But great ideas that command instant allegiance no longer exist,
because our skeptical contemporaries believe in neither God nor humanity, kings
nor morality—unless they believe in all of them indiscriminately which amounts
to the same thing.
Robert Musil, The
Man without Qualities
What
kind of people are the Norwegians? I
suspect that they regard themselves as exceptionally decent and highly
civilized. They enjoy the good fortune of having the Americans to condescend to
and help them feel morally superior and culturally refined. Like the rest of the Western Europeans, the residents
of this Scandinavian enclave eschew the death penalty and cast a horrified glance
at unruly outposts of the western world, places like Texas and Florida where
killers still have to give some thought to the possibility of facing an executioner
bearing a syringe.
The
recent trial and sentencing of Anders Hehring Breivik in Oslo, however, cannot
help but suggest some invidious comparisons of these most civilized descendants
of Viking marauders with those less civilized people who cannot quite put aside
that primitive notion that the innocent victims of cold-blooded murderers are
owed something – justice, perhaps – and that the murderers themselves are
something other than clinical curiosities, perhaps very bad people who plan and
do terrible things, people who should pay a steep price for the pain and misery
they inflict on others.
Breivik
is not an ordinary mass murderer. Last year he shattered his country with a
killing spree that left 77 Norwegians dead, including a large number of
children. Here then was a particularly gruesome and most extraordinary case for
the Norwegians to grapple with – a proud, smirking, fascist-saluting,
child-slaying monster in the midst of a violence-loathing people. What exactly do you do to or with someone like
this? This would not be a hard question for some societies (the end of a rope
or in front of a firing squad) but for the Norwegians it was very complicated and agonizing. The collision
of Mr. Breivik with the criminal justice system of Norway exposed, to put in
kindly, some very serious inadequacies with the country’s legal system and brought
to light what I believe are some strange and incomprehensible features of their
society.
Was
Breivik sane? It depends. From the perspective of a lay person he certainly
appeared to be. He knew who he was and where he was. He planned, systematically
carried out and appeared to be pleased with his “accomplishments.” But this was a question for the doctors to
decide, the professionals, the psychiatrists.
How did they do? Their definitive,
expert, clinical opinion was: no ... well,
actually… yes. The first two
psychiatrists who examined him pronounced him insane, and under Norwegian law,
no prison cell for the most prolific mass murderer in Norwegian history. Even for the high minded, punishment-averse
Norwegians, this was too absurd. A
public outcry compelled the government to bring in a different team of
psychiatrists who opined that he was, indeed, sane. Was the first team or the
second team right? Who of us can say? Perhaps they should have resorted to a
coin-flip.
Breivik
went to trial and a panel of five judges rendered a verdict of guilty and
sentenced him to 21 years in prison, the maximum sentence under Norwegian law
for any criminal. That comes out to a
little over three months in prison that he will serve for each of his 77
victims. Ah, yes, the victims! But they
are of less concern than how Mr. Breivik’s psychic profile is construed and
what “treatment” might be his due. The
sentence, it should be noted, could be extended beyond the 21 years if it is determined
at the point of release that he remains a threat, a provision which exposes the
utter absurdity of such a sentence in a case like this: when is someone who has
proudly murdered 77 people no longer a threat? Who would be arrogant or stupid enough to ever
want to answer that question and be held to account? But even more to the point: what if we could somehow know that he was not a
threat? Should a man who has done something like this ever be permitted to walk
freely among other human beings? What kind of people lavish such concern over
someone who ravaged and murdered their children?
The
government prosecutors – that is correct, the prosecutors – were convinced that
Breivik was not criminally responsible (that he was indeed insane) and argued
(unsuccessfully) that he should go to a hospital rather than a prison. The defense attorneys, on the other hand,
were convinced that he was mentally intact. They prevailed. No case in
Norwegian legal history had ever produced this strange alignment of
prosecutorial-defense opinion. The question of sanity perhaps has a range that
extends beyond Breivik.
Why,
one might be tempted to ask, was the government so determined to render Mr.
Breivik as an insane person? The answer,
I suspect, is that insanity as an explanation for Breivik’s crime makes it all
very easy and tidy for everyone. The
“insanity” label relieves Breivik of both legal and moral responsibility – he
becomes just another patient attended to by doctors in a hospital – and as well
“Anders as insane” relieves everyone in Norway of having to contemplate a
criminal justice system that is limited to detaining a murdered of 77 people to
twenty-one years.
The
thirty-three year old Breivik who prior to his rampage lived with and was
attended to by his mother, it was reported,
will serve his sentence at Ila prison near Oslo where he will have
access to no less than three separate cells – one to sleep, exercise and study,
a sort of extended bed-n- breakfast. No
hard labor or bread and water for this prisoner. He will be able to read, write, keep himself
fit, and perhaps, if we may be so hopeful, improve himself. His “baseline” fortunately gives him a lot of
room. The father of one Breivik’s victims, a seventeen year old boy, made a bitter
observation. “Now he’s going back to his
boy’s room just with different walls, and exchanging his mother with a prison
guard bringing him prison food.” Indeed. Norwegians, if nothing else are most
attentive to the comfort of their prison population.
In
Norway we have a society that has nearly succeeded in completely medicalizing
morality. Maybe this is progress. I
think not.
