JUSTICE! Criminals Should Be Held Fully Responsible for Their Crimes! or Should They?

People are often shaped by their society, and the criminal is no exception. The criminal, a bank robber, a rapist or an embezzler, is the essence of all that is ill in society. This is becoming increasingly true in the modern day context. That is not to say that the criminal himself is without blame. What we should realise is that both the individual criminal and society beget each other.

Nobody should deny that ultimately, it is ourselves who should be held responsible for our own mistakes. In most crimes, we know that it is the criminal himself who makes the conscious decision to commit the crime, and therefore he should be punished accordingly. To lay all blame for his action upon the shoulders of society, his poor education and his upbringing would be excusing the criminal from wrongdoing, and this would be tantamount to encouraging and condoning crime. In crimes like rape or murder, the criminal causes immense suffering to the victims. Often this is a deliberate attempt to either hurt somebody or satisfy his personal urges without any consideration for others. Responsibility for such crimes should rest heavily on the offenders. People who commit most crimes should be brought to the realisation that there are certain things that are not right, and are punishable by harsh measures

However, we cannot always lay total blame on the criminal for his offences. As I have earlier mentioned, the criminal is a reflection of all that is bad and cankered in our society. History has taught us that when the authorities of a country are corrupt or negligent, thus being legalised perpetrators of crime, people, if not checked, have a tendency to degenerate in their moral values. An unmistakable example of this is the burgeoning crime rates in the United States. Violence is escalating and becoming a commonplace occurrence in a large portion of society. Firearms and ammunition, once exclusive to the police force and military, are becoming the playthings of everyday criminals, simply because the American government has, for too long a time, made the mistake of permitting liberal gun laws to exist, thus making it easy for arms dealers to supply dangerous weapons to the man in the street. Something should be done about this when it is a common occurrence for teenagers to go around town toting guns and killing people. Everyone who was shocked at the recent murder of Michael Jordan's father by two black teenagers in the US knows that if the relevant authorities were more stringent when it came to access to weapons, violent crime would not be such a serious problem. The government is starting to realise this -- and hopefully it will be taking measures to deal with violent crimes that beset the country. In such cases, both the criminals and the government should be held responsible.

Other cases of criminals who turn to crime because of social conditions abound. Citizens of major cities in Brazil know that the gangs of street children who wander the streets are no small nuisance. Many of these children sleep in public places and steal and rob to keep themselves alive. It is true that the children cannot be excused from crimes of theft, but then, their activities are a testament to the fact that there are serious problems in Brazilian society which are being ignored. To eradicate them, 'death squads' of the city's police force kill these children -- which itself is a crime. What society can do, in this case, is to help the children. Fortunately, there are a number of citizens who are willing to sacrifice time and effort to provide proper housing and education for such children. At the moment, though, a few good Samaritans are not enough.

People often become criminals because of social conditions. We see that in the US, inner cities are ridden with poverty, joblessness and crime. The twin evils of poverty and unemployment beget crime which comes to be regarded as an alternative to an honest living. However, the criminal, no matter what, is still a wrongdoer. But neither is society helping him very much when it allows him to be caught in a cycle of crime and poverty.

So what should society do? Here, I stress the importance of mutual help amongst the members of society. The government should take an interest in criminals and try to tackle the problem before it actually becomes a serious one. Parents should be taught to teach their children good human values. Children and their parents should learn that crime does not pay, but merely incurs greater costs to the individual and society. Efforts should be made by government and educational authorities to ensure that a country's citizens know and live by this.

People should also cry out against crime and demand that action be taken to reduce crime rates. When children are taught the straight and narrow path in life, the chances are that they will stick to it. Children who have been well taught will not turn to crime and they will grow up to teach their children well. Society should decry violence and crime and not glamorise it in the media or be indifferent to it.