Professor:That’s all for today’s class. We will continue our
lecture on crime and punishment tomorrow.
A: Do you think we should be tougher on crime?
B: Well, it depends on what you mean.
A: For example, we could bring back the death
penalty for murder, give longer prison sentences
for lesser offences and lock up juvenile offenders.
B: Those really sound like Draconian measures.
Firstly, what do you do about miscarriages of
justice if you’ve already put innocent people to
death?
A: You’d only use capital punishment if you were ab-
solutely sure that you’d convicted the right person.
B: But, there’ve been many cases of wrongful con-
viction where people have been imprisoned for
many years. The authorities were sure at the
time, but later it was shown that the evidence was
unreliable. In some cases, it’d been fabricated by
the police.
A: Well, no system of justice can be perfect, but
surely there’s a good case for longer prison sen-
tences to deter serious crime.
B: I doubt whether they could act as an effective de-
terrent while the detection rate is so low. The
best way to prevent crime is to convince people
who commit it that they’re going to be caught. It
doesn’t make sense to divert all your resources
into the prison system.
A: But if you detect more crimes, you’ll still need pris-
ons. In my reckoning, if we could lock up more
juvenile criminals, they’d learn that they couldn’t
get away with it. Soft sentences will merely en-
courage them to do it again.
B: Yes, but remember that prisons are often schools
for criminals. To remove crime from society, you
really have to tackle its causes.
A: Well, if I were president, I would impose tougher
laws and punishment. I would have a peaceful so-
ciety based on fear of punishment, not conscious-
ness of doing the right thing.
B: You sound like a dictator!
A: Well if it works, why not?
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