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> It seems to me that one of the biggest questions on this issue that Americans need to face is: are you punishing or are you rehabilitating? It seems to me th
by jlgreco 13y ago
> It seems to me that one of the biggest questions on this issue that Americans need to face is: are you punishing or are you rehabilitating?
It seems to me that there is a third option: isolating. Some people we cannot cure, but should not be "punished". Even so, they need to be kept away from the general population for the sake of the population.
I personally think that using imprisonment as a sort of "punishment" is barbaric and has no place in a civilized society. It should only be used to rehabilitate or, barring that possibility, isolate. You have someone who just won't stop killing people and your psychologists are at a loss as to how to turn him into a safe productive member of society? By all means, keep him locked up and off the streets, but trying to frame this detainment as a "punishment" is how we start down a very dark road.
- gaelian 13y agoQuite so. The purpose of my simplified question was to contrast the concept of punishment with really any other option. Because I don't think America has faced the fact that many of its citizens still require punishment of criminals as opposed to rehabilitation, isolation or whatever may actually be a more appropriate and humane response, were religious or pseudo-religious doctrine taken out of the equation. I believe the privitisation of the penal system in the US has set the stage for all kinds of misdirected incentives. I wonder if some who benefit from the system as it stands are in fact quite happy to perpetuate the need for revenge/punishment. I do none the less understand the impulse for revenge on an individual level. Anyone who says they don't must have had a charmed life indeed. I just think it's time we start consciously removing such instincts from our penal systems.