How the Justice System Can Reward "Going Straight"

"After punishment, is there room for society to acknowledge an offender’s efforts to turn his or her life around?

Two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Law School argue that the criminal justice system should publicly celebrate cases where those who have been convicted of a crime show remorse and atone for their behavior.

'The criminal justice system traditionally performed its public functions – condemning criminal conduct, shaming and stigmatizing violators, promoting societal norms – through the use of negative examples: convicting and punishing criminal offenders,' wrote Paul H. Robinson and Muhammad Sarahne in a research paper entitled The Opposite of Punishment: Imagining a Path to Public Redemption.

'One could imagine, however, that the same public functions could also be performed through the use of positive examples.'

Creating a path to redemption and offering uplifting examples of those who have taken this path would encourage others to do the same, the authors maintained. It would allow those who have been convicted to think of their future instead of dwelling on the past."

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