Based on the discussion we had in class, there were many questions that came up about the video and what we actually do in our society. Some of the questions were, Are people with mental health issues obligated to be punished for crimes that they commit?; Is is morally right to torture someone?; Do we believe that our justice system rehabilitates or tortures those who are incarcerated/hospitalized?; Is the same person being tortured, the same person that committed the crime? Is there a crime that could take away your rights to humanity?
These are just a few questions that came about and in my opinion it was very difficult to come up with answers to just these few questions. You have to really think about a lot of different variables that play a part in these situations. For example, in the video the woman was brain washed everyday and couldn't remember what had happened but continuously relived it. The question then was, Is she the same person that originally committed the crime? My opinion is that she would've been the same person had they not erased her memory on a daily basis.
Another question that came up was, Is there a crime where you forfeit your rights to humanity? My answer to this question is that if you commit any crime you are forfeiting your rights as a human period. Being incarcerated or hospitalized is a form of slavery in my opinion. You have to answer to someone else in authority of you. This means that you are not free to make your own decisions or do what you want like a normal human would. But you would be the reason why your basic human rights have been stripped from you and you wouldn't be able to fault anyone else.
Also in class, Dr. J asked if we thought that our justice system really cared about helping society by incarcerating or hospitalizing criminals? (it was something to that extent) I strongly feel that our justice system does not genuinely care about whether or not someone is mentally healthy or if they learned their lesson, but they are mostly concerned about making quotas and keeping the money flowing in. You have so many people who have gone through a period in their life where they have been in jail for either a small crime (public indecency) or a big crime (murder) and spend their time in jail but never feel any remorse or guilty and come right back to society and do the same thing over again or maybe worse than before, so you then have to ask, What was the purpose in sending them away?
All in all class has been very interesting lately and weird all at the same time, but I think it's pretty great that we can sit and have civilized discussion about these things, giving everyone the opportunity to voice their opinions.
3 comments:
I love your comment about the woman not being the same person as she was when she committed the crime. That type of punishment is unjust to me as well. However, I disagree with your statement about forfeiting human rights. I believe no matter how bad the crime, humans still have rights that need to be respected so that order can be kept. The Constitution says that human rights are UNALIENABLE meaning they cannot be taken away. If you believe they can be taken away, you believe they can be given by a possessor of the rights. I think justice in America means no matter how bad the crime, the human still has unalienable, unconditional rights that cannot be taken away without trial.
I agree that the justice system has no intentions of rehabilitation, rather they simply lock people behind bars in a gruesome, long term, form of time out. While that is true there is a good reason for sending them away, fear factor. Why wouldn't some creepy guy decide he doesn't care anymore and just walk around with his privates out? He doesn't because he knows when the police aggressively take him to jail he will be sitting in a cell sad and scared.
I do not completely agree that you lose your rights completely whem commiting a crim. I do support tham you are totally free until you infring upon the rights of other, but even after you lose the total freedom you are still a human being and should be treated as such. Therefore I highly disagree with your notion that incarceration or hospitalization is a form of slavery. Those deemed dangerous for society ought not to be apart of it, in my opinion, and their deeming does not simply result from their demeanor(in most cases) but rather their actions. It would be slavery if we deemed them unfit based on outward appearance or something like that.
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