“All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.” Joseph De Maistre was a lawyer, diplomat, writer, and philosopher in France after the Revolution. De Maistre believes that the punishment that a person receives for his wrong doings are not only for justice, but to show that the society cares enough to acknowledge the crime and put forth an effort to avoid the repetition of the act in the future. If a civilization is to flourish, it must have a system in place to discourage any transgressions of the law. Laws are put in place to keep the society healthy and alive; when those laws are broken, the society is hurting only itself. A society of people is analogous to a rocking band; when all the members work in harmony, nothing but beautiful music is created, but if one member does not perform as expected, the sound of the entire band is corrupted. In other words, punishment can be considered as method of rehabilitation in hopes (in many cases, only a fool’s hope) that the wrongdoer will learn from his/her mistakes and grow as a person. Punishment is to a society as a hammer is to a nail. When the nail comes loose, everything begins to fall apart, but the hammer is there to put it back into place and keep the integrity of the structure.
Throughout the world, countries have different views of what punishment is. Some believe in preserving the dignity of the criminal; while others proceed with the simple intention of letting the criminal know that their actions will not be tolerated. The latter course of action usually consists of the criminal being put through physical pain; ranging from a beating, a severed limb, or death by stoning, beheading, etc. Though this sort of corporal punishment is rare during the present day, it is still very much a part of judicial systems in many countries. They kept this system for the simple reason that it seems to be working. According to NationMaster.com, a country that no longer uses corporal punishment, such as the United States of America, has a significantly higher crime rate per capita than a country which still implements a corporal punishment system, such as Malaysia (US DOS). One reason for this might be that in countries such as the USA, some people may not find incarceration to be punishment enough and fail to rehabilitate themselves and continue to act out against the laws that society has set forth; but on the other hand, a thief in Malaysia that has lost their hand as a payment for their crimes is almost one-hundred percent less likely to steal with the other hand (because I’m pretty sure he would like to have at least one hand available for everyday tasks).
Personally I do not believe that I would enjoy either form of punishment: losing my hand or being locked up; therefore my simple advice would be: follow the law. Even though not all people agree with every law that a government may pass, it is important to go about showing disagreement in a legal, positive way. By simply breaking a law that a person does not agree with, the person is saying no more than the fact that they could simply care less about the well being of themselves and the communities around them. Carelessness does not show a legit disagreement or motivation to change a law. The laws that are placed before us are done so after careful deliberation among people that know what may best serve a society (or so we hope). The laws go through careful consideration for years at a time; which is why there are even laws that state proper ways to appeal disagreements. Simply put: laws are made to keep order, once that order has been broken, drastic measures are required to fix the damage and to ensure avoidance of further destruction.
Works Cited
Crime Statistics> Total crimes (per capita) by country, NationMaster.com
, http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita>
2008 Human Rights Report: Malaysia, US Department of State 2009
< http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/eap/119046.htm>
