ABSTRACT
This ambiguity translates into moral judgments of wrongdoing and a sense of justice. In ordinary moral life, I suggest, we follow a two phase approach in which at first we are angry and seek to blame, and then, later, proceed to judge the person more ‘in the round’, taking their circumstances and overall situation into account. We interpret what was done as part of a person’s history which disposed them to actions of certain kinds regardless of their will. We ‘explain’ what they have done and, so doing, come to excuse them. In morally judging crime, we do something similar. Even in the most demonised cases, like those of a Rosemary West or Myra Hindley, we come to wonder how they could have done what they did. We do not do this in order to deny the terrible wrong in their acts, but we are led to wonder about their ultimate responsibility for them, no matter what the law’s judgment may be. We also come to see the refusal to understand and to contextualise by those who unthinkingly condemn as itself a failure of human being.17 Thus, our initial reaction of anger and condemnation may be followed by a sense that the criminal was also a victim. In so doing, we move from the sense of the individual as an autonomous agent (the law’s view) to that of the person as a being-in-relation.
