Opinion paper

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Opinion Paper

Crime is unlawful actions in which the government may be forced apply legal measures to curb and reduce it. There are set legal code in the society that must be followed by each and every citizen. If the legal code is violated, punishments may follow (Simon, 2017). This applies in classical school of criminology whereby it assumes that the individual makes a choice to commit a crime. An individual is driven by pleasure but avoids something that may cause pain. the society may deal with deviance as this is the action of going against the norms of the community. This is where social control comes in. if the victim does not change, social control may not help the criminal and therefore involving the authority.

When it comes to crime, the state government is now involved in order to administer punishment to the victim. Crime has additional set characteristic that breaks the set rules and regulations of a state (Cullen, 2004). Criminal justice system has authority to deter the person from future crimes as the deterrence theory states. If the victim is not given punishment, he or she may develop potential of committing more crimes in future. Prisons according to deterrence theory should deter the criminal from committing more crimes. Prisons seclude the victim from other people and they receive their rewards inside the prison which are meant to change the behavior.

Looking at the time of crime committed by the individual may enable the authority determine the kind of punishment to give to the victim. Even the criminals has got rights, it is therefore important not violate the rights even when they have committed crimes. Deviance and criminality are very different. If a girl wants to commits suicide because of losing her boyfriend is an example of deviance. This should be punished differently from the crimes. Criminality is a behavior that goes against the laws and the government takes punishable actions to rehabilitate the individual as well as preventing future crimes.

Punishments change from severity and depend on the justification of the crime and law. Punishment may include infliction of pain, incarcerations, death penalty, fines, liberty and many other forms of sanctions (Simon, 2017). The criminal justice system should protect the criminal from being harmed by the community as it arrest and administers punishment. Living the victim to the society may cause more damage. Imprisonment nowadays is also not doing well when it comes to rehabilitation as they are overcrowded. This may even impact more negative behaviors to the individual.

In conclusion, a stand by ground law suggests that an individual is entitled to protect him or herself from attack even if it takes lethal forces. So the victim might commit a crime during self defense. The best way to mitigate crimes is to use criminal justice system in order to investigate the cause of crime before administering punishments to the individual.

References

Simon, J. (2017). Governing through crime. In Law and Poverty (pp. 97-115). Routledge.

Cullen, F. T. (2004). Social support as an organizing concept for criminology: Presidential address to the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Justice Quarterly, 11(4), 527-559.