[ I appreciate that there are potentially tough moral questions this whole issue, so it was most convenient when I came across an article on the BBC News website which, as ever, talks about this far more eloquently than I ever could. The original BBC article specifically related to the 5 British men released from Guantanamo Bay this week, but I think you'll agree has far wider significance.]
What would it be reasonable to do, for example, if I were to give you a dozen eggs and told you it was highly likely that at least one was lethally poisoned, but I didn't know which? Prudence would demand that you throw them all away rather than risk death by omelette.
But what if the "bad eggs" are human beings? If I were to say of twelve people that it was highly likely that at least one was a terrorist, would you be justified in treating all twelve as though they were guilty? Justice would trump prudence, and we would have no choice but to allow the possibility that a terrorist would go free rather than incarcerate the innocent.
But although justice would weigh more heavily here than prudence, prudence does not count for nothing at all. Indeed, when the stakes are very high we might agree that prudence, not justice, ought to prevail. If we knew that one of a group of 12 people had the capacity to detonate a nuclear device in central London, then we should detain all twelve until we found out which one it was.
Those who disagree with the way in which America is treating suspects in its war on terror are taking issue not so much with a fundamental principle as with the assessment as to what the risks are in placing justice before prudence.
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For the majority of us, the problem is not how we implement justice, but how we respond to those who have been through the system and emerged without charge. Do we have the moral fibre to act as justice demands and treat the freed as innocent, despite the reasonable suspicions we may have about them?
Would we allow ourselves to discriminate against many innocent people just because some time in the future might find that someone who was released was guilty after all?
We have to accept that justice is served better when we risk freeing the guilty than it is when we risk locking up the innocent. To behave as decent citizens we must sometimes put prudence, usually so reasonable a creature, to one side and respect the rights of those who have not been found guilty in a court of law.
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