We are often taught that vengeance is a reprehensible or unworthy motivation and that, as a result, pursuing revenge should not be the method of choice when meting out punishment for crimes. Incarceration and other penalties, according to this view, can only be justified in as much as they protect society, rehabilitate criminals, or deter further crime. But are these approaches to punishment really more just than the retributive or vengeance model? Don’t the victims of crime deserve some kind of payback for their suffering? Are justice and revenge in conflict with one another, or do they actually go hand in hand? John and Ken trade favors with Thane Rosenbaum from the Fordham Law School, author ofPayback: The Case For Revenge.
John opens the show by saying that for humans, the desire for payback (in other words, for getting even after a wrongdoing) is a natural response. But is it a response we should ever act on, even if it is a natural one, asks Ken? John says that if you cause harm to someone else, they have the right to cause harm to you. Revenge, says John, is a way of restoring balance and the honor of victims. It is a source of empowerment. Ken disagrees; he argues that revenge escalates violence rather than restores the balance John speaks of. Ken and John end at odds with the question of whether revenge is any good for the victims.
Ken and John are joined by guest Thane Rosenbaum, Professor of Law at Fordham University and author ofPayback:复仇的理由。John first asks Thane what got him interested in the topic of revenge – perhaps for personal reasons? Thane explains that his approach is victim-centered, meaning that he prioritizes what the victims of a crime need in order to feel that justice has been fulfilled. While Thane has never been personally victimized, he explains, his parents were Holocaust survivors and he is a human rights law professor, so he is sympathetic to the experience of people who have been victimized. John asks Thane why revenge should be a part of the criminal justice system, to which Thane replies that all persons signed, however inadvertently, the social contract, meaning that we yield the role of justice determinant to the State. We believe in the idea of punishment for the greater good of society, but in doing so, we discount the debt owed to and deny the experience of the victim. Ken asks Thane to elaborate on the relationship between justice and revenge and to explain the notion that a call for justice is, in itself, a call for revenge. Thane explains that there can be no justice as long as victims are not avenged. There is a misunderstanding, Thane explains, that revenge escalates violence, but, looking back in history, people have sought proportionality and thus followed the ‘eye for an eye’ system with no escalation of aggression.
肯对人们在寻求报复时的相称性这一观点持怀疑态度。塞恩说，这必须是事实，因为历史和我们活着，没有长期不和的事实证明了这一点。圣经的教训也与这个问题有关。Ken和John邀请观众参与，并讨论了一些问题，如复仇的欲望是兽性的，是过时大脑的一部分，对罪犯的成本/收益分析，因为它可能受到惩罚，以及当法律制度不能帮助受害者时，受害者是否应该有报复的权利。这部剧的结尾是塞恩的反思:没有复仇，就有不满。
