With the authority to discipline, our society has the ability to influence the future. Although, punishment is used to human savagery , it can also be used to exert power. The act of consigning punishment is extensively documented in literature. Such is the topic in Ben Mikaelsen’s novel, Touching Spirit Bear. Cole Matthews proves that the power to punish is often misused, resulting in detrimental side effects for society. Thankfully, Cole’s most recent crime is judged using the Native American tradition known as Circle Justice. Due to the process’ restorative approach, Cole is allocated a punishment, which allows him to peruse a path towards redemption. As demonstrated by Cole’s transformation in Ben Mikaelsen’s Touching Spirit Bear, justice provides redemption as illustrated through setting, symbolism, and characterization, which proves society should refrain from allocating justice solely based on punishment.
Firstly, In Ben Mikaelsen’s Touching Spirit Bear, justice provides redemption as illustrated through setting, which proves society should refrain from allocating justice solely based on punishment. Justice awards a penance to an offender, which in a way equalizes the errors y made by the guilty party. The process of Circle Justice, awards Cole with a banishment sentence as a means of remedying the problems his actions have generated.He is given a year long banishement senthence as a punishment for severely injuring a fellow classmate named Peter Driscal. Had he served his punishment elsewhere, his current state would be drastically altered. In the traditional court system, it is highly probable that Cole would have been awarded a lengthy prison sentence. Unfortunately, prison further decreases a detainee’s ability to eve...
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...sent in the justice system. Through comparison, Miakaelsen proves that healing must be a sector of concentration in justice, if society aims to retrograde the complications created by a crime. As a result of punishment being a fixation in justice, legislation is directly contributing to detriment of our society. By remaining focused on punishment, our governance is failing to erase the taint crime inflicts upon our nescient society. As citizens, we must manifest together to demonstrate our support for justice which focuses on restoration, rather than retribution. Otherwise, with solely punitive measures in place, this cycle of lawlessness will remain incessant. Is this reality of harsh discipline still acceptable if there is no obvious benefit from these methods?
Works Cited
Mikaelsen, Ben Touching Spirit Bear. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2001. Print
Inventing the Savage was an interesting look in how Native Americans are expected to assimilate into culture, and because they have no desire to assimilate in “Euro-American” culture, they are treated harshly. Though this book was published in 1998 (15 years ago), there is most likely unfair treatment for Native Americans in both regular society and prisons. By writing this book, Ross gives a great perspective on how Native Americans are treated like “cultural prisoners” and how the “Euro-Americans” do not take kindly to the behaviors of the Native Americans. Overall, this book is highly recommendable to anyone who has an interest in learning about Native American criminality, as well as the treatment of women in prison, but more importantly the treatment of Native Americans in prison even today.
...are confronted with the question of moral absolutes, we are forced to wonder when and to whom justice truly applies. Hopefully, we will look at our world and our ideas of right, wrong and retribution in different ways, ways that will enlighten and enrich our lives, and the those of the an audience of readers 2,000 years from now.
It uses the form healing instead of regular punishments such as prison, jail, etc.. To learn more about Circle Justice read on. Point 1: A great example of Circle Justice and why we should practice it is in the book Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen. In this book, the main character Cole Matthews made a mistake by affecting someone in a negative way that will affect that person’s life forever. He went to a detention center and while he was there, someone recommended he go to Circle Justice for a second chance instead of going to prison. Cole was sent to Circle Justice and they gave him an opportunity to go to an island off the coast of Alaska.
The purpose of this paper is to examine why the justice system fails for First Nations persons and alternative rehabilitation methods used by Aboriginal people, comprised of Aboriginal people, for Aboriginal people, in hopes to rehabilitate offenders and prevent criminal behavior in the Aboriginal community from precontact to today. Through the attempts of Aboriginal people to take control of their own destiny’s in the ever going struggle to attain self-government I will examine the aims and structure of one of these alternative rehabilitation methods, the Sentencing Circle used today to address the need to return to community based “Restorative Justice Programs” in the Aboriginal community
...lacks, and men. Furthermore, the competing paradigms influence public policy. Those that maintain acts as voluntary are more inclined to punish the individual or group, however those that are seen to act under determined forces, judge treatment to be more suitable. Even though these theories contrast, they still contain similarities which are shared in the new penology. Aspects are taken from all to create a new perspective on crime that centres on the management of offenders.
As agents of justice and philanthropists of duty one must evaluate the criminal justice system and its approaches to the solution of crime to determine what is good, appropriate, and what will reduce recidivism. As a western society the United States has changed and adapted its judicial system in hopes of conforming to our changing society and the increase in criminal behavior. Through these adaptations emerged a system within criminal justice that changes the focus of rehabilitation of the offender to not only include imprisonment, but to include reconciliation with the victims and the community that the offender harmed. The restorative justice approach takes a look at the crime, the criminal, and the offended; with hopes for healing and justice
He argues that the only punishment possibly equivalent to death, the amount of inflicted harm, is death. Death is qualitatively different from any kind of life, so no substitute could be found that would equal death(6). The down side of the retributive system of just can be observed in our modern practices of zero tolerance laws. These laws have placed values of some wrongdoings so high that punishment for relatively minor offenses can see an offender detained for substantially longer than arguably needed to repay the harm they caused. Placing a grater demand on our prison facilities and creates a circle of offense and
Circles are a method of restorative encounter that can be traced back to 1992 when they were first used in the town of Mayo in the Yukon Territory of Canada. The judge that first used this method saw a number of advantages to using the circle. He pointed out that some advantages were that it promoted a shared sense of responsibility, it involved the offender and the victim, it created a constructive environment, and it extended the focus to the underlying cause (Van Ness & Strong, 2010). These are some of the advantages that are focused on today when circles are used in the restorative justice system, but now there is something known as a Modified Circle, which varies some from the traditional Restorative circle. The two types of circles have
The guilty however, would be dealt a swift and it was hoped, harsh penalty that would deter potential violators from committing delists. Incarcerations in prisons, service in galleys, death and amputation were to be the elements of the new system of punishment. They punished equally, without regard to social condition, was an ambitious goal but the premise for its success was the growth of the state sovereignty. The state fell short of achieving this sovereignty as reflected in the flexible application of penalties. It was not simple that the well-connected aristocrat might escape with little or no punishment, but that those close to the grand dukes might also be punished heavily, since their behavior, too, was under surveillance.
