Reperations for Sterlizations

North Carolina, hope of flight and apparently sterilizations without consent is proposing to pay reperations to the tens of thousands of victims of compulsory sterilizations performed in hospitals across the state. Now there's a lot of talk about reperations and it almost seems as if we've become like the Japanese, willing to absolve evil with a dollar figure. Rather than punishing Nazi war criminals we took checks from them. Families of murder victims now sue their murderers in criminal court. But financial rewards don't punish or uproot evil, they only put an exact dollar figure on it so that future villains can look at it like an insurance executive, determining what their worst case payout will have to be.

In place of that I propose convictions not reperations. Many of the doctors responsible, the politicians are still undoubtedly alive. Prosecute them. If done in wartime this would be a war crime, prosecute it in peacetime as one. Yes they were following orders but these were evil orders in violation of basic constitutional and human rights. If nothing else it will stand as a testament that you cannot simply do wrong and then expect the taxpayers to foot the bill with reperation payments. Those responsible, whether they were issuing or following orders, should be held responsible.