Essay criminals should be cured not punished
Answers
Punishment instills fear in the criminal and prevents him from repeating his offence. If the sentence is a severe one like imprisonment or even death, many will think twice before committing a crime. Moreover, others will feel that justice is being done.
However, there could be where the criminal does not deserve severe punishment. There may be some particular reasons for committing a crime. For instance, a criminal may have come from a broken family or have psycho logical problems. Therefore, reformation could serve as a better alternative in this case. Reformation tries to trace the root cause of the crime and attempts to change the criminal’s attitude and behavior.
Reformation centers employ professional psychologists and teachers who try to understand and guide the criminals. The criminals are also taught useful skills such as woodcarving, wiring and plumbing so that they can find jobs after their release.
However, there are disadvantages in reformation too. Criminals who commit heinous crimes may pretend to have psychological problems and be admitted into reformation centers. There, instead of being punished, they receive kind treatment. This would of course outrage the public.
In conclusion, I feel that both punishment and reformation do help to solve the problem of crime. Hence, both the approaches could be adopted. Whether a criminal should be punished or reformed however, would depend on each particular case and careful consideration.
Answer:
While all creatures of God respect the Divine will, man has repeatedly manifested a satanic identity. No man is born a sinner, they say. Destroy the sin but not the sinner. But is this always a practical solution?
Christ warned us against being presumptuous enough to stone a sinner unless we were free of sins. Ramakrishna would agree. The fire of love melts the most-stone hearted sinner. Ashoka and Akbar in the past and Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King in the last century have demonstrated that opponents can be overpowered with love.
But there is no gainsaying the fact that this world witnesses a constant struggle between good and evil which is aggravated by the machinations of certain people with vested interests. Terrorism threatens the very future of mankind today as intolerance rules the roost. Domestic fury and fierce civil strife are as much a part of the Gaza strip as it is of Kashmir. Different periods in history have failed to communicate to man the futility of violence and crime.
The two World Wars, the nuclear holocaust in Japan, the communal riots in the summer and autumn of 1947 when humans slew each other like goats—the crimes committed against humanity have been endless. Would Gandhism work here? Would our freedom fighters have been successful if they had the Nazis or Stalin to deal with instead of the British? Would the ruler who demolished twenty- seven Jain and Hindu temples to construct the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi or those that destroyed the Babri Masjid deserve to be forgiven? Can they ever be made to learn to respect humanity? History does not support the utopian view that forgiveness can make a wolf turn sheep.