Punishment

Criminals are the blithe of our society. They are those who take advantage of our society and the people it contains in order to further them-selves or to fulfill a mental or physical urge. There are many causes for criminal activity, the root being the urge to go against and defy one's leader. The question must arise: why? Do criminals commit these acts on their own free will or is there an outside force which compels them beyond their control to commit these crimes? There are two separate viewpoints that I will be discussing. The first is held by a man named Clarence Darrow who was a humanitarian. "Humanitarianism is an informal ideology of practice, whereby people practice humane treatment and provide assistance to others. It is based on a view that all human beings deserve respect and dignity and should be treated as such. Therefore, humanitarians work towards advancing the well-being of humanity as a whole." (Wikipedia.com) The humanitarian view of criminal activity would tend to believe that it is not a man's fault if he commits a crime but that he is forced to do so because of his environment. Therefore he should not be punished for his actions. The opposite of this would that of C.S. Lewis. Lewis believed in retributive justice which is a "theory of criminal justice wherein punishments are justified on the grounds that the criminal has created an imbalance in the social order that must be addressed by action against the criminal." (Wikapedia.com) In other words, punishment is the only way to deter criminal activity and to cause the criminal to repent. Despite the fact that the environment has the ability to influence the behavior and decision making of humans, our free will ultimately controls our actions. I believe that people should be held accountable for their actions and punished accordingly.

Clarence Darrow was a criminal lawyer who was born in 1857 and died in 1938. He was a criminal lawyer whose opinions and beliefs tended to go against tradition. He stated: "I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be. They are in jail simply because they can not avoid it on the account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no way responsible." (The Responsibility of Criminals p. 66) He also believed that jails should be non-existent, and that there is no difference from the people in the free world and those inside of the jails. Would those in jail have committed their crimes had they not fallen upon hard times? Darrow believes in the mass majority of cases if a man does absolutely not need to steal in order to survive he will not. Society and desperate circumstances our environment puts us in is the reason people are driven to the point at which they feel it is necessary to commit such an action. It is not because people are morally "wrong" but because more often than not society places these individuals in situations where the best possible scenario is to steal from another man because you need to eat or have a worm coat in the winter.

Taking another individuals child might seem like the fastest and most logical scheme to earn some quick cash. Money is a precious commodity in this world and should not be taken for granted. Money will corrupt anyone and cause them