How should people be punished for their crimes?

Question

Do you think people are punished fairly? Does the punishments fit the crime?

Answer 1

murder: death sentence (if u have iron clad proof)
rape: life in prison
crimes against children: life in prison/ death (depends on severity of crime)
possession of narcotics: few months in prison
theft: depends on what you stole and how much (hard to say)

thats what i think.

Answer 2

Whilst the punishments might not fit the crime, I feel this is something we need to look at in this country, very seriously.

Our prisons are overflowing. It is not always the right thing to do to keep locking people up. Whilst they have committed a crime, just locking them up for a few months does not make them become reformed people.

Whilst I still think they should be locked up, they should have the opportunity to learn to become good citizens - through training and education. And they should be able to PROVE that they are going to be able to go out into the world and function as law abiding people.

Many of these people have no respect for themselves or others. They have little (if any) education and no skills. They need to learn respect - for themselves and others.

Prison should not be seen as a soft option but an opportunity to make these criminals become decent people. They should not get to watch SKY TV, have relationships, have access to drink and drugs - any privileges should be earned whilst they are there. We are too soft in the UK and we are breeding a disaster for the future.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, I am a Christian, and Jesus said, "turn the other cheek" after disavowing the Old Testament "an eye for an eye." It's amazing to me how many Christians are selective in this. I think people should be locked up forever if they are a threat to society, but if we do to them what they've done to others, then we, as a society, are just as bad as they are. Also, with so many death penalty cases coming to light where the captive was later found innocent, but has already been executed, that means that we as a society committed murder. Should then, we ALL be punished the same way? That's the death penalty paradox.

Answer 4

Make the punishment fit the crime,what a criminal does,should be done to him.What really pi**es me off is parole,They should be made to do every minute of the sentence,& if they mess about in jail, the should have time added on.People who are an obvious danger to the public should never be freed.How can a system which locks up old ladies who cannot afford to pay their council tax,yet lets convicted murderers out of jail, be fair?

Answer 5

I think that in Britain, they are trying to dis-invent the concept of crime altogether. The philosophy seems to be, that it is everybody else's fault, and not the criminals. The scales of justice should balance, the punishment to fit the crime. There is far too much emphasis on rehabilitation and not punishment. In fact, I don't think that rehabilitation should enter the equation at all, that is down to the criminal. Once you take responsibility for rehabilitation away from the criminal, and he re-offends, he will blame you for failing to rehabilitate him.

Answer 6

It should depend on the crime. British justice is unfair. It seems if you speed and don't pay your fine you can be locked up for 5 years. But if you murder someone in cold blood and there is a clear movie of you doing it, you were seen doing it have the weapon with finger prints over it and no doubt you did. You get a 1 year suspended sentence.
I think execution is not a punushment due to errors in justice. It is no where fair but in this day and age it's not easy to keep up with the new crimes and some crimes seem to be getting so nasty that the current laws aren't good enough. For example the Bulger killers and they get a new life for their crimes. I hope the Sun find out who they are and let us all know.

Answer 7

I'm not sure that punishment is really the point? That's like looking for revenge, and by the time a case gets heard, people have had a year or so to wait & think it over.

Isn't the whole point to make sure it doesn't happen again to others? You can't change what's happened & they can't change what's happened. I don't care if you wax their legs & pull out their teeth, or dip them in boiling oil, what's done is done and you can't either wipe the victim's memory, and it wouldn't be right to try to.

If you think they'll do it again, then prove they did it and how, find out why they did it, so you can all learn how such a person is made. If they didn't understand other people's pain, kill them outright in six months from now. Forget what's not real to them. Stop preventing suicides in prisons, if they did what they did, and know it, make very sure of them and let them get on with it.

It's cheap to distract yourself with the mission of making the perpetrator suffer. You entertain yourself, but it makes no difference to their victim, it denies their reality. The whole system is about not acting in anger.

And you have to prove that the person you have there is the real perpetrator. I don't care if they had their reasons - if they kill or rape children, they should die. You can't afford to have them around.

But it's not about a lynching, or to see them suffer, is it? It's to make sure they are incarcerated for long enough, for a bad enough crime, that they will never be able to have any children, to repeat what they did. In case it was a genetic thing. That's why they lock people up for their childbearing years. That's where it comes from.

So who cares? If you all agree that you have the right person who did it, and you know that they weren't operating under duress, and you can't cure them, sure, I think, if it's bad enough, kill them. If they have killed twice, for example, and you can prove it in a court of law, kill them. It's not good enough or safe to have them prowling around preying on people who pay for their jailing.

If you don't have enough jails, well, build them, and if you all can't afford to build more, ask yourselves if all the energetic people locked up are not missed?

But ask yourself also if your parking fine was filed under Murder 1, would you go along with that for society's good?

Answer 8

I believe jail and prison, are hard to endure, and can be ran in a humane fashion. They generally are but there are many problems in the justice system here in the US. from privatized prison to prosecutors wanting to have success at any cost and further their careers. Same with detectives. We have to punish crime but we need to clean things up and see it's done fairly.

Answer 9

People shouldn't be punished for their crimes.
Punishment does not deter crime. All who believe it does are wrong. Someone criminals are kept secure either because they are a danger to society, or society is a danger to them.
Incarceration is a method of crime prevention that all agree doesn't work, yet presently is the only method at our disposal.

Answer 10

I think the punishment should fit the crime. I'm not suggesting you should have someone rape a rapist or kill a killer, that's just a mess but I think criminals should have to spend their incarceration contributing to a cause that prevents their crime and they should be employed to make a financial or labor contribution to society. Criminals should all recieve therapy as if they were asylum inmates.

Answer 11

For some crimes which do not harm other people directly people should be reprimanded. like stealing food made to do community work. But for seroius crimes like rape or murder. They should be punished severley. Like hanged so other criminals learn a leason