Crime, Justice, and Punishment - Essay Example

Crime, Justice and Punishment Man has for long cried on the view that he is not properly treated by the people who rule his life. This has been an on-going saga for ages now. To add some pointers on the discussion, we find that indeed this is something that has a lot of solid basis to it and not just a mere faux pas is attached with it. Punishment is something that is directly or indirectly meted out on an individual and within the context of that very punishment; there are issues which look at the moral and ethical side of things. Punishment is something that needs to be understood in the light of the crime that has been done and not merely for the sake of ill treatment and harsh actions which are put on the offender. The basic purpose of punishing someone is to make him understand that he has committed a wrong and he should be made to pay for it, though not in terms of cash or something but in a manner that will do some good for this human being in the long run. Punishments have to be understood in the proper context, so as to state the least. We will delve further through the course of this paper as to how punishment is linked with morality, equality, rights of human beings and just about everything that comes under the banner. Equality is man's most perilous metaphor whereby it has haunted and made a fool of him for a number of years now. Equality and indeed justice takes into account a number of differences amongst people, top of the list of which includes the racial ones that are either ancestral which may be hereditary or inborn as well as cultural, i.e., procured from society after one's birth. This one can usually be changed or at times totally removed with the enforcement of changes that might be social in nature. These changes are in essence, autonomous of man's laws, rules, regulations and customs, except over a period of many eras. Justice particularly has a number of characteristics as it basically chalks down the conditions and necessities that are linked up with it. Justice within a society is not all about being fair but also holds a great deal of importance on being just and timely. It is a true saying that justice delayed is justice denied; for this reason justice takes both these things when it is defined in the truest sense of the word. Justice is radically associated with the mighty men - the rulers and the ones who govern a particular area or a regiment of soldiers. Justice thus holds supreme importance for these brave men as they are the ones who lay the foundation for the society to be a part of the equal rights and hence the fairness fable in general. The concepts of civil rights and of civil law are both functions of the concept of civil society whereby it is that bubble of private action free of government control. It is not free of government action, because government action secures the nature of civil society by the protection of persons against criminal wrongs. The essence of civil society is thus that people are left by government to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, while the government protects the citizens from criminal wrongs of violence, theft, fraud as well as many others. The most violent and heinous crimes committed anywhere in the world are by the youth. These are organized and in a proper manner, with no shortcomings at any end on anyone's part. Research has found out that the youth are the ones who are most definitely involved in this menace. At times, the politicians are the ones who use them in order to hold protests against any civil or governmental norm prevalent in a certain region of the world which enrage these youth. Studies have shown that the extreme cases of criminal behaviours all involved having youth at their expanse. They not only bring with them terror for the common citizens but also introduce a huge dust of alcohol, abuse of drugs and many other forbidden things in the society. The future generation should be made to stay away from this peril as much as possible. Studies show that these young people are those who are at frenzy with their home and family or else the ones who do not have any one to look after them in their childhood and teenage years. They have an inferiority complex attached with their souls, which they very dearly want to get rid of. The crimes give them pleasure for certain time duration and heal their wounds but actually these never leave a lasting impression on their personality, rather they become more evil and bad. These youth sometimes, are the young black and brown fatherless ones who live within the inner streets of our cities who do not have any mentors, ministers or monitors to look after their needs and wishes. They are the ones who feel left out and think of themselves as nothing more than an ordinary piece of crap for the whole society and human era. Poverty and lack of education in their lives make them the most vulnerable amongst all human populations of any country or for that matter, the world. Committing a crime is not a remedy to get one's hopes and needs fulfilled but there is a certain way to do everything and quite rightly so every society has some pre-set ways to go about the same in the most simplest and accommodating (for its citizens) of manners possible. The organizations, not really the ones that are famous and well known, are also involved in organizing crimes, which are exploiting the younger generation of today. These create networks between their different branches and then go about performing their so-called duties to the society in a negative fashion. Mafias, gangs, triads and many more are just a few to be named as the well-set organizations in today's world who are organizing crimes, hiring people for the same and then committing the evil through these people, mostly involving the youth. These organizations are also