Who Is "Justice" Actually For?

In Black Mirror's "White Bear", we are first introduced to a young woman in a mysterious room. She has no recollection of who she is or what occurred before she awoke. She sets out to learn more about how her setting and, with any luck, who she is. She is then led by a guide claiming to know where they need to go to be "safe". This journey takes her through much anguish and legitimate torture, with an uncountable number of bystanders merely filming her ordeal, before finally reaching her destination. Once she reaches the titular "White Bear" facility, all is revealed. We learn that she and her now-deceased fiance kidnapped a young girl. After torturing the young girl, the two eventually killed her, with Victoria (the main character of the episode) filming the entirety of the proceedings. At this point, the viewer understands that she is being made to relive her sins, though on the receiving end of the unquestionably cruel actions. She will have to live with the full knowledge of her guild, while now having a heightened understanding of what the young girl suffered in her final moments.

That is, she lives with this knowledge for a few hours, until her short-term memory is wiped, rendering her incapable of remembering the ordeal she just endured. Immediately after seeing this, my first response was a simple question: what was the point? If the entire ordeal is structured around making her relive her past crime as the victim in order to understand its full severity, why would you then make her forget it entirely? Only a few minutes later (if that), we see a new scene with a sign that reads, “White Bear Justice Park”. It continues to reveal that is a theme park in the vein of “justice”. Park visitors are able to participate in the day’s proceedings as one of many nameless watchers, who do nothing but record the events on their phones.

It is this transformation of the crime into an entertainment event that most bothered me about the episode. The punishment fails at making Victoria empathize with the victim, as she never remembers what she experienced. Where the punishment does succeed is in making Victoria repeatedly suffer great trauma, with it being entirely plausible that she will eventually break. As the inter-credits scenes continued, it became more and more clear. The only ones benefitting from this punishment were those enjoying the park. I think this is a perfect example of how “justice” isn’t necessarily for the guilty.

However, I also wonder how this compares to our current system. Though we don’t currently do anything quite like this, is our system better? We do not parade our criminals on this scale (i.e., beyond the initial media coverage a select few cases receive), instead opting for what feels more like an “out of sight, out of mind” approach. I don’t think we should even begin to approach what is portrayed in “White Bear”, but is our approach actually “justice”? I know it’s been discussed at length, but I believe that, once again, we need to revisit our concept of “justice”, and ask ourselves what we are truly accomplishing.