I'll get you!

I'm frequently bothered by the rhetoric of punishment and retribution in our country. People talk about deterrence, but we seem to be focused on the idea of punishment. There's the idea that someone hasn't paid "enough" for what they've done, as though a year in jail or a certain dollar amount was equivelent for what they've done. And that always makes my blood run cold. There is no "enough" .. there simply needs to be an adequate deterrence. (this also bothers me with corporate law .. the fines are usually so small they don't get high enough to stop the behavior).

I think about this sort of thing a lot because I have a baby, and he's old enough that I have to start paying attention to what he's doing and start corralling him. And of course, there's the spank/no spank debates and everything else. What I'm finding, though, is that the only thing that gets his attention is removal .. sticking him in the playpen. So I don't engage in the issue of spanking, because this "works". Punishment isn't the goal here .. getting him to stop turning off the computer is.

Questions:
Why do we punish people? Well, I try to punish or push back to stop the behavior. I don't want to actually PUNISH them .. I want it to STOP. Sometimes this means removing myself from the situation .. and if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. While I want the person involved to learn from it as well, the only person I can control is me.

I don't deal well when people try to "teach me a lesson" .. usually because I find such reactions amusing. One person went around trying to spread rumors that I "radiate evil", which I find absolutely hilarious. I think I was "supposed" to learn to not tell this person anything that she doesn't want to hear. What I did learn was that she's got a messed-up view of reality.

If I was in charge, how would I punish people? I'm not sure there would be jails .. or at least, jails would be solely for people that couldn't be allowed out in public. I'd make people work for their punishment, because I think you learn a lot more slaving away doing meaningless labor than you do locked away from society. And I would make it something that couldn't be construed as "manly" so people wouldn't want to "go to jail" to "become a man", which happens now. As far as what would happen after that, I don't know. But it might be interesting to see.