After reading the latest criminal idiocy in Asia News, I feel prompted to ask other members here a very simple question.
That is, what is the solution to crime? Simple, eh.
The hard line view is lock 'em up, let 'em rot, kill 'em etc, etc.
Liberal view is to "cure" the criminals, give 'em another chance to straighten up and fly right, retrain, "reprogram" etc, etc.
What are your views? Thousands of books have been written of course, but I wonder if their is some general system out there that could be applied to solve the problem of most, if not all, criminal activity. Or maybe, a complete redesign of society itself?
Personally, how we address criminals has a lot to do with the type of crime committed. Locking everyone up for a certain period of time for every type of non-misdemeanor crime seems lazy and ineffective. Financial crimes, like fraud and burglary, should have a financial payback element, for example. Violent crimes, on the extreme, should just be dealt with like an eye for eye type justice. Things in between should be dealt with by solutions comparable to the crimes, not necessarily involving incarceration.
Anyway, the crime that prompted me to post was some 20 year old guys mugging old people with machetes. What solution would prevent them from doing stuff like this again? Could you apply it across the board without having larger societal negative consequences?