Quote:
Originally Posted by hendrixpujols11
In India, during the time of the caste system, if you were born into the "untouchable" caste, it was impossible to break free, and you were literally COMPLETELY dependent on people of a higher caste and were viewed as having no value to society. According to the Hindus of India, your caste depended on your past life. Therefore, the Untouchables generally accepted their position in society, assuming that they were responsible for their past actions. Gandhi fought for this to be outlawed, even though he himself was of the merchant class. This mentality is dangerous. The point of imprisonment and punishment of any sort is to take the people off the streets, and to "teach them a lesson". If they learned their lesson and are not dangerous, why imprison and punish them?
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First of all, don't bring the caste system into this, because had to do with all sorts of other stuff and is very complicated blah blah blah. As for the purpose of punishment, I really don't know if rehabilitation is the point of punishment. I don't think that we, as a society, know what we seek when punishing wrongdoers. In many instances, the punishment is very blatantly and admittedly giving someone "what they deserve." At other times it is rehabilitation. At other times the person is merely undermining to society and the most important thing is to reduce the damage that they inflict at any cost. And some times people are even punished in order to have examples made of themselves. I don't think that law has ever been about "fairness," not in that it is the same for everybody but that it is what a child might call "fair." That is to say, if we are imprisoning a person to better them for the good of society, then rehabilitation indicates that their time should be up and they should be permitted to re-enter society. However, I am very skeptical if that even remotely has to do with the real reason that we punish people. If anything I think it is because criminals mock the validity of laws, and that is unbearable to the law makers, the enforcers and law abiding citizens because it is a mockery of all of them, so the punishment serves as a vindication to all those who have been "mocked" by the crime. Not to say rehabilitation doesn't play a major role in it too a lot. Just putting it out there that punishment isn't so ideal.