Crime & Punishment

4 Pages 1106 Words

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Whatever happened to the old axiom "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time"? The reality, of course, is that it seems to be getting more and more difficult to put criminals behind bars. This leads directly to a growing disregard and disrespect for the law. This should hardly be a surprise. Why think twice about committing a crime if you have little reason to fear the consequences?
Today's "prisoner" seems to have little to fear. Many find themselves better off behind bars than they were on the street. Modern prisons seem more like country clubs than the classic notion of "prisons". The average yearly cost of incarcerating a prisoner is greater than the average annual income of a sizable number of American families. While those law-abiding families struggle to get by, many prisoners are getting three square meals a day, free workout and recreational facilities, and don't have to work. A phalanx of liberal attorneys are available to defend the prisoner's "rights" while the victims of that same prisoner's crimes get tossed aside and forgotten. Inmates sentenced to death often spend a decade or more in jail while the appeals process drags on and on and on.
There's more than a little wrong here. First and foremost is the notion that a prisoner has any "rights" that could be violated. "Rights" are the benefits afforded to law-abiding citizens. They are not reasons to avoid paying for one's crimes. As far as I'm concerned, if someone is convicted of a crime and sent to jail, they have *no* rights for the period of their sentence.
Prisoners are supposedly "repaying their debt to society". How can they be doing that if they contribute nothing to that same society while in prison? They need to be put to work. There's an endless number of jobs that they could be doing to benefit society at large. For example, why let trash accumulate all over the landscape just because people don't want to take paying jo...