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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/01/19/ixopinion.html
Martin would be free now, if he'd lied to his jailers
By Theodore Dalrymple
(Filed: 19/01/2003)
When he shot two burglars, killing one and injuring the other, Tony Martin became overnight something of a folk hero. At long last, someone was taking burglary seriously and taking practical measures against it, unlike the police and the criminal justice system. The much-burgled public was not interested in the petty, legalistic details of the case - the kind of gun he had used, or the extent to which the force he had employed was reasonable in the circumstances. Mr Martin's clear-cut moral stance towards burglary was in sharp and refreshing contrast to that of their Slipperyships, the Lords Chancellor and Chief Justice.
Now we learn that Mr Martin, though his crime has been reduced on appeal from murder to the much less heinous manslaughter, and his five-year sentence reduced by one third accordingly, is not to be granted parole. He is rather less fortunate than Brendon Fearon, one of the burglars, who had his three-year sentence cut by half, and was released in August 2001. Mr Martin doesn't deny his acts, that it was his finger on the trigger: he merely refuses to feel contrition for what he did. On the contrary, he thinks he was perfectly justified. And it is a truth universally acknowledged by parole boards all over the country that a man who feels - or at least expresses - no contrition should be granted no parole.
The relationship between contrition and inward reform is one that is taken for granted: because - it stands to reason - how can a man resolve to behave differently if he does not even feel sorry for how he behaved before? In fact, however, the relationship between contrition and reform is not so obvious. Our everyday life and experience suggests this: although we feel genuinely contrite each time we indulge in our worst habit, we do not invariably thereby cease to indulge in it on all future occasions. If every time we felt guilty for having overeaten we controlled ourselves better in the future, we should all be thin. Contrition, then, is not enough.
If it is not sufficient to make us change our ways, is it at least necessary to do so? Again, the answer would seem to be no. The fact is that most, though not all, criminals give up their life of crime spontaneously, usually by their middle or late thirties. Burglary, for example, is a young man's game. This is not because burglars suddenly see the moral light, and realise that all their previous break-ins have contributed to the misery of the nation. Quite often they say to me in the prison in which I work that they are sick of the criminal way of life, that they "can't do no more bird". This is not remorse, exactly: they do not even mention the harm they have done to others or express regret over it. But they nevertheless do give up.
The necessity to express contrition in order to obtain parole puts certain prisoners in a dilemma. They believe and maintain all along that they are innocent, the victims of a miscarriage of justice: and, human institutions being inevitably imperfect, at least some of them must be right, that is to say, genuinely innocent. Miscarriages of justice do, after all, occur, and are often revealed only many years later.
The innocent person convicted of murder has a choice once he becomes eligible for parole: he can either confess to what he has not done, and be released, though at the cost of compromising his chances of ever having his innocence officially recognised; or he can continue to maintain his innocence, and suffer further injustice in the form of continued imprisonment.
I have known quite a number of men convicted of murder who have maintained their innocence up to the time when they became eligible for parole, or who claimed until then to be amnesiac for their crime, who suddenly recognised their crime or recovered their memory of it. They were overtaken by remorse at last, or at least did a very good imitation of having been so overtaken.
Equally, though, I have known men convicted of murder, wrongly in their own eyes, who have continued to maintain their innocence in spite of the manifest advantages to them of confession of guilt and expression of contrition, who thereby accepted many years of extra imprisonment. This would seem to be prima facie evidence of their genuine innocence, for who but the innocent would behave in so principled a fashion? However, the ways of man are strange, and it is possible that for some people, the maintenance of their self-image as wronged innocent - even though they are in fact guilty - is more important than mere liberty.
Of course, Mr Martin's case is different. He doesn't deny that he killed the 16-year-old intruder into his house, and he even expresses sorrow for his death. What he denies is that he was wrong in using a gun to protect his property (he had been the constant victim of burglars' unwanted attentions). This presumably suggested to the parole board that, if placed once more in a similar situation, Mr Martin would behave in the same way. If released, therefore, he would constitute a danger to the public.
It is, however, only a very special section of the public to whom Mr Martin poses a danger: what I suppose, in these days of unctuous euphemism, we shall soon have to call "the burgling community". In other words, Mr Martin may not be released that burglars may safely burgle, for there has never been any suggestion that Mr Martin was likely to shoot anyone else. The state thus protects burglars more assiduously than it protects householders.
If only Mr Martin had lied about his own thoughts! Then he might have been set free. But he is too stubborn and principled a man for that (even if some of his principles are legally, if not morally, wrong). It is surely a curious system that demands of prisoners that they should lie as a condition of their release. In this, however, the parole board is only demanding what is increasingly demanded of the rest of us: lies, lies and more lies.
For example, as a doctor I am now required to produce something called a Personal Development Plan. I have reached an age when the only genuine item on my PDP is retirement at the first opportunity, but of course I cannot say any such thing. I have to pretend to be an 18-year-old once more, setting out on the exciting ocean voyage of adult life, with everything before me. Like the prisoner who wants to be released by the parole board, I must lie through my teeth. It is what officialdom wants of me.
We have lost the distinction between inner states and outward manifestations. Our society has become like a watered-down version of China under the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution, with its ceaseless demand for bogus confession and equally bogus promises of future good conduct. In the meantime, genuine integrity and remorse for wrongdoing wither away.
