EGALITARIAN JUSTICE versus RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. After the 2010 Soccer World Cup Final in which the Netherlands lost to Spain the manager of the losing team complained bitterly that they had been treated unfairly by the referee. Bert Van Marwijk pointed to the match statistics as proof of grotesquely biased decisions by the officials. The Netherlands had received 28 bookings compared to Spain's 19, and the Netherlands had been further penalised by having Heitinga sent off, meaning their team was reduced to ten men compared to Spain's eleven. Using statistics alone as a meaure of fairness that would indeed seem to indicate a heavy bias against the Dutch side. If we are to judge these things on an egalitarian basis one would expect the statistics to be evenly balanced at the end of the match and it is to this that Van Manwijk pointed. In an Egalitarian framework the penalties should have distributed evenly by the end point. In contrast a Retributive framework awards penalties according to infractions against an objective standard. The reality of that football match was that the Dutch team played an extremely dirty game involving some quite vicious fouls. Personally I think Marwijk's team was lucky not to have been down to nine men! It was thoroughly disgraceful behaviour on their part which led to the disproportionate number of bookings. But think about it, what if the referee had applied Egalitarian justice? That would have meant that the Spanish would have received an equal number of bookings. Think about the implications of that; in such a situation there is no incentive to play by the rules, in fact quite the opposite, you "may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb". There will inevitably be a deterioration in the standard of behaviour as perverse incentives are introduced by an Egalitarian/Statistical frame of justice. But let's face it you can't get more even-handed than condemning the innocent with the guilty!