Reply to Reported hazing incident involving Damascus High School JV Football team

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Reported hazing incident involving Damascus High School JV Football team"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the fundamental question that we as a society have to consider is are there crimes that are so deplorable that one might consider a person virtually unredeemable or not worthy of such an effort? Is justice about punishment or redemption? [/quote]

Justice is about punishment of the offender and/or restitution for the victim.

Redemption is a construct of the establishment.  You can mandate punishment.  You can't mandate rehabilitation.

[/quote]

Do we have a responsibility as a people to try to facilitate and provide rehabilitation or no? (not trolling, just thinking this out) If we don't have a moral obligation does it just make financial sense to do so? [/quote]

I think we do have a responsibility as a people to provide rehabilitation. Otherwise, what kind of people are we? Who do we want to be?

Until the 1970s, our prisons saw rehabilitation as part of their mission. Then the tough on crime era started, and rehabilitation became more and more of an afterthought until it was pretty much disregarded. That's also when we started treating more juvenile offenders as adults. Now, some people are actually offended at the idea of rehabilitation in prison. Many in our society see prison as only punishment, retribution, or revenge. They don't want vocational training, college courses, therapy, or any comfortable living conditions. They want prisoners to suffer because they are being punished. Never mind that the vast majority of prisoners will one day be back out in society and will struggle more and fall back into crime at a higher rate because of how they were treated in prison and what little services and opportunities they had.

Studies show that rehabilitation works, and it costs society less in reduced recidivism. It's safer for the public and is also more humane. But it also involves thinking of convicts as people who can change and have intrinsic worth as human beings. In a vindictive society like ours that's pretty tough.

When our prison wardens visit countries like Norway, they are shocked at how the prisoners live, and how they interact with the guards. They are treated like people who will one day be back in society. And these same wardens tend to come away realizing that things need to change in our country.

The rate that we lock people up here in the US and the conditions in our prisons says a lot about us. It's not something to be proud of. Can all criminals be rehabilitated? Of course not. Should some people never be released? Of course. But for most prisoners (many who should not be in prison), we can do better, if not for them as human beings, then for society.

And I don't know about the children in question in this case. I'll leave that up to the professionals. Hopefully, they will be properly evaluated.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics