> I really don't think that there would be such a thing as an anarchist
> court system. Anarchists will point out that the methods of justice
> should be left up to community decision. Anarchists have written and
> talked about some alternatives to the current system of injustice, such
> as "restorative justice."
I have heard only good things about the various restorative justice pilot programs that have been adopted around the U.S. The problem is that they are all limited to juvenile offenses or petty offenses. The programs I am aware of all work along these lines: suppose some kids vandalize an old man's house and in lieu of criminal prosecution, they agree to meet with the victim with a mediator and discuss how their actions have harmed the victim and their community. To "restore" the victim and the community for their crimes, the kids might agree to do yard work for the victim for the summer, or pay him some sort of restitution, or whatever.
This kind of stuff is great, and it ought to be expanded. The question is what do you do about more serious crimes? Yes, there's the point about how the state and capitalism actually create "crime" -- and there's definitely a lot of validity to this argument. However, there are some serious crimes that will always be with us, like crimes of passion and sexual offenses against young children -- and it is difficult to see how the restorative justice model could address these crimes to the satisfaction of the victims or "the community" at large. Some crimes are so serious that some sort of violence (incarceration, corporal punishment, etc.) is going to be necessary to achieve deterrence and/or retribution.
> I think that a community should have some kind of justice system, but a
> standing court system makes me nervous. The current system is based on
> the rule of laws, which are an abstract system that is applied to all
> cases, irregardless of circumstances. I'd like to see a system which
> prioritizes the specifics and circumstances of each "case".
I guess the question is, how much of a justice "system" could you have without the rule of laws? Sure, laws cannot encompass individual circumstances (if they did, they wouldn't be laws), so laws have serious problems. Fine.
But if a guy molests a six year old and the community comes to a consensus that his eyes should be gouged out, he should be castrated, and then his head should be cut off and put on a stake on the main road into town -- is that any better than having a law that says he has to be imprisoned for 20 years regardless of what "the community" thinks? Maybe this kind of justice would be more authentic or something because it'd come from "the community" rather than the state, but would it be better?
Again, I ask these questions out of curiosity (even sympathy) rather than hostility -- it's just that I've never been satisfied with the answers I get to such questions from anarchists. There seems to be an unwillingness to admit that criminal justice (at least for the kinds of serious crimes that will always be with us) in an anarchist society could easily be a hell of a lot bloodier.
-WD