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Sunday, September 18, 2016

Crime and Punishment



The way our system works is that a person commits a crime and the police bring him to justice. Once found guilty the judge will pronounce sentence of say, ten years in prison. The victims of the crime all nod in satisfaction that he was put inside for a significant period of time.

However, what the judge has said, in effect is that for the next ten years you are hereby declared exempt from the normal costs of life. You will have a roof over your head, and we will provide you with three meals a day. You will not have to worry about water, gas, heating, electricity or telephone bills. You may not even have to do any work.

As an added bonus you will get to live with horrible people like yourself.

So, where's the punishment in all this? I don't know. Where the judge adds the extra words: "at hard labour," this might actually mean some hard graft. You may get to feel the pinch of paying for your sins. Without the hard labour the rest is a vacation.

In some countries if you are poor and unable to pay your bills, for the sin of owing people money you get sent to prison. For such people I imagine they find prison horrifying, difficult and painful. It's also pointless! If some of the silly people who commit others to prison for this crime of not being able to pay their bills should end up in similar situations, I think the practice would soon stop.

Being male and a homosexual has been a heavy burden to bear. Depending on the country a man might be killed, or beaten, or discriminated against. Many men, in the more understanding countries have been sent to prison for sex related activities as the State have invaded their bedrooms. So, in addition to the above list of freebies these guys land in a kind of heaven where men who are so starved for sexual release will not think too hard about finding it with a man who is already gay. The problem here may be sentences that are too lenient and short.

For those criminals who hurt people I think they should at least be flogged. Rape a woman, go to jail and be flogged. Feel the pain you have inflicted on another person. The damn Nazis did unspeakable horrid things to their prisoners, including beating them and ending their lives and the best that society could retaliate with is holiday camp-like conditions in jail? The guilty Nazis should have been flogged often and hard. It should have been made so terrible that they would have started crying two days in advance of their next punishment.

True, I haven't spent any time behind bars. That's because I haven't done anything to merit such treatment, nor do I ever intend to do so. That's the secret: Don't do the crime and you won't have to do the time.

Copyright (c) 2016
Eugene Carmichael