Comment by michaelbuddy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelbuddy | Hacker News Reader

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So I'm supposed to forgive the guy who raped my cousin and killed her friend? Am I supposed to feel like he paid his dues. Whatever imaginary criminal you are inventing is not the real criminals who destroy lives every day. And their punishment for their violence the trauma they cause victims their families and their selfishness of taking lives cannot be punished enough in so many cases.

It's not the media that causes victims and victim families to live sad or fearful or hateful. Desiring punishment and retribution for crimes is very much a natural thing. We see it in the animal kingdom as well. Any personal forgiveness is up to the individual(s) affected. Many criminals get off easy in the justice system. Some of them should never get out. Some of them deserve the pain they unleashed on their victims but sadly get 3 hots and a cot for 50 years, never contributing anything to society for their entire life.

You don't have to forgive anyone. Getting the retribution you think is just and deserved means giving the state the power to inflict that retribution on anyone it wants. There are consequences to having the brutish government punish people on your behalf and they always come back to harm the weak and innocent.

Justice systems don't operate to make people feel better or make the evil suffer.

> Getting the retribution you think is just and deserved means giving the state the power to inflict that retribution on anyone it wants.

Not giving that authority to the State means that it is retained by the People. The whole point of a justice system is to give the State a monopoly on violence: in return for giving up their right to vendetta, the People expect that the State will be scrupulous and fair in its prosecution of criminals.

Indeed, this is the foundation of the legitimacy of the State, and it is why a State which refuses to execute justice will eventually lose legitimacy in the eyes of its People.

Forgiveness is up to you.

I'd prefer the criminal justice system focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment. I'd rather we try to make society safer than exact revenge: we all have different ideas of revenge, but a safer society ought to be pretty easy to agree on.

The focus needs to be both for the public to see it as fair. We want people who do bad things to be punished.

However I find that the US system is pushing some insane punishment in a lot of cases.

You don't really know what forgiveness is, but I'll help you , it's self-sacrifice, you can't hope to forgive someone if you're just waiting for them to make you feel better, because they can't replace what you lost.

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