Victim Alienation Offenders, however, are not the only ones alienated by the justice system. Victims' needs are neglected as well. Victims often experience a need to be empowered. This involves overcoming the sense that the offender controls their psyche, by experiencing justice as well as healing. These needs are never addressed by the present retributive system.
Retributive justice is primarily negative and backward looking.
To begin with, there exists a substantial gap between the level of crime perceived by the public and the actual level thereof within the community. This, in turn, influences the perceptions the public have concerning the ways in which crime in the community should be dealt with. These processes are driven by a philosophy of retribution which fails to preserve, at the very least, human dignity and, as a result, people are brutalized while crime rates continue to escalate. 2 Extract from 'An Argument for Rehabilitation' written by myself for the Institute of Criminology, University of Cape Town, 1995. The author is aware that the minority of US prisons do not fit this description.