- 31 Jan 2017 20:27
#14770314
...so I was thinking that the idea of sentencing people for a number of years in prison is rather arbitrary. There's no real point to why prisoners serve x number of years for committing a crime.
Perhaps society needs to come up with another way of judging this in a way that actually matches the crime that's committed. Maybe prisoners should have to perform community service until the deed is paid off. Maybe they should have to express themselves in a way that shows thorough evaluation of why what they did is wrong.
I say this especially because it would encourage us to address why crimes are committed. Many people are provoked into committing crimes due to the structure of their circumstances, or because of scenarios that aren't kept track of. If we consider the actions needed to adjust someone's mental state or to compensate a victim, then we have to consider what the mental state or compensation is in the first place.
In turn, we can discover that indeed, many criminals do not deserve the sentences that we give them. On the other hand, we can also realize that some criminals deserve worse sentences than what we thought they deserved because they were actually impacting people more deeply than we thought they were. We could also end up sentencing people for minor infringements like duress, intimidation, harassment, and provocation which are typically used as criminal defenses instead of recognized as crimes.
Perhaps society needs to come up with another way of judging this in a way that actually matches the crime that's committed. Maybe prisoners should have to perform community service until the deed is paid off. Maybe they should have to express themselves in a way that shows thorough evaluation of why what they did is wrong.
I say this especially because it would encourage us to address why crimes are committed. Many people are provoked into committing crimes due to the structure of their circumstances, or because of scenarios that aren't kept track of. If we consider the actions needed to adjust someone's mental state or to compensate a victim, then we have to consider what the mental state or compensation is in the first place.
In turn, we can discover that indeed, many criminals do not deserve the sentences that we give them. On the other hand, we can also realize that some criminals deserve worse sentences than what we thought they deserved because they were actually impacting people more deeply than we thought they were. We could also end up sentencing people for minor infringements like duress, intimidation, harassment, and provocation which are typically used as criminal defenses instead of recognized as crimes.