Do you think that sentencing a person to prison is focused more on punishment or rehabilitation? Explain your reasoning.
REPLY TO MY CLASSMATES RESPONSE TO THE ABOVE QUESTION AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU AGREE? (A MINIMUM OF 200 WORDS EACH POST)
                                                        CLASSMATES POST
In my opinion, I believe sentencing someone to prison is focused more on punishment.  On one hand, I think about time.  How long does it take to truly rehabilitate someone?  What does it even mean to rehabilitate someone?  If a person enters a convenience store with a sawed-off shotgun and murders three people in the store to take the cash out of the cash register, how do you rehabilitate that type of person?  I think of rehabilitation in the form of drug/alcohol rehabilitation, for example. A person could stop drinking and taking drugs, enter treatment, attend an aftercare program, and establish a network of support that will help him or her stay off the drugs and alcohol.  But how does you rehabilitate a criminal?  In my opinion, you don’t.  It doesn’t mean that he or she, in some cases, doesn’t feel remorse for his or her actions but there is no continuing behavior moving forward like there would be in a drug and alcohol case.  So, that leads me to believe that sentencing is focused more on punishment that fits the crime.  If we take the example of the convenience store, sitting in jail for the rest of his life is probably a fitting punishment, if not the death penalty.  Rape, child molestation, and other sexually based crimes are not about changing the behavior and rehabilitation.  It’s about punishing the person for committing such heinous acts.  So, my short answer would be that sentencing is focused more on punishment.