The Reason Why We Punish Criminals
By Soomin
The US prison system is now criticized due
to its huge population—according to The
Week, the number of criminals in jail in the US is the same as one quarter of the world’s imprisoned population—and its inefficiency at preventing lawbreakers from breaking the rules again. The experts pointed out that this inability of the US
prison system is caused by lengthy sentences for misdemeanors, particularly by
the three-strike rule and the high five-year recidivism rates. States
such as Texas and Hawaii are now making new policy to solve this problem
especially by adopting new prison rules focused more on rehabilitation and less on punishment. Many states nowadays send drug criminals to re-hab programs
rather than to prisons to help them better reintegrate into the society better. One
famous example that jail is to correct and rehabilitate the prisoners not to
punish is the one in Norway. Even Anders Breivik who killed 77 innocent people in
2011 lives in an ‘apartment prison’ with bedrooms and a kitchen.
Actually Norwegian way of dealing with
convicted criminals is very extreme way that focus mostly on rehabilitation and
the human right of the offenders. Still, however it gives a good point to
discuss about the essence of punishment; why we punish criminals? Modern legal
researchers said that there are mainly four purposes of legal punishment. Retribution,
deterrence or public education, incapacitation and rehabilitation. Retribution
means punishment as public revenge. Punishment as deterrence or public
education is a kind of warning possible lawbreakers to think twice before they
commit crimes. Legal penalties like incarceration are considered as the incapacitation
of criminals since while they get separated from the society they will not
break the rules. Finally, as criminals are also members of the society,
rehabilitation is concerned so that their offending behaviors would corrected
and they would behave well in the society after they get released from jails. When
one purpose of the punishment, rehabilitation in this case, becomes the main reason
for the whole then we cannot say we meet the goal of punishment.
Moreover, when it comes to ‘public revenge’
the controversy over ongoing reforms on prison system becomes more complicated.
The reason why we feel resistance against the Norwegian prison system in spite
of the fact that the five-year recidivism rates is relatively low in there, is
that we do not see the criminals are paid back by what they have done to
others. We think if somebody hurt others then he/she should be hurt as well.
This is the fundamental of the justice we believe in.
People have established this kind of
justice since people started to make social norms, the very beginning of the human
history when Hammurabi stated “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Punishing
rule-offenders is a way of paying back, establishing the justice. In other
words, revenge has been a means of justice and one purpose of punishing criminals
throughout history. People, especially state actors, however, prefer a so-called
civilized way of revenge; let the government do it for the people. The concept
of public revenge emerged as governments, modern or not,
gained power to establish the law and take their authority to force people to
follow it. The establishment of public revenge and the banning private revenge are like two sides of the same coin—governments enact revenge as the representatives
of justice rather than allowing people to take revenge on others personally.
This means governments which make private revenge illegal have the responsibility to take revenge instead of the
victims. The banning of private revenge can be justified when the governments, which are the only agent that hold the right to revenge, take responsibility for it. Less tough sentences on trivial crimes would be welcomed because the
damage they do are often so small or sometimes there is no obvious victim of
those offences; for example, drug crimes. However, for some serious crimes like murder, fraud, rape, terrorism, and so on, this is a totally different situation. Governments have the right to impose tough sentences, and they hold the responsibility to punish them. They are the only one who can take the revenge for the victims and the left families.
Soomin, Good writing! You include evidence from the article and your analysis of that evidence. You need to add an image, though.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard someone use the terms "public revenge" and "private revenge" before. Your use of these terms made me pay attention differently than if you would have used "justice" for example. Good writing and thanks for making me think!
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