A Sentence Cannot Repair Everything

I have watched quite some movies about prison, and when people discuss it, it is as if the choices are to teach criminals how to change or suffer. Sometimes, my mind goes to that person who goes home after the court has been dismissed and still lives with what happened.

Think of anyone who sells provisions in your area or a shop nearby. At night, someone breaks into her shop, damages her padlock, and takes her savings and some of her goods. The thief was later caught and sent to prison. But that person whose shop was robbed still has to restock either by borrowing or by taking a loan, get a new padlock, maybe double her security, and wonder if that will happen again. The thief that was sent to prison does not repair her ordinary life.

And for that reason, I will say, punishment is important. A person who harms someone deliberately must face consequences. And when those harms are not being attended to, it only makes the victim pay twice: for the first crime, then the society's approval and eagerness to carry on. The affected people's or person's anger or frustration is not always bitterness. In most cases, it is rejecting the pretence that there is safety when, in reality, there is none.

But when they are sent to the prison, the whole purpose is not to punish them alone; that should not be the whole purpose. If someone is imprisoned, and throughout their time in the prison, they only obey the prison authorities and hate the world outside. Definitely, the same person that went there is the same person coming out, and they might even turn more brutal.

In prison, they should be taught how to live life without causing harm to others by educating them on responsibility, work and treatment. Through what they did or accomplished in there, their progress should be judged, not through a compelling speech during their parole.

During their rehabilitation, it should not be a demand that the affected people forgive. The person whose shop was robbed should not have to meet the person who carried out the robbery, hear the person's apology or become evidence that that person is a new creature. The changes that we must see are turning into a new person, rebuilding his life without asking the person whose shop was robbed to shoulder that burden. And if possible, what was stolen should be repaid back through voluntary means or little by little.

And I will say the better process is taking accountability in our society in a way to protect one another from future crime. What punishing the criminals does is to give them boundaries, but when they are rehabilitated, they tend to live beyond those boundaries.

Though, doing both will not take away their harm or what they have done. Even if the thief comes around as someone who has changed, people around might still need to watch out several times. And as little as that sounds, it matters too. Justice must make room for both truths.

Thank you for reading.

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