March 2001
Editor's Notes
by Kristin McCahon
One day a couple of years ago, while I was working quietly at the Institute, I got the phone call we all dread second-most. "Come home now. We have been broken into."
I felt physically ill. With sweaty palms and a stone in my stomach I drove home to assess the damage. What carefully collected treasures were smashed? What family mementoes were gone, and what paintings slashed? Were the pets injured or dead?
I was angry. Why should the possessions I treat so carefully be thoughtlessly damaged by some uninvited thug? I wanted the criminal to be punished. If he had still been there when I arrived home, I would have punished him myself.
The police behaved impeccably. They arrived promptly, took statements, looked concerned, and sent over an officer with a fingerprinting kit who searched the house for useable evidence. In the end, however, they never were able to give me what I wanted: the sight of the perpetrator, in handcuffs, being hustled into a police cruiser.
We all want justice. We all need to feel safe. Fear is a primordial, survival response, and combating it can consume a lot of our productive energy. Societies hold fear in check (and thus harness some of that otherwise lost productivity) with a visible police presence, a strong judiciary, and clear property rights. For the legal system to work effectively, there must be some balance: my desire for restitution and a public beheading on the one hand, and society’s need for reason, some measure of compassion, and public order on the other.
Examining this balance is primarily what the focus of this issue of Fraser Forum is about. What should be done with young criminals? How should we address the issue of illicit drugs? What are our chances of being murdered in our beds? This issue’s authors give some reasoned, clear-headed responses.
Our burglary turned out to be fairly minor. A CD player and a few other things went missing. Money was stolen, but the paintings were unharmed, as were the pets. Insurance covered most of the expense. A new alarm system set our minds at ease. But the criminal was never caught; I never did feel that justice was served.
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