What is the difference between torturing a living creature and torturing another living creature? I can't see it. And neither can you, but if I asked you what is the difference between torturing a cat and torturing a woman, everyone would say that torturing a woman is a worse crime. Still, If now I told you that the cat was tortured out of fun and that the woman would be tortured as a punishment for what she has done, out of an established law, your mind will, quite funnily, change completely again, and torturing a cat would be a worse crime.
But... in the end... is it not torture both times?
How can our judgement change so greatly, and so rapidly? How can torturing being worse than... torturing?
I partly agree with freeferraris: yes, it is usual to disassociate the criminal from the crime, as it is usual to merge two different things, like guilt and responsibilty, into one single subject, which is the main flaw of "eye for an eye", and which is why we tend to strangely judge the same torture as good or bad depending on the circumstances.
Ok, I try to explain:
When we do something, every thing we do, we are "responsible" for what we have done: be it good or bad, useful or pointless, helping or hurting, we have the responsibility for what we have done, even if we are not guilty for something wrong. We are responsible because we "do" things, whether willingly or not. Guilt is a different thing, it defines the state of someone who has broken a rule, be it civil, religious, social, cultural, or one of our most deep taboos as human beings.
So, we are always responsible for what we do, but we are only occasionaly guilty for something we have done, acoording to some kind of law. Law is precisely what defines between guilt and innocence. it gives other people the "right" to put a limit to our free will and to punish us for our actions.
We constantly tend to confuse and identify this two concepts and think that if we are not guilty, then we are not responsible, while if we are responsible, then we are, by consequence, guilty. The two terms are almost considered synonyms. But they are not. From this confusion comes that overindulgence that freeferraris highlighted. But clearing this confusion means, at the same time, renounce to some quite harsh punishments. Why? If responsibility equals guilty, and non responsibility equals non-guilty, then whoever do something without a positive act of will, perhaps by reaction, or by consequence, or because it is forced by laws or men, is innocent. We know this, and we accept this. It is a tool to defend ourselves and our way of thinking.
Every one of us, in fact, can feel anger against a sadistic torturer, and it is easy to sentence him/her to a suffering death. It is easy because usually we are not sadistic torturers, so we know something like that is either hardly understandable in our mind and not likely to happen to us. But at the same time we feel the danger of being punished for unintentional acting. Noone would have himself killed for having unintentionally killed another man... Since we can't divide guilt and responsibility, we say that what discriminates between guilt and innocence is will.
Unfortunately, this means that our rage can not be unleashed against mad people, or other kind of unintentional acting. If the defendant could not act differently, he/she is innocent. And we are, therefore, frustrated. (I won't enter in the mined field of "free will", because this would make us all "not punishable"). Freeferraris calls this frustration "fooling ourselves", and he is not completely wrong, in my opinion. We become overindulgent because of our failure to separate guilt and responsibility. But his answer to this problem is again a product of our failure. He is stating, onece again, that killing according to the law is different than killing out of the law, and torturing according to the law is different than torturing out of the law. Why? Is it only because we are "told" to do so or because something has already happened? "Eye for en eye" may cause endless wars and vengeances and killings and so on. Anyone want to have a look at Israel and Palestine? I am right to kill because they killed, because I killed, because they killed... forever.
No. Justice through "eye for an eye" is subject to the same responsibility = guilt flaw, and won't do.
What should we do then? Let criminals free? No, not at all. This would also be subject to the same flaw. But if guilt and responsibility are separated, law, which is what defines guilt, would tell us how to limit the freedom of action of the one responsible for what would be considered a crime; law should not tell us how to punish a crime, but when and how to limit the freedom of another person if he/she is responsible for breaking a rule, knowing well that we could not use, as punishments, what the law itself prohibits to free people.
Limiting one person in his/her freedom, according to law, should not be seen as a punishment, but only as the most effective way (when it is the case), to grant freedom to everyone else.
So, in this case the girl should end up in some confined space so she will avoid doing these things again. Also, in the best of the worlds possible, her confinement should be in a mental health institution, to help her change her ways and return, possibly, to a free life.
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