Appealing to a Resistant Audience: The Unpopular Argument - Essay Example

eally glad that you have given me an opportunity to address you and to share with you my views on how we can better deal with law-breakers in our country. This topic is indeed quite important and relevant because it impacts our society directly. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to first thank you most sincerely for your concerted effort in trying to ensure that there is law and order in our societies. If it were not for your efforts ladies and gentlemen, our society would be in a state of anarchy, completely without law and order.

Having said that, ladies and gentlemen allow me now to delve into the issue of how best we can deal with law-breakers. This issue is, of course, is a controversial issue in criminology because there are conflicting theories of crime causation, and therefore, different views of how the state should deal with criminals. As law enforcement officers and prison officers, I am well aware that you strongly believe that criminals should be imprisoned and punished accordingly in proportion to the gravity of their crimes.

This view of, of cause, is grounded on sound reasoning and has a number of merits. One of the main principles upon which the idea of imprisoning criminals is based is the idea that punishing criminals by imprisoning them deters crime because other potential criminals will desist from committing crimes for fear of being imprisoned. Also, the imprisoned law-breakers may not repeat the same crime again for fear of going to prison again. This argument is indeed valid and based on sound reasoning.

The second view upon which the idea of imprisoning prisoners is based is the idea that imprisoning and punishing criminals does justice to both the offender and the offended person. The reasoning here is that, denying the law-breakers freedom and imprisoning them is a way of making the law-breaker to “pay back” for the crimes that they have committed. Again, this argument is valid and based on sound reasoning because crimes should not