Peer Review

Flash Reflection One

For Flash Reflection One we were first asked to describe our personal beliefs on when society is justified in punishing an offender. For me, the answer to this justification has several stages for several different severities of crime. Capitol crimes such as murder undoubtedly deserve some form of punishment as murder is not a typical goal for a healthy member of society and receiving punishment for a crime of this magnitude would serve as a deterrence for others from committing such acts because they know the consequences. This stance on extreme crimes is similar to the majority of the population as seen in the “Rationales for Crime and Punishment” YouTube video when it states: “if we step out if the bounds of the social contract, the state has the power to punish us for such transgressions. This should only be done explicitly for the purpose of our collective protection” where the collective protection part is the key point here. In a utopia the “correct” answer would be that all crime is subject to equal punishment as crime itself is a violation of the social construct to which all members of a society are supposed to abide by.

However, for me personally I believe that a society is justified in punishing an offender when someone else has been reasonably harmed by the actions of an offender. I hold this stance primarily because of the key word “punishing” in the context of the original prompt as I believe that punishment should not be the main focus of the corrections system but rather rehabilitation should be. Again, in the case of capitol crimes there needs to be punitive actions yes but in cases like small property damage from graffiti from a teenager or young adult I feel that instead of incarceration the better option would be to attempt to address underlying factors as to why they felt the need to graffiti on property and how to address such behavior moving forward so they can learn why that is not acceptable behavior. Clearly I ascribe to the rehabilitation rationale for dealing with crime and the goal of punishment in society but I don’t think of rehabilitation as a punishment in the same sense as a lengthy incarceration sentence essentially equivocating to nothing more than a years and years long “time out” similar to what you would do to a toddler for bad behavior with no change in the behavior and instead a fostered hatred for those that put you in “time out”.

Despite my own feelings on what the goal of punishment should be in society, I cannot ignore that the most practical rationale is incapacitation. I think this is the most practical option because there are not enough resources to launch full programs to rehabilitate each and every criminal offender that there ever has been, and at this point in the corrections system’s lifetime after extending from a culture of simple incarceration and “throwing away the key” for criminals back in the days of the inception of the corrections system it would seem to be extremely hard to change the current system from a logistical standpoint.