DO WE DESERVE PUNISHMENT FOR OUR CRIMES

Western society denies that the criminal is accountable, guilty, and deserving of punishment. Consequently, we lack an adequate appreciation of justice and perhaps even the will to enforce it. Here are some reasons why we are now inclined to deny that wrongdoers are actually guilty of the wrongs they commit:

1. We are just a product of our nurture and nature.
2. We lack freewill and could not have acted otherwise.
3. If the wrongdoer had simply been loved enough, he wouldn't have committed his crimes. Consequently, the fault is with the parents and society.
4. We are more likely to regard ourselves as compassionate and as a "good and worthy person" when we don't seek justice and the punishment of the wrongdoer. 
5. Along with this, we might be more engaged in wrongdoing than the previous generations, especially sexually and relationally, and no longer experience the righteous indignation at the sight of others' wrongdoing.
6. Moral relativism, the denial of moral absolutes, has become the reigning religion of the West. This has deprived justice of a firm moral foundation upon which to render judgments. Although judgments are still rendered, they are rendered more on the basis of tradition and expedience than conviction.

As a result of this kind of thinking, the "insanity plea" is more often invoked and with greater success. Society is also more likely now to let criminals out of prison early, and our elected officials, surprisingly, have been informing us that we will just have to get used to criminality and terror, suggesting that they are not going to do much to protect the innocent.

According to historians Will and Ariel Durant, this reorientation might pose a real threat to our civilization:

• Caught in the relaxing interval between one moral code and the next, an unmoored generation surrenders itself to luxury, corruption, and restless disorder of family and morals...At the end of the process a decisive defeat in war may bring a final blow, or barbarian invasion from without may combine with barbarism welling up from within to bring the civilization to a close. ("The Lessons of History," 1968)

Since the sixties, this pleasure-seeking thinking has been accompanied by the great growth in the incidence of crime in the West and its economic stagnation. However, it is important to observe that the success of the West had been predicated on Biblical values. The West had once believed in objective evil, guilt, and morality and the justice of punishment. For instance, we read:

• Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it; do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on. For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong; they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. (Proverbs 4:14-17 ESV)

The Bible consistently teaches that evil exists, and that we are responsible for our sins. Consequently, we are taught to take full responsibility for them:

• Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:13-15)

Consequently, we cannot blame our parents, society, or our DNA for our sins. Instead, we justly deserve punishment for them. This is the essence of justice – giving the wrongdoer what they deserve.

However, this is no longer the thinking of the West. One respondent wrote:

·       The only real purpose of criminal punishment which makes sense is deterrence. Any other purpose is simply judgmental revenge.

The West now believes that punishment is merely a matter of deterrence and not the just payment for the crime. In contrast to this now ubiquitous thinking, the Christian West had previously believed that the wrongdoer deserved the punishment that justice would deem appropriate. Instead, we punish with prison those who don’t really deserve it – a travesty of justice.

The idea of justly-deserved-punishment has become repugnant to a pleasure-seeking West. After all, few are willing to believe that they are unworthy and deserve punishment. This can only lead to the decay of a once great society.