quite diligent in spreading the use of drugs and alcohols in the young blood. They operate in a secret capacity and cannot be easily tracked down by law enforcing agencies and the like. At certain places or areas, these organizations have illegally and immorally patched up with these agencies and the police departments to carry out their heinous and atrocious evils in the society. A commoner in today's society is enticed every now and then to newer and more fancy products and indeed a similar way of life. For this, he wishes to have more money and if he works, he expects his employers to pay him more than his actual wage. This does not happen in the real world and eventually the youth, with their hot blood fuming inside, take up committing crimes and start earning instant and lavish money. They believe this is their right and don't want to be left out on any account when compared with any other superior individual of the society. The wages for the low-skilled workers had its sudden decline in the early 70s, which spanned over a period of 20 years, ending up round about in the early 90s of the last century. This decline resulted in a drift, which changed the demographic impact that was the basis of crime all these years as well as of the crack cocaine effects of the 80s, to name just a few. Grogger thinks that with the wages for low-skilled workers on the rise in recent years, the crime rate will definitely take a U-turn in the positive direction. He is quite optimistic on this notion. Crime is on the rise in the world and studies and surveys suggest that the same will continue to do so in the years to come. These rates have always been on the hill when a society is a multicultural, industrialized and democratic one. Similar is the case in the United States at present. Also, a new trend has set in where the least crime affected nations have reported higher felony rates than ever before, suggesting that there is something more than just wages and low-skilled workers' salaries. Interestingly, these nations do include the most economically feasible platforms for its countrymen. Crimes such as rape, robbery, assault, and murder for a meager amount of money have been on the rise in countries like Hungary, Scandinavian nations as well as the more sound and developed nation like the United Kingdom. Captivatingly, the highest crime rates have been reported in the most developed nation of the world, United States, negating all the facts supporting the thesis of low wages and the like. These crime rates are on the downfall in the country ever since economy has begun to stabilize and people getting what they strive for in every field of life. Similarly, street crime has been on the decline as well for almost two decades now. White-collar crime is one form of crime that is on the escalation everywhere in the Western world. It ranges from breach of trust in highly technologically skilled societies to fraudulent charges and computer pilfering. It has been estimated to continue for an indefinite period of time in the future generations. This sort of crime is difficult to define and hence few countries have been able to ascertain its origin, its perspectives and its rationale. This one is literally very hard to describe and examine and equally harder to enforce and arbitrate. The irony with white-collar felonies is that government and the people in particular do not pay heed to its curtailment and if something for the better is not done in this era, then it will surely become a super menace in tomorrow's age. Adding to the discussion, we see that the Juvenile courts are different from the courts that bring into light the issues that are raised by those with respect to the adults in the society. The juvenile courts are in essence quite a bit different and perplexing to understand for one and all when one gets an insight on their functioning, working boundaries and the manners in which they actually carry out their processes and indeed give their rulings in the courts of law day in day out. However, strict implications are in place so that these could be somewhat made parallel with what the adult courts do at the end of the day, though with a different rule and following for that matter so that the youth of any given period of time does not suffer at the hand of the prevalent justice system which fails to keep its word and grant punishment to not only the adults but also the related young ones. The United States Bureau of Prisons (BOP) handles more than two hundred and thirty juveniles and their average age is nearly seventeen years. The United States is one of only six countries to execute the juveniles. There are sixty-eight juveniles sitting on death row for crimes committed as juveniles. Forty-three of those inmates are minorities. People, who are too young to vote, drink alcohol or drive with speed, are held to the same standard of responsibility as their adult counterparts. In prisons, they argue that the juveniles become targets of older, more hardened criminals, which is quite true indeed. Brian Stevenson, Director of the Alabama Capital Resource Center says that they have totally given up in the idea of reform of rehabilitation for the very young. Similarly, Leading to Prison Juvenile Justice Bulletin Report has shown that two-thirds of juveniles detained for a number of violent offenses were released or put on probation as a matter of fact. Only slightly more than one-third of youths that were convicted with homicide were transferred to adult criminal courts. Hence these laws began changing as early as 1978 in New York to try juveniles over the age of 12 years who had committed violent crimes as adults used to carry out. However, even since the laws changed only twenty percent of serious offenders served any time. The decision of whether to waive a juvenile to the adult or criminal court is made in a transfer