Just Torture?

            In the Black Mirror episode “White Bear,” a woman wakes up in a chair and in pain as she has no recollection of who she is or why she is there. When she goes out in public, she is followed by people who are constantly filming her and will not answer her questions or pleas for help. She is chased all day long by a group of people called hunters and she is constantly in a fight or flight type panic. In the end, she is captured but it is revealed to her that she is a criminal that is being punished for filming the murder of a little girl that her fiancé tortured and murdered. She is watched by an auditorium of people who clearly hate her as she learns who she really is.  She is publicly humiliated and sent back to her chair she began in and has her mind wiped to start it all over again the next day. A calendar shows that this routine had been going on for at least half a month already.

            Is does this punishment truly create justice or is it pure torture? Personally the woman did not deserve the extent of punishment she received. Yes, she herself aided in the heartless crime of kidnapping and murder of a young girl by filming the whole thing, but she did not deserve to be dehumanized in the way she was. In today’s prison system, many criminals sit in prison to think about the awful things they committed, but the way she was treated in “White Bear” is horrendous. At least for the death penalty the only torture besides death itself is the mental torture of knowing when your death date is. This poor woman is in a frantic and panicked state all day long and with little to drink or eat. She is in life or death mode every second and as the days go by her body and mind are getting weaker and weaker. There is no way that woman could survive doing it for months and months, at some point she has to die of exhaustion. Also, what is the point of having people come watch the torment of a criminal every day? To deter others from doing the same thing? The people acting and observing this woman’s torment is just as evil as the crime she committed. Personally if I were a criminal and I had to choose between death penalty or what that woman went through I would probably choose death penalty.