Essay/Term paper: Criminal punishment

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Dostoyevsky

Good afternoon ****** and fellow class mates. To many of you, the word prison might frighten you. To some, you welcome the idea of prison. To others, well, you just don"t care. Well I am for the idea of prison, but I don"t support the way our prisons in north america are being run. These people deserved to be punished! I don"t want them to waste our money, get "paid" for television interviews, book rights and all the other goodies that come from doing a crime. And then slapped on the hand saying: "You be a good boy/girl now" and sent them off to a place we call prison, but in reality, some of the prisoners, find prison to be just like a strict camp. I have personally talked to some people who had gotten out of prison a few weeks prior to our talk, and they where telling me how they learned how to make certain crafts, learn how to sow, and many other things. To me, that sounds awfully like a camp I was made to go to when I was young. Some people in prison even have television, others treat it like a hotel. This disgusts me! This doesn"t sound at all like a prison. A prison is a place where people are supposed to be punished. Not treated like guests. There is a fin line between being punished and being over punished however. I"m not saying that each person should be beaten daily, or made to stay in a cell by themselves with no one to talk to for an eternity. The person should be punished according to the crime. "An eye for an eye." This brings me to the subject of capital punishment. I"m sure some of you are disgusted by the word, but I am not. I am disgusted with the fact that it is not here in Canada. I believe that for major crimes, such as that of Paul Bernardo certainly deserve the death penalty. If someone can go out and kill dozens of children, or adults. They surely have the guts to go though with the end of their lives. The amount of grief a family has to suffer when a loved one is lost is tremendous, and to have to go through life worrying weather or not you safe because your afraid the killer will get out of jail with good behavior. Sure, there are some people who cannot get out, but there is sill the fear they could escape. I am sure even though the family does not normally believe in capital punishment, will feel relieved when the killer is dead. I know I would. I"m sure you all probably think I"m a monster by now, but think about it. What would you do if you where robbed? You"d want revenge, right? What if (god forbid) someone you loved got killed, what if you where to be rapped? What would you do??