Justice In Dexter's Definition Of Justice

What is justice? Justice is a noun defined by Webster 's dictionary as the process or result of using laws to fairly judge and punish crime and criminals. However, an individual 's perception of justice may be different from the standard dictionary definition. For example, Dexter is an American crime drama that takes an aspect of justice as its setting and uses it to invoke the audience to contemplate the idea of justice. With this in mind, the producers of Dexter make both a idealistic and realistic claim: the ideals of modern justice are catching criminals and penalizing them for their crimes, yet because the legal system and the people who serve it are flawed, the producers seek to critique the definition of justice and who has the right to enforce justice. This claim is most prominent in a flashback scene wherein, the …show more content…
He himself if also a criminal. Although he purges society of the criminals who have escaped incarceration, he does so with murder. The producers characterize the protagonist as such in order to drive home their claim. All criminals should be punished for their crimes, and the justice system and the people who are a part of it, such as the police, do the best of their abilities to apprehend them. However, not all can be caught and justice will sometimes remain unserved. To make up for this flaw one can take up the responsibilities himself and eradicate society of those who were able to flee the law. Unfortunately, this idea is idealistic at best. What one considers "criminal" or "good" is arbitrary. Some one, like Dexter or his father, who takes up justice into his own hands may not be serving justice at all. He may be doing more harm than good. Dexter has murder on his shoulders despite his doing society a favor. So the question arises on what is justice? And who has the right to enforce