Do criminals need help rather than punishment?

Mary W

When someone is arrested, charged, tried and convicted of a crime they are sentenced according to sentencing guidelines for the kind of crime they were convicted of. Now the corrections officers, criminal psychologists, and social workers are supposed to "assess" the offender and order prison programs that are designed to help the prisoner to become "prosocial" instead of antisocial. These programs cost a huge amount of money but the outcome is meant to help the offender to turn their lives around - and become a law-abiding person. Corrections officers are the lowest law enforcement officer on the rung of the career ladder. They usually have no education above the high school diploma and some have had criminal encounters with the law enforcement community. Corrections officers are basically mean humans and they do not consider the prisoner anything more than an animal. These kind of employees are being trained and/or released from duty because it is now known that similar bad behavior does not help the prisoner. The criminal justice system wants to have ZERO recidivism as do the citizens. To get this, they now know they must rehabilitate the offender.

xanjo

It appears that in societies where criminals currently get help rather than punishment, they are far less likely to re-offend and usually become productive members of society. Many Scandinavian countries have exceptional rehabilitation schemes for criminals and they do work. They're certainly more promising than locking people up and throwing away the key, which really offers solutions for no-one, not the criminals, nor the tax-payers who have to fund them whilst in prison.

It's surprising, isn't it, how quick people are to condemn others who've made a mistake? And who hasn't made one or two mistakes in their life? Nothing liberal about the thinking, but plenty of logic. If you treat people with contempt, they return it, multiplied by ten. If you treat them with respect, they start to see they are worthy of it and act accordingly.

Dina W

Could you be any more general.

Too many different types of crimes to generalize, some are socially influenced, some are economic, and some are done by "bad seeds"

americanhero_aa

Depends. It takes years to change the fundamentals of most people, so you have to lock them up. Whether you call that punishment or just preventing them from committing further crimes is a matter of semantics.

Troy K

It depends on what they do

lalli

in most of the cases not necessary. we must take their sociological, economical and other conditions which made them into consideration before punishing them. all criminals are not born. the persons with hard core criminal mentality must be kept in imprisonment and for the rest we must help them to get out of thier frustrated condition with the help of psychiatrists. nothing is impossible if attempted with sinceority to bring a change in thier minds. punishment must touch thier heart and soul not their physic.

younmanofthegarden

criminals are not born, they are made by the society as criminals.
the law is made for protected the people,
In real term punishment is also a help.
every human being have right to seek help from the society.
criminals not expectational person.

CRAIG C

That's a good question. I would say Yes under these conditions. If this is a first time offense and that it was not violent. Everyone deserves a second chance. Except those who hurt or kill someone. If after the first offense, they commit another crime, lock them up and throw away the key.

spag

Sure they do. Jeffrey Dahlmer was misunderstood and just needed psychiatric assistance. He couldn't help that he raped men and then ate them. Or how about the Virginia Tech shooter? If he didn't help himself, maybe we could have let him talk out his frustrations so he wouldn't take them out on another 30 innocent victims. You may be on to something here. As Ronald Reagan said, "Take down these walls", he should have said, "Take down these jails".

Scotty R

no, you are a limp wristed liberal if you think that way. crime deserves punishment...help them before they commit a crime cuz once they've done it, theres no excuses

Robert R

Criminals are selfish, self centered people who want what they want when they want it. They are willing to hurt other people to get it.

They deserve punishment. Statistics prove that rehabilitation does not work. Prison does not need to be a kinder, gentler place. It needs to be a very unpleasant place so they don't want to come back. And it needs to be a place where they work long hours of hard labor like many honest law abiding Americans do. Learning to work might do them some good and might keep them too tired to casue too much trouble in prison.

skiingstowe

Hi,
I've had my dealings with a number of criminals, and I find that they don't need to be coddled. What they need is to have their heads place firmly in a vice, and squeezed just enough to get them to see the errors of their ways. The liberals of this country have screwd the rest of us out of our peace and security by being soft on the scum of this country. I have no love lost on the human trash of this world. If they want to be bad actors then they need to feel the same pain they inflict on the people they stolen from, raped, maimed, murdered, and slandered. If you want to help them, you can turn the handle on the vice.

meathead

When you have made a moral choice to break a law, you got your just reward as punishment. If we chose to ignore punishment for violating the law, what is the point in having the law ? responsibility for ones action sometimes deserves punishment.

atoughlife2

They need fear, less rights and a better corrections system.

Getting punished for a crime is a joke. They're given 100s of chances at probation, programs, fines and at a last resort, they're locked up.
Being locked up, they're allowed to lay around 24 hours a day on the taxpayer dime. They don't have to attend classes for education, viloent offender management should be made mandatory. Non h.s. graduate should be made to attend classes while locked up and sentenced to finish the classes upon release if not completed while serving time to society.
YES, having your freedom removed is hurtful and hard, unless you don't care and have adapted to being imprisoned. Being forced to CONTRIBUTE to society instead of being fully allowed to exploit and be a detriment to society is what their punishment should be. But the "you can't make me" attitude is that of a 2 year old. These criminals should be treated the same if they act the same.
I'm tired of bustin' my *** to pay for their meals and lazy *** to sleep in jail all day.

Booger

No, we need more death penalties and swifter route to the noose, chair, etc. If we kill them all, society will be ridden of the expense of keeping them, and there can be no recidivism when they are released. Soon, society will be clean and livable for the civilized.

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