hearing. The two major criteria for waiver are the age of the child and type of offense alleged in the petition. Some jurisdictions require the child to be over a certain age and charged with a felony, while others permit waiver if the child is over a certain age regardless of offense. Still yet, others have no conditions. Juveniles can be tried in all stated in one of three ways, either by Concurrent Jurisdiction in which the prosecutor has the discretion of filing charge offenses in either juvenile or criminal court. Other one says that their can be Excluded offenses in which the legislature excludes from juvenile court jurisdiction certain offenses that are either very minor, such as traffic or fishing violations, or very serious, such as murder or rape and lastly the Judicial waiver which states that the juvenile court waives its jurisdiction and transfers the case to criminal court. Barry Feld who is a Juvenile Law Scholar has proposed that waivers to adult courts shall be made mandatory for the serious crimes. Those promoting the crime control model believe that the overriding purpose is protection of the public, deterrence or violent juvenile behavior, and the incarceration of serious youthful offenders in the adult criminal justice system. The rehabilitative justice model view this as an attack on the juvenile justice system, but crime control advocates consider such steps a necessary response to a rising juvenile violence rate. The federal prison system is built for adults and has one hundred sixteen thousand of them. The number of youths has already risen from one hundred and eleven in 1990. There are not many talks of how they will handle more youths just that they are going to get tough. Youths can land in federal prison for violations of federal law such as drug trafficking and bank robbery or for crimes on federal property. Most are in for felonies committed on Indian reservations. Native Americans make up two-thirds of all juveniles in the BOP system. What these people are doing is not meeting the needs of those children in terms of rehabilitation. An audit team found that each youth gets just twenty hours a week of programs including schooling, vocational training, counseling, a and mental health services; if that. It is also known that most of the juveniles have serious problems with alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine so they need some licensed counselors to address those addictions. The significant question here is that whether the purpose of punishment is to make the offender into a good person or destroy his own self for good. This needs to be answered in the light of the discussion that we have done above. The morality angle seeks to find an explanation for the same in an ethical zone, one that limits the punishment from torturous ways and means rather making the offender pay for something that is most prized to him, though not necessarily in terms of money or valuables. It could be his time that he loves spending with his family or even his degrees that he has earned by getting himself educated over a period of quite a few years. Punishment's sole objective should be one to educate the offenders so that they do not repeat what they have already done in the past. More than that, these individuals should also be exclaimed about their acts in the light of morality and how ethics would never allow for the very same. The most significant thing in this equation is to apprise them of their sheer mistake rather than feeling agitated about the barbaric attitudes of the people who are at the helm whilst making the important decisions of their lives, which would either leave them in jail for a long time or get them hanged. The education factor must therefore be made apparent in the ruling of the verdict when an offender is punished since he must be told about the positives of life rather than making them hard and real criminals after they leave the jail area completing their respective tenures. The attempt should thus always be to make the punished individuals into good and respectable human beings. The vengeance and retribution is definitely not the point behind punishing the rightful offenders since this is a grave reaction to the already committed action by the individual. The law thus has to understand its due and moral law in the relevant scheme of things and then go about committing certain acts which are not only acceptable but also socially and morally right. Moral education is the exact word that stems from this discussion since a lot of emphasis must be laid on the fact that the concerned person becomes a better human being after he has been punished for a certain period of time. The reason of punishing an individual is by no means to incapacitate him rather ask of this person to give in his best towards the society in an individual role as well as a collective manner. All said and done, it is up to the said human being as to how he takes the punishment in his stride and then go about gaining further insights. If he takes the same in a positive fashion, he is sure to become a better individual but if the opposite happens, then this person could turn out to be a real nuisance for the whole of society. The bottom line thus is to think for the betterment of all and sundry and not just focus on an offender who deserves punishment because it has been destined upon his personality by all accounts. BIBLIOGRAPHY Matravers, Matt. Justice and Punishment: The Rationale of Coercion. Oxford University Press, 2000 Marsh, Frank H. Punishment and Restitution: A Restitutionary Approach to Crime and the Criminal. Greenwood Press, 1984 Berman, Mitchell N. Justification and Excuse, Law and Morality. Duke Law Journal, Vol. 53, 2003 Staddon, John. On Responsibility and Punishment. The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 275, 1995 Word Count: 3,000 Read More