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Saturday, 30 April 2016

What Of Justice

The first duty of society is justice. ~ Alexander Hamilton

The purpose of justice is keep people safe, punish law breakers, compensate victims, and lastly, it should make things as best as possible, as they were before. Anything short of these things, is not justice. Thus is why, society is as it is.

One of the greatest problems with any justice system, besides being slow, corrupt, and somewhat useless, would be that people haven't decided if prisons are to punish, rehabilitate, or to just keep criminals away from the public.

As we all know that three in one cup of soups aren't that very tasty, so do we know that, when you try to have the best of both worlds, things rarely work out. If a prison was to be all those things as mentioned in the previous paragraph, it would be highly expensive, and if a half attempt was made, it would do most likely none of them. 

So with that in mind, most governments go for just keeping criminals locked up, for the time being. One of the many problems of that is, it's expensive, very expensive. Moreover, it's more expensive then it should really be in light of human rights, and their beliefs in how we should treat other humans who were anything but humane to their victims.

Nevertheless, beside that issue, would be that, locking up someone changes nothing. While commonly believed that time changes everything, it does not. We might like to think that, but the only thing that changes people are experiences. However, the experiences that prisoners receive in prison, are not really the one's that you want them to learn.

Despite all that, it is not one of the biggest issues at hand. The biggest would be that, whenever a criminal does a crime and they go to prison, for them to go to prison, they had to take something out of society. Whether what they took be the peace, or an item from someone, a life, or whatever it be, they never repay it. Instead, for some reason, they just live in a place where they are all locked up.

How does that help society, not only has something been taken, society has to give back to the taker;Tax payers have to pay for their up keep, they don't don't pay ours. It's like the victim of an attack paying the medical fees of their attacker who injured their hand when attacking the victim.

The problem with the justice system is not that the prisoners suffer enough, but that they need to either be rehabilitated or they fix the mess that they made. They should some how pay for what they did, but not in the sense the pain they feel in prison, but what they give to their victims or back to society. When it comes down the line, with the justice system is the mistaken ideal, that if the prisoner is suffering, the victim is benefiting.

Laws are the very thing that holds society. However, whenever society has these laws broken, they must make things as they were. Otherwise, society starts to crumble. And while it may not seem important that rules are broken, Rome one of the mightiest empires was destroyed by corruption. They were so corrupt, till barbarians could just take whatever they wanted, because the empire was destroyed from the inside out.

With our society, it seems that we are realizing that hiding what we don't like in our society under the carpet is not working. It's a rude awakening, but with realization things will be only for the better. Like a man or woman realizing that their lifestyle is not healthy, so we must realize that our justice system needs change. Changed not just for prisoners and their victims, but for all of us.

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