Posted by
Loyal Democrat on Wednesday, May 09, 2007 11:13:33 PM
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The reason prisons are crowded is simply because we as a society too often fail in our responsibility to look out for the needs of others. If we were not so preoccupied with making our own individual lives better, we could see that many of our fellow citizens are in need of financial help or general assistance.
For instance. no car thief actually wants to take property that isn't rightfully his, but society has failed to teach such an individual the talents it takes to obtain a decent job that will provide the means of obtaining such an expensive item. Since society failed to teach the thief how to easily earn the funds to buy a car, then society has no right to complain when the talentless individual turns to thievery. When a person is driven to steal, they should receive our sympathy, not our wrath. Their theft is our fault, and it is our obligation to make amends for our failings.
Likewise, murderers are often mentally off balance, and it is no more proper for us to jail an imbalanced murderer than it would be for us to implement a policy whereby we incarcerate every mentally retarded person. Mental illness should be treated with compassion, not locked away because it is inconvenient to treat.
Pedophiles are another type of victim of societies failings. Often, pedophiles are found to be former victims of sexual abuse, so to punish them is akin to locking away a merchant that has been robbed. It is wrong for society to incarcerate the victims of a crime, and as our courts often discover, most pedophiles are the real victims. They typically feel rejected by a society that has allowed them to be abused, so rather than lock them away, we need to show them trust and kindness by inviting them to openly live among us. Showing trust will ease the sting of the crime that society has perpetrated against these victims, and it something that each and every one of us owe any child molester.
With all of this in mind, it is wrong for us to place thieves, murderers, and pedophiles in jail. As a society, we should have to deal with the problems that we have instilled into these victims, and not be able to conveniently tuck them out of sight.
This will allow us to free our jails for real criminals, the perpetrators of hate crimes and the deniers of Global Warming. |