Friday, May 4, 2007 - Crime and punishment :

Which do you think should be the more important aim for the legal and judicial processes: punishment or rehablilitation?

I feel that rehabilitation is a more important aim of the legal and judicial processes than punishment. The main reason stems out from the positive impacts of giving counselling, guidance and advice through rehabilitation to crime offenders outweighs the impacts of punishment.

Usually, rehabilitation is offered to crime offenders like drug consumers, pilfering, those who attempted suicide and other minor offences which can be solved by rehabilitation. I think that the aim of rehabilitation is to urge these people to mend their ways by understanding their needs and allocate resources to best help different people restore their morals values and self confidence.

I believe that rehabilitation is more effective than punishment in the sense that it uses long term professional help from trained counsellors or psychologists to encourage and change the mindset of offenders and give them vocational training during their prison term. This is done so that they would regain their impetus to live an optismictic life after being released from prison.

On the other hand, punishment serves like a retribution to crime offenders where the government avenges the crime by inflicting violence on them by caning, death sentence or even torture in come countries. In my opinion, punishment would lead crime offenders to feel more resentful and bear greater grudges against the society in the long run. This is because they would perhaps release their hatred and frustration of being punished into the society when they are released. They may demonstrate the violence that they experienced in prison to other potential victims like their friends and family members whenever they feel provoked.

In addition, some offenders may not learn their lessons and repeat their crimes again once they are let out of prison. I believe that this may be simply because during their prison term, there was no one to guide them out of their dark offences, no one to give support and encouragement to them. Few would go out of jail a changed man, optimistic and changed for a better. I suppose offenders who have undergone punishment are more likely to have low self-esteem and self- worth when they face discrimination against them from the society.

In a nutshell, the legal and judicial processes should include more rehabilitation for crime offenders. Crime offenders are so because of the way they are brought up- perhaps they did not receive enough education, parental guidance or of negative influence by external grounds. In my view, rehabilitation would ensure a higher percentage of crime offenders changing for the better as professional advice and care are extended to them in prison. It would definitely help offenders return to society as useful and kind people. However, it should not be applicable to those who repeat offences over and over again although they have received rehabilitation. These people are simply taking advantage of the benevolence of the law and thus I believe they should be given punishment instead.

The future ain't what it used to be. hugged teddy at 8:43 PM