Punishment? Justice? Revenge? "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Vengeance is mine", sayeth the Lord.
I am not a vengeful person and I am not God.
I am actually kind and tolerant, but I have a few bones to pick.
The fires that burned so tragically in Southern California have set me to thinking...
again...
about the nature of crime and its punishment.
Certainly, most of those fires are the result of low humidity, high winds and unfortunate accident.
I am fairly certain, however, that some of them have been deliberately set.
"Fire bugs" tend to take advantage of these sorts of situations; what's one more fire among so many? Did I mention that I am a kind person? Well, as true as that is, I have some rather strong views about justice.
And I am not normally a judgmental person, either.
I do not believe that, as a society, we deal effectively with those who perpetrate crimes upon our society.
If everyone who ever thought about setting a wild fire burning knew for an absolute fact that they themselves would be set on fire as a punishment, how many of them would actually set a fire? Maybe that is a little too cruel of a punishment.
Maybe we should just burn to ash everything that they own.
Granted some egomaniacs will think that they can not be caught.
But you get my point, right? Our criminals, when caught and prosecuted have a nice, relatively cushy jail cell to look forward to.
I am certain that thousands of years ago when mankind first banded together into tribes, they did not tolerate behavior that went against the best interests of the tribe.
Individuals who endangered, directly harmed or broke a taboo of the tribe were most likely cast out or shunned.
No cozy prison cells with three square meals a day for them.
Go out there and make it entirely on your own, buddy.
Whenever I think about crime, it tends to re-open a poorly healed wound.
About a year ago, our next door neighbor trespassed on our property with a loaded shot gun.
From our backyard, he shot and killed a miniature Dachshund that belonged to the daughter of our backdoor neighbors.
They had gone out to dinner and the dog was loose in the fenced yard and had been barking for several hours.
His first blast only wounded the poor dog.
I will never forget how it screamed.
His second shot finished it off.
He did not just kill the dog, he also changed the dog owner's and our lives forever; not for the better.
Prior to this incident, our neighbor had been going around to many of us and complaining about lights left on that shined into his bedroom windows at night, noisy children, parties and the like.
He wanted his way regardless of what anyone else might want.
The little dog sacrificed its life to let us all know the lengths to which this man is willing to go in order to have his way.
Now, I am not advocating that a life be taken as punishment for the taking of a life.
Quite possibly the British had it right; but where do you find a nice, completely isolated desert island and how do you keep it that way? Besides, Australia is now a nice place to live.
My husband and I have been shunning our neighbor and his wife (she had the opportunity to stop him), but the people who lived directly behind him have moved away and so has the family that lost their dog.
If I thought there was some way to force him to move, I would pursue it.
Recently, some of our good friends across the street have started talking to our next door neighbors again.
We do not hold this against our friends, but it is a shame.
Our felonious neighbor gets to continue to live in his house (he served no prison time, but did complete several hundred hours of community service at the Humane Society) and continue his life as if he never did anything reproachable.
This is just wrong.
I do not know what the ultimate answer is.
I wish I did.
But I do know that criminal behavior should never be tolerated, forgotten, forgiven or condoned.
I believe that we, as a society, owe it to ourselves to find a better solution to the problem of crime and implement it.
Sometimes the hard decisions just have to be made.
And believe it or not, I would be happy to help make them.