An Eye for an Eye

Prompt 27: Is "an eye for an eye" a good basis for determining an appropriate punishment? Why or why not?

I've heard the phrase "an eye for an eye" before. I've also heard the phrase "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". I think that the former sounds too much like revenge to be used as a tool for determining appropriate punishment. If a murderer kills your mother, should you kill theirs back?

While it certainly sounds like it would make you feel better (and keep in mind, this is completely hypothetical--DON'T go and kill anyone's anything), in the end I think that's a rather pointless philosophy. Two wrongs don't make a right, after all. It doesn't change anything; it doesn't make your situation any better. In fact, it makes your situation worse, and you've sunk to the level of the person you were trying to "punish" in the first place. It sounds to me like that defeats the purpose of the entire endeavor and makes it a waste of time.

I do realize that, when people take "revenge" on someone, they aren't always thinking rationally--the world just isn't that perfect. Ideally, we would take the latter of the two phrases to heart and go about everything through the proper channels. And, honestly, if you wanted to kill someone out of revenge... well, it just seems stupid to me. Perhaps this is a sadistic point of view, but I'd rather they rot in jail knowing that they're guilty of everything they've done for the rest of their miserable lives.

That point aside, I definitely disagree with the phrase "an eye for an eye" in terms of distributing punishments to criminals. Besides, it would hardly be appropriate for the government to use such tactics either, not just the victim of said crime. It just wouldn't be appropriate for the government to say "Hey, you killed this person's mom, so we're going to kill yours and then everyone will be even!" I mean, that's just illogical. The basis of government isn't to make the victim feel better, but to distribute justice.

(Damn, I'm starting to sound like Tousen... that's very bad. If my sister ever reads this, I'll never live it down. *Makes face of horrorified realization*)

Now, I'm trying not to get repetitive here, but I'll just tie this off. "An eye for an eye" sounds to me like blatant revenge. It has no sense of the "justice" which America is supposedly founded upon (judicially speaking), and therefore it has no place in the workings of our crime and punishment systems. Perhaps that's corny of me--and I've never been wronged, I don't know how victims of crimes feel--but I do think that everyone would be better off if we didnt try to take others' "punishments" into our own hands. That usually only lands you in a jail cell, and that's certainly not where I want to be spending the rest of my life.