prideful folly. These things are not for us to decide. Only the state can decide how it will be compensated for its own grievance. But when has prison ever satisfied a grievance? Sentencing to imprisonment fails to look past the offended to the redemption of the offender.
By your logic nobody should ever get sent to prison for a crime. Do you think that the judge did nothing wrong in letting Ethan Couch walk free after killing four people?
As for The State, it isn’t a God that makes decisions with neither (name removed by moderator)ut nor error. The State is made of the governed, exists to serve the governed, and change according to the will of the governed. That means that these things are exactly the things for us to decide, and that changing the law is as easy as convincing enough people that a change is necessary.
I suggest you read John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. He was an enlightenment thinker and his work goes into length about human rights, natural law, and the role of government.
The most significant idea in his Second Treatise is that all human beings are born with unalienable rights, that those rights are protected by natural law, that anybody who breaks the law of nature has declared war on all of humankind and therefore needs to be punished (but not disproportionately), and that people form governments to ensure their rights are protected.
