Discursive essay

The only way to cut crime in our country is to make punishment more severe

 

 

I believe the situation in my area is on the same level as in the surrounding areas. We don’t have much major crimes like murder or rape though it happens just as frequently as drug dealing. Here the problem is poverty. Consequently so, poor people started stealing. As a result of this the number of robbery and mugging increases every day.

It is strongly felt by people that everyone deserves a punishment for what they’ve done and in order to teach them a lesson, these punishments need to be more severe. Criminals need to be locked up for longer periods or even life sentenced. They are for death penalty, too. It would be some kind of a cleaning. Cleaning the society from the ones who “poison” it. In one hand it’s very understandable that they want revenge on individuals that have taken away the life of their beloved. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Seems decent, doesn’t it?

Other people disagree and say that sick plants shouldn’t be ripped out of the soil, they should be fixed instead. Following this ideology of course not everyone can be fixed but it’s worth a try. So much money is spent on prisons, if we just shove all the criminals in there, we would do wrong for ourselves. They’d need even more money which means higher taxes for us. Not so bright idea now, right? Another argument against severe punishments is the judicial question. Who decides the seriousness of a crime? And who makes up the proper punishment for it? Sounds like people want to play God: decide between life and death. This is against human dignity because in principle everyone’s equal.

I’m two minded about this myself, can’t really decide on which side should I stand. But the one thing I know for sure is that no one is allowed to make decisions about others’ fate but themselves or God. And the fact that courts do this is not something I like the idea of.