Sometimes a single word is enough to cause discomfort.
Collective punishment.
A term that smells of history, of dark times, of a state that no longer asks who did what – but only to whom someone belongs. A word that one would actually only expect in the subjunctive in a constitutional democracy. As a warning. Not as a tool.
And yet it is now back on the table.
This time not in history books, but in courtrooms. Not as a relic, but as an instrument of modern security policy. The son deals drugs, the mother loses the apartment. The brother is convicted, the family stands at the door. That simple. That efficient. That frightening.
Of course, the argument is polished like a Sunday suit. It’s about order, about security, about protecting the neighborhood. About people who can no longer sleep at night because deals are made in the stairwell downstairs that should never have existed. The state, it is said, must remain capable of acting.
Capable of acting.
A nice word. It sounds like strength, clarity, decisive action. But it has a downside. Because the ability to act without restraint quickly becomes a hammer that only sees nails.
And suddenly families are those nails.
One could almost think responsibility is contagious. Like a disease spreading across the kitchen table. Those who live together are liable together – at least feeling wise. Legally clean? Perhaps. Morally? Well, yes.
But what does that mean concretely?
A mother who can no longer reach her son – is declared partly responsible. A father who has long since given up – becomes a public order offender. People who often stand at the margins themselves are pushed even further out.
That’s what they call prevention.
You can admirably be sarcastic about it: Finally, a solution that eliminates several problems at once. The dealer might be in prison – and his family immediately on the street. Efficiency is, after all, the order of the day.
But: what follows from that?
A state that begins to distribute guilt like flyers loses its most important virtue – differentiation. It stops distinguishing between perpetrator and environment, between responsibility and powerlessness. And this is exactly where the imbalance begins.
Because law is not a team sport.
It lives from looking closely, separating, weighing, doubting. From not saying: “You belong together, so you are liable together.” But rather: Who did what – and who did not?
The question is therefore not only how far collective punishment may go.
The real question is whether a rule of law state can even afford that.
Or whether, while fighting drug trafficking, it begins to lose something far more valuable.
Its own idea of justice.