Martin would be free now, if he'd lied to his jailers
By Theodore Dalrymple
(Filed: 19/01/2003)
When he shot two burglars, killing one and injuring the other, Tony Martin became overnight something of a folk hero. At long last, someone was taking burglary seriously and taking practical measures against it, unlike the police and the criminal justice system. The much-burgled public was not interested in the petty, legalistic details of the case - the kind of gun he had used, or the extent to which the force he had employed was reasonable in the circumstances. Mr Martin's clear-cut moral stance towards burglary was in sharp and refreshing contrast to that of their Slipperyships, the Lords Chancellor and Chief Justice.
Now we learn that Mr Martin, though his crime has been reduced on appeal from murder to the much less heinous manslaughter, and his five-year sentence reduced by one third accordingly, is not to be granted parole. He is rather less fortunate than Brendon Fearon, one of the burglars, who had his three-year sentence cut by half, and was released in August 2001. Mr Martin doesn't deny his acts, that it was his finger on the trigger: he merely refuses to feel contrition for what he did. On the contrary, he thinks he was perfectly justified. And it is a truth universally acknowledged by parole boards all over the country that a man who feels - or at least expresses - no contrition should be granted no parole.
The relationship between contrition and inward reform is one that is taken for granted: because - it stands to reason - how can a man resolve to behave differently if he does not even feel sorry for how he behaved before? In fact, however, the relationship between contrition and reform is not so obvious. Our everyday life and experience suggests this: although we feel genuinely contrite each time we indulge in our worst habit, we do not invariably thereby cease to indulge in it on all future occasions. If every time we felt guilty for having overeaten we controlled ourselves better in the future, we should all be thin. Contrition, then, is not enough.
If it is not sufficient to make us change our ways, is it at least necessary to do so? Again, the answer would seem to be no. The fact is that most, though not all, criminals give up their life of crime spontaneously, usually by their middle or late thirties. Burglary, for example, is a young man's game. This is not because burglars suddenly see the moral light, and realise that all their previous break-ins have contributed to the misery of the nation. Quite often they say to me in the prison in which I work that they are sick of the criminal way of life, that they "can't do no more bird". This is not remorse, exactly: they do not even mention the harm they have done to others or express regret over it. But they nevertheless do give up.
The necessity to express contrition in order to obtain parole puts certain prisoners in a dilemma. They believe and maintain all along that they are innocent, the victims of a miscarriage of justice: and, human institutions being inevitably imperfect, at least some of them must be right, that is to say, genuinely innocent. Miscarriages of justice do, after all, occur, and are often revealed only many years later.
The innocent person convicted of murder has a choice once he becomes eligible for parole: he can either confess to what he has not done, and be released, though at the cost of compromising his chances of ever having his innocence officially recognised; or he can continue to maintain his innocence, and suffer further injustice in the form of continued imprisonment.
I have known quite a number of men convicted of murder who have maintained their innocence up to the time when they became eligible for parole, or who claimed until then to be amnesiac for their crime, who suddenly recognised their crime or recovered their memory of it. They were overtaken by remorse at last, or at least did a very good imitation of having been so overtaken.
Equally, though, I have known men convicted of murder, wrongly in their own eyes, who have continued to maintain their innocence in spite of the manifest advantages to them of confession of guilt and expression of contrition, who thereby accepted many years of extra imprisonment. This would seem to be prima facie evidence of their genuine innocence, for who but the innocent would behave in so principled a fashion? However, the ways of man are strange, and it is possible that for some people, the maintenance of their self-image as wronged innocent - even though they are in fact guilty - is more important than mere liberty.
Of course, Mr Martin's case is different. He doesn't deny that he killed the 16-year-old intruder into his house, and he even expresses sorrow for his death. What he denies is that he was wrong in using a gun to protect his property (he had been the constant victim of burglars' unwanted attentions). This presumably suggested to the parole board that, if placed once more in a similar situation, Mr Martin would behave in the same way. If released, therefore, he would constitute a danger to the public.
It is, however, only a very special section of the public to whom Mr Martin poses a danger: what I suppose, in these days of unctuous euphemism, we shall soon have to call "the burgling community". In other words, Mr Martin may not be released that burglars may safely burgle, for there has never been any suggestion that Mr Martin was likely to shoot anyone else. The state thus protects burglars more assiduously than it protects householders.
If only Mr Martin had lied about his own thoughts! Then he might have been set free. But he is too stubborn and principled a man for that (even if some of his principles are legally, if not morally, wrong). It is surely a curious system that demands of prisoners that they should lie as a condition of their release. In this, however, the parole board is only demanding what is increasingly demanded of the rest of us: lies, lies and more lies.
For example, as a doctor I am now required to produce something called a Personal Development Plan. I have reached an age when the only genuine item on my PDP is retirement at the first opportunity, but of course I cannot say any such thing. I have to pretend to be an 18-year-old once more, setting out on the exciting ocean voyage of adult life, with everything before me. Like the prisoner who wants to be released by the parole board, I must lie through my teeth. It is what officialdom wants of me.
We have lost the distinction between inner states and outward manifestations. Our society has become like a watered-down version of China under the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution, with its ceaseless demand for bogus confession and equally bogus promises of future good conduct. In the meantime, genuine integrity and remorse for wrongdoing wither away.
