Crime and Punishment

The criminal law establishes crimes and the proper type of punishment for each of them. But what is the correlation between crime and punishment? And how those measures and penalties are seeing through the eyes of society?

When someone breaks a rule, so he/she got punished. That is the way things work, or at least how they should work. You can see this from a macro perspective (society), or from a micro-perspective (your own reality).

A few days ago, my wife grounded my 2 years old son because he wasn't having a good behavior. In other words, he broke the house rules. They had a conversation about what had happened and his punishment was to stay in his bedroom for 10 minutes alone. After that, it was the time for my wife and I have a talk. In my opinion, her measure was too harsh. So, in this case, we were talking about the same "crime" with different opinions about what would be the correct punishment to the "infractor".

The grounding was unpleasant, and she issued it purposefully to serve as his punishment.  However, it is not a law. It is not written in any place that the correct measure, in this case, is to ground him, but she decided based on what she believed that would be the best punishment for him.

In order to correct those discrepancies and to avoid that anyone would take their own measures based on their own beliefs, the laws were written as wells as the punishments for the violation of them. But it seems that are some different views about the application of the law. There are those who believe that, choosing to behave badly, you must, therefore, be blamed and held responsible for your bad behavior. In other words, it is the called "an eye for an eye" which means that the punishment should fit a crime.

On the other hand, there are those who believe in punishment as an example to the society. From a micro-perspective it was exactly what my wife did with my son. When she grounded him she was trying to give him an example and show the consequences if he would choose to break the house rules again. Analyzing from a macro perspective if we had siblings, we would be giving an example to the other son. He will notice the consequences and think twice before breaking the rules as his brother did.

The law is not perfect. It is opened for interpretations as well as the punishments are opened for controversies. Although we may not agree sometimes with the balances and counterbalances ruled by the system, they are the foundation of a well-structured society.