Does anyone ever deserve punishment?

It seems to me that punishment holds the purpose of formulating a sense of justice amongst those who are (and feel) wrong done. In this way, its eventual success is only to serve that of vengeance. This 'justice' contains no more peace of mind than it does spite and malice.

I think that we should always forgive quickly because that is what we would want if we had wronged someone. Not only that, when we choose not to forgive right away, we are judging that person. We are saying that this person does not deserve to be forgiven right away. They need to suffer for what they have done to me. But, if God forgives as soon as that person asks him to, who are we not to forgive right away. If God forgave us, the way we forgive others, where would we be? Are we more righteous and just in our judgement than God?

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Yes, the threat of punishment seems to be a good deterrent, and of course if must be seen to be carried out, or it will become like an idle threat that everyone ignores. I tend to think that we punish ourselves for any perceived wrong-doing as it is our karma to do so. Like it is said that a criminal always returns to the scene of his crime. Why would he do that if not to risk getting caught? It certainly looks as if he/she wants to get caught? As a Zen practitioner, I have to say though that I don't know the answer. If everybody practiced meditation (not necessarily in the Zen fashion) then crime would be hugely cut as we all learned compassion and supported our fellow human beings.

Hi, yes you are right, we should attack the root cause of the problem andnot just the vicitm or the person whose doing the crime. If we just simply punuish the person, it maybe for a short period of time and maybe after getting released, they may resort to the same thing again, coz thats what their need maybe, and they have no alternative other than doing this. We have to provied them more work opportunites, so that they are also allowed to leave this path. Punishment yes, is needed if its such a crime that is beyond normal human bounds, but otherwise for smaller crimes life theft et, we have to find alternative solutions for the people, so that they can look forward to a better life, thus making them think that they too can leave this line of crime and become better human beings.

I have been in other countries where there is much poverty , a great lack of education , and general ignorance. They have public punishment for crimes. I have seen this to be a great deterrent. There is very little crime if it exists at all.

I think some people really deserve to be punish because they really do ask for it a lot sometimes.