Crime and punishment
Sir: Jonathan Benthall is to be congratulated for making the case so urgently for the retributive element in punishment (Spectator 16 July) We might agree till Doomsday about the deterrent value of different kinds of punishment, but it seems to me that Mr Benthall's view is the only one that can be equated with a proper sense of human dignity and self-respect.
In a free society, unless medical evidence proves otherwise, it must be assumed that every adult is responsible for his or her own actions and is therefore answerable for them to the rest of society. Is this not what the freedom of the individual is largely about: being able to make adult choices in an adult world?
Recently I heard Lord Longford say on television that he looked forward to the time when all serious offenders would be treated as sick people in need of medical help. What view of humanity could be more degrading than this? To be free is to be answerable for our own actions, even if this might bring down upon us the ultimate censure of society, the death penalty. Lord Longford and his kind would keep us all safe and sound behind the nursery window bars.
C.J.Arihur
Belle Vue House, Low Fell, Gateshead-on-Tyne
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