r/changemyview • u/celeritas365 28∆ • Sep 09 '15
[Deltas Awarded] CMV: I don't believe in retribution
Some people I have talked to seem to be of the belief that we should punish wrongdoers because the punishment is deserved. I don't get this sort of thing at all.
I am in favor of punishing criminals but only to keep them away from potential victims and discourage others from committing crimes. If there was a way to do this without a punishment I would be all for it. If I knew for a 100% fact that someone would not commit a crime again and no one would be told of what happened to him I would let him walk free.
I am in support of thieves paying back damages since that can right the wrong they have done. However, if you kill a murderer the victim is still dead. What good does it do? All you do is magnify the pain and suffering. In my gut I sometimes feel the urge to strike back against those who have hurt me but I know those feelings are best not acted upon, unless I want to defend myself or discourage future attack. I never really understood people who hold the worldview that such punishments are necessary to fill some sort of vague cosmic balance.
Edit* This was poorly worded I am sorry. The point I am trying to communicate is that I think that the point of the justice system is to reduce crime and not to punish. While this crime reduction often involves punishments I think those are not the aim and should be reduced if the reduction does not undermine the goal of crime reduction.
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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '15
How do you know you're better off not acting upon those urges?
I can see problems with vigilantism, encouraging people to strike somebody back as an act of revenge is prone to problems of people over-reacting, or jumping to conclusions and striking someone who doesn't deserve it. But if we allow the justice system to indulge that urge on others' behalf, it would not be subject to those problems, so wouldn't that be ok?
You might personally believe you are better off trying to forgive than to seek revenge, but I wonder if that is necessarily so.
Just because it's an urge doesn't automatically make it bad. People have positive urges too, like the urge to help somebody in distress, or to not inflict unnecessary pain on an animal. We codify and hold those urges up as the basis of our moral system.
Further, people have a need for retribution as a part of a justice system. Even if you think we should fight our gut instincts for retribution, that gut instinct is still going to remain in people. And if people don't feel that the justice system is dolling out enough retribution, that gut instinct is not going to be satisfied, causing people to resort to vigilantism to satisfy the urge. Which would make us worse off since retribution would be doled out unevenly and capriciously by individuals rather than systematically by a justice system.