and if we allowed revenge to rule punishment we would all be pretty fucked. nice to feel anger on behalf of the feelings you have for the victim, but revenge doesn't solve problems, it pepetuates them. remember the wise man ghandi "if we allowed an eye for an eye the whole world would soon be blind"
I personaly think the victim or the victims family should decied the fate of the person that wrecked their lives ... but over here their is no death penalty so that might be a little problem .. I would dump people that rape/kill on a desert island with pleny of canned food but no can opener.
I can understand that feeling, I've felt like killing a rapist once, but it's just venom in the heat of the moment. Looking at it objectively, an eye for an eye really does make the whole world blind. No one will ever learn to behave differently, or to treat others better, if society sets such brutal examples....
There are places with enough lawlesness that this is the case. Retalliation or retribution they call it. Revenge. Northern ireland ended up with this type of crime control on a mass organised scale. Man that worked a treat, didn't it? What is sufficient retribution? Where do you draw a line? If someone pushes you, and you then push them back equally to what you thought was their push, and they push you back equally to what they reckoned was your push, it escalates out of control. There have been studies dealing with this, the perception of a wrong done to you is usually out of proportion to the actual wrong. I think that the death penalty for burglary would be completely over the top, but if my house was broken into and we were victims of burglary and I had to deal with my families psychological torment of having our home space invaded in such a way then I would feel murderous. No, victims should not be allowed to dish out the punishment! .... and thats only dealing with the practicallities of it, not touching the morality - if you dish out rape for a rapist, then are you not a rapist? same with murder.
Yeah Col, you become a murderer if you kill the murderer, but so many people are sick and think that it is justified to do such a thing.
