Hi peter,

>>>Don't agree. Same in Dutch language and culture. You may be right that (Dutch) judges want more proof than 'hey, you black rat' in order to convict someone. But maybe that's one of the reasons why so many citizens feel there's a big gap between the population and the courts.
>>
>>Well the problem is that people have different ideas of what discrimination is (at least I seem to have a different definition), so there is confusion. In order to agree upon what is discrimination there have to be some rules describing discrimination.
>>
>>I simply can't imagine subjective rules where historical suppression, type of ethnicity, cultural aspects beeing part of the pure definition, because it is impossible to have a uniform conclusion do to interpretation differences. As stated by thomasW, it seems more have to do with hyper-sensitivity rather than rational thinking.
>
>Hyper-sensitivity? I'd say 'sensitivity', versus 'rationality'. But I think it is time we should agree to disagree. I know of no new arguments anymore to bring to the front.

Well I don't have any ammonution left either, unless re-iterating the same arguments. I agree we should agree to disagree. Howover I'd like one thing to make clear. My definition of what is discrimination or not is indeed rational, as I think it should be. However I recognize that statements like 'Black rat' and 'blonde airhead' are highly offending/insulting and indeed can come accross threatening. However, IMO, it just does not fit in my (rational) definition of discrimination.

>>Therefore I simply disagree with your suggestion that many citizens feel there is a big gap between population and the court. We have a court for a very good reason. Kees B., would be dead if we did not have one, while after 4 years we know he is innocent.

>>The majority of the population has no idea about our juridical system and reacts in reflexes and emotions, but that is simply not the way you can practise justice. It has to be rational or else it is not defendable. We can disagree with the lenght of detention the punishment, the security of TBS people, but all in the end we do not have a clue what we are talking about. We have to leave that up to the court.

>Your faith in the judges is bigger than mine, I guess.

Faith in judges or justice in general? Well this always a difficult topic and normal people tend to look from a very fixed angle. For example whenever on TBS convicted escapes and kills someone while on the run (Last june or so), or when big mistakes happen in a trail (e.g Puttense moordzaak, KeesB, Paskamermoord) everyone falls over justice. In a sense I think that is correct. Justice should learn from their mistakes. OTOH, in some cases we really talk about incidents (appearantly) wrong judgements (TBS cases). We are really quick to have an opinion on this, without having the faintest clue of what that means in practise. Someone convicted to TBS on early age should have a chance to prove he can return to society at some point or else you have to hold all of them for the rest of their lives. That in itself is inhuman. People with psychological problems often can return to society after treatment. Not giving them a chance to prove they can be part of society is a crime in itself. That is why TBS clinics do exist.

I'm not going to say that I'm an expert in this field, but I have some software running at some jails and TBS clinics and learned a lot esspecially from the TBS clinic.

Justice is like most jobs a human job. Humans make mistakes. We accept a programmer making mistakes, We accept the carpenter to make mistakes, etc. However from some jobs we don't. We don't accept surgeons to make mistakes and we don't accept justice to make mistakes, just because the consequenses can be so dramatic. But we have face reality, that we all make mistakes. That is human nature.

Walter,