All the laws, which concern with the administration of justice in cases where an individual has been accused of a crime, always begin with the initial investigation of the crime and end either with imposition of punishment or with the unconditional release of the person. Most of the time it is the duty of the members of constituted authorities to inflict the punishment. Thus it can be said that almost all of the punishments are an act of self-defense and an act of defending the community against different types of offences. According to Professor Hart “the ultimate justification of any punishment is not that it is deterrent but that it is the emphatic denunciation by the community of a crime” (Hart P.65). Whenever the punishments are inflicted having rationale and humane factor in mind and not motivated by our punitive passions and pleasures then it can be justified otherwise it is nothing but a brutal act of terrorism. Prison System: It has often been argued that the criminals and convicted prisoners are being set free while the law-abiding citizens are starving. Some people are strongly opposed the present prison and parole system and said that prisoners are not given any chance for parole. Prisons must provide the following results: Keep dangerous criminals off the street Create a deterrent for creating a crime The deterrent for creating a crime can be justified in the following four types Retribution: according to this type, the goal of prison is to give people, who commit a crime, what they deserved Deterrence: in this type of justification, the goal of punishment is to prevent certain type of conduct Reform: reform type describes that crime is a disease and so the goal of punishment is to heal people Incapacitation: the...
Prison and the penalty have become the essence of punishment because it makes the person fear in committing the same crime repeatedly. For example, prisoners would engage in activities like work in order for them to learn and train them. Therefore, a crime and penalty must be accepted in order for the penalties to be heavier than crimes. Also, there must be a rule that focuses on the intensity of the effect on who committed the crime by using the common truth. According to Foucault (1995), “When the prisoner is isolated it creates a terrible shock. When the prisoner is isolated, they are able to reflect and protect themselves from their bad behaviors and negativity” (p.122). If, essential punishment for prisoners should be based on learning to become a better human with
However, we feel that we conclude this paper with a brief personal reflection on alternatives to capital punishment. It is evident that the clearest alternative presented is the prison. This is so, since the capital punishment in theory should be applied to the most serious crimes. Therefore, alternatives posed Penal abolitionists, such as raising certain crimes civilian, law is not possible for offenses which correspond to the capital punishment. I believe that the abolition of capital punishment is necessary, but yet not believe that prison is a real alternative. The alternative is in force in some countries is life imprisonment, with which they still have the same problems with the sanction capital, since it does not respect many of the rights of certain subjects, nor reconciler
There is an ever increasing trend of crime in our society. The troubling issue is that such an increase is also seen in violent crimes; between 2012 and 2013 alone there has been a 4.2% increase in murder cases. There are many contributing factors to these statistics, one of them being the effectives South Africa’s judicial system. A punishment system which deters people from becoming first time offenders, as well as prevents existing offenders from re-offending will play a crucial role in stabilizing the level of crime in South Africa. This essay will consider whether restorative justice is an effective process and hence whether it is gaining support in the South African legal system.
Laws serve several purposes in the criminal justice system. The main purpose of criminal law is to protect, serve, and limit human actions and to help guide human conduct. Also, laws provide penalties and punishment against those who are guilty of committing crimes against property or persons. In the modern world, there are three choices in dealing with criminals’ namely criminal punishment, private action and executive control. Although both private action and executive control are advantageous in terms of costs and speed, they present big dangers that discourage their use unless in exceptional situations. The second purpose of criminal law is to punish the offender. Punishing the offender is the most important purpose of criminal law since by doing so; it discourages him from committing crime again while making him or her pay for their crimes. Retribution does not mean inflicting physical punishment by incarceration only, but it also may include things like rehabilitation and financial retribution among other things. The last purpose of criminal law is to protect the community from criminals. Criminal law acts as the means through which the society protects itself from those who are harmful or dangerous to it. This is achieved through sentences meant to act as a way of deterring the offender from repeating the same crime in the future.
Instead of a single principled response to diverse social behaviour, criminal law comprises of numeral diverse practices with a diversity of rationales. In condemning wrongs and vindicating rights, the criminal law debatably fulfils an extensive diversity of roles. One role that relishes a qualified priority is the role of supporting the rule of law which is obtained in the image of authority and prevailing legal rules which coerce the verdicts of authoritative officials (Grant, 2016). The pursuit of the rule of law thus entails creating authoritative legal sources capable of vindicating verdicts made by officials. Through attaching sanctions to a legal rule, criminal law guarantees that the reward for cooperation will not be an opportunistic