Essay on Justice
The concept of justice implies the maintenance of the balanced relationships between individuals based on the legal norms, rules and traditions through the system of law enforcement and courts, which focus on the punishment or correction of offenders. At the same time, the justice system relies not only on legal but also moral and ethical norms. In fact, legal norms derive from moral ones. Therefore, there is a strong correlation between morality and justice that means that justice attempts to prevent what the society perceives as bad and, thus, helps the society to be better.
The concept of justice is closely intertwined with the concept of the criminal justice because the maintenance of the social order, existing legal and moral norms inevitably involves the prevention and punishment of crimes. This is where the criminal justice crime comes into play. The criminal justice focuses on the prevention of crimes using various tools, including punishment through imprisonment of offenders, correction, and other methods.
Kohlberg’s Stages of the Moral Development can be applied to the criminal justice and criminals. At this point, it is possible to dwell upon three cases of criminals in the context of Kohlberg’s Stages of the Moral Development. First, the criminal behavior may be viewed from the personal relationship stage’s perspective. Kohlberg defines this stage as the stage, when a one lives up in accordance with existing social norms and principles (Kohlberg, 1981). If an offender commits a crime, for example steals money to buy drugs, he/she conflicts with the existing social norms but the offender does it rather out of necessity, being driven by his/her drug addiction than by his/her desire to rebel against existing social norms. At the next stage of the moral development, the stage of maintaining social order, the offender may commit crimes because he/she disagrees with the existing social order and believes that the entire society is against him/her (Cooper, 2010). For example, if a person lives in poverty and cannot breakthrough the poverty barrier to earn enough for a decent life, then a person may commit a property right stealing from others to become richer him/herself. Finally, from the social contract and individual rights stage of the moral development, the individual, who decides to steal from the rich, may be aware of the fact that all people have equal rights and opportunities but he/she cannot live as rich people do. This is why the offender focuses on the specific group, the rich, to compensate his/her problems.
In fact, it is possible to suggest different solutions to the three criminals described above. The drug addicted offender should focus on the treatment of his/her addiction that will prevent him/her from violation existing social norms. The thief, who wants to become richer, needs the support of the public through specific government programs or community programs that will persuade the offender that the society is not against him/her (Broad, 2000). Finally, the criminal, who decided to steal from the rich only, should learn the principle of equality of all citizens. The crime is the crime, whoever is the offender and the victim. In this regard, the extensive support may help the offender to understand that the rich can share with the poor benevolently but not only through a theft.
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