Crime, punishment and vengence, Capital punishment

Do you agree with the author that there is always a tendency to confuse punishment with revenge?

Is there always a tendency to confuse punishment with revenge? In the article “Crime, punishment and vengeance”, the author says punishment is a penalty imposed for violating the law and it is usually handed down by some authority whereas revenge is inflicting punishment and usually by groups of individuals who do not have the authority to punish. In my opinion, I agree with the author that there is a tendency to confuse punishment with revenge but it not always.

When you hear about horrid crimes, anger rises and you will wish that the person would get back what he or she would deserve. Revenge is often accompanied with emotions and private desires of individuals. Due to the fact that juries have the authority to punish criminals, they can therefore inflict cruel and unusual punishment out of anger. This would be a case of confusion between the two. I feel that by doing so, it has violated their professional ethics. Judges therefore have to be able to put aside their feelings. Another example of confusion could be in companies. A staff who is not able to get along well with his or her colleagues and bosses and at the same time not performing well in the job could have been fired due emotions of the colleagues and bosses as a form of punishment. Thus, I would say that there is a thin line between punishment and revenge. Handling cases of such would put your ability to test.

Punishment meted out can be seen as what the person should deserve. It is seen as retribution like what the Old Testament dictum of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. You would want to inflict the pain that people could have inflicted on us. This already happens in our daily relationship with people around us. Emotions often overwhelm us and covers up our rational side.

Punishment handed down by rational people would be just having your interest at heart. People would want to you learn from the experience and thus become the better person at the end of it. Like a mother punishing a child who stole money from home. The punishment to be grounded is just to allow the child to reflect upon his action. Would the mother want to take revenge for the child stealing the money? The case of Jack Ronald Jones, the punishment made him a better person. Although we could have hated what he did, the jury did not use punishment as a form of revenge to pay for the life he took away.

To sum it up, there is a tendency to confuse punishment with revenge to a large extent but it is not always so. We should thus be careful with our emotions and thus be wary of it overriding your own rational side.

Appilcation Question 2 - Are you for or against death penalty?

Capital punishment is the penalty of death for the commission of a crime. (From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition). Are you for or against death penalty? In my opinion I would say yes to death penalty only under some special circumstances.

Like in article 1, it says that “capital punishment should be used only for murders, and not for lesser crimes. When the tradeoff is between taking lives and, say, reducing property theft, the case for milder punishments is far stronger.” I agree with the author that it should be used for murders only as lesser crimes such as theft does not involve taking the lives of others, I do feel that it would be too harsh to take the life the person. There are others way to punish the person, such as to sentence him to jail and fines. However, for the case of murder, I would say not all murderers should be put to death penalty too. Some murderers could have done killing due to the need to protect one self or under pressure of protecting another innocent. For this, a lighter sentence should be given to them as they did not kill because they planned or targeted to kill others. Therefore in contrast, in cases of premeditated murder, I would give my full support for death penalty. Reason being, he has no right to take the life of another.

Some would say that if we are able to mete out death penalty for every crime, we can thus achieve deterrence. In my opinion, this is not true. Indeed I have to agree that the death penalty would allow people to think twice before violating the law people do fear death like what “David Hume put in discussing suicide , “no man ever threw away life, while it was worth living. For such is our natural horror of death...” In the case of Singapore, our death penalty has contributed a drop in crime rate such as murders through the years. However, we did not use death penalty for lesser crimes and statistics has shown that we are still quite a safe country. Evidence can be seen in http://www.spf.gov.sg/prints/annual/2007/07spfa_crimestats.htm. Therefore I believe that it does not have to be a death penalty to deter.

Another reason for not saying yes to death penalty for lesser crimes is the fact that we should try to help the criminals instead like what the author expressed in article 2, “punishment must not be only retributive, but should also try to rehabilitate the criminal in order to enable him to live in society with other human beings.” An example would be Glenn Lim who is a former drug offender. He is now a dedicated ambassador for SANA and a youth champion who has mentoring many at-risk youths. Glenn Lim has thus used his own experiences to contribute back to this society. If a death penalty has been given to him, would he be able to do all these?

In conclusion, I would say that death penalty should only be given under special cases such as premeditated murder. We do not take the lives of others out of hatred for the individual.