Justice

 

 

Man has never tried to remove the causes of injustice. On the contrary, in the name of justice, he has been taking revenge on the individuals who were not obedient to the social order, to the establishment, to the vested interests. They were condemned as criminals, punished - and it was thought that justice had been restored.

 

In fact, the people who had been punished were really the victims. Justice was not restored. In fact, the people who were the root causes of injustice in the world had taken their revenge. Their revenge was fulfilled, and people were made afraid to go against the social order in any way.

 

It is very strange that such a long history... and nobody has tried to look at why injustice exists at all.

 

We have been trying to look only at individuals, and they are not the causes, only symptoms.

 

For example, a poor man is forced to steal in certain circumstances. If you really want justice to be restored, his poverty should be removed. But no, you throw the poor man into jail for a few years, and you create more injustice in the society - because then his children are bound to become beggars, or pickpockets; his wife is bound to become a prostitute.

 

And the man you have jailed for a few years - you have taken away his humanity, his pride, his self-respect; you have humiliated him so much that back in the society he will find himself a stranger who nobody trusts, who cannot get a job, who everybody avoids. Nobody wants to be friends with him. He is again forced to steal.

 

It is a known fact that once a man is forced into jail as a punishment, he automatically comes back again and again to the jail. In the long run, the jail becomes his home, he becomes a jailbird. The outside world is just a holiday resort. Once in a while he is out in the world - but the world is not accepting of the man, does not treat him on equal terms with other human beings. Insulted, he also becomes revengeful.

 

Revenge cannot create anything else except revenge. Hate creates more hate, revenge creates more revenge.

 

In the jail he becomes more and more of an expert. He is no longer an amateur - the first time he was an amateur. In jail, which should almost be named a university for crimes, a teaching school, a productive field for criminals... in jail he learns that it is not the crime that is punished, it is being caught that is punished. Don't be caught, and you have not committed the crime. There are senior experts in the jail; they teach the novice, they initiate him into the secrets of the criminal world. Each time he comes out of the jail, he is more mature as far as crime is concerned.

 

But perhaps the old humanity was not interested in removing crime completely. It was only interested in punishing the disobedient, the misfit - those who wanted to go their own way, those who did not want to become a cog in the wheel, those who had a certain individuality. There was no other avenue open for them except crime. Crime was their sort of rebellion.

 

The rebellious man and his world will look into the causes. No man is born as a criminal; every man is born as a sage, innocent. It is a certain kind of nurturing, a certain kind of society, a certain upbringing, that reduces him into a criminal.

 

The society of the rebels will remove the causes. For example, poverty will not be allowed on the earth. And once poverty is removed, almost fifty percent of crimes will be removed, and fifty percent of judges, fifty percent of courts, fifty percent of law enforcement authorities, and fifty percent of laws - just by removing poverty. [....]

 

Justice will be a very natural thing. Once in a while someone will go berserk, but that does not need punishment: it needs help, it needs love, it needs compassion. The source needs to be found - why did it happen? That man has to be put in a psychiatric hospital and taken care of, with great respect.

 

And when he is back, he is to be welcomed - he is cured.

 

All crime is illness, sickness. It does not need any punishment; it needs understanding, and it needs treatment.

 

-Osho, "The Rebel, #9, Q1“