May contain elements of shameless authoritarianism

So today in my country a woman killed a snatch thief. As expected, there was a token commentator in a paper who stated that instead of lauding such an action, we should stop and pity the snatch thief himself. The thing is, while I definitely agree the existence of a criminal is always indirectly the fault of the society as a whole, I am a massive proponent of the idea that if you do something wrong, you deserve whatever you get. Don't get me wrong, I disagree with those who say that these people are inherently 'evil'.

I just believe in publicized deterrents.

The lack of deterrents was what frustrated me about the British system. It's slightly soul-destroying to know that if someone broke into my house and took my property/threatened me, all they would've gotten was a strong word and a slap on the wrist. Call me an idiot, but I don't think this does anything to deter anyone from doing the same. I'm not saying we should allow people to go on public rampages killing every criminal since they 'deserve' it, I'm saying that while the act is happening the victim should have the priority of action.

In the face of possible comments that I am privileged and thus unable to empathize in any way with the impoverished, I would argue that one of my closest friends used to be in a gang when he was younger. I have no problem with seeing the perpetrator as human, they are. My argument is that though they are, we shouldn't be a fucking soft touch on them. Instead we should look at where the problems really start, and that ultimately lies with society as a whole. We should focus on reducing social inequality, on guaranteeing a good education to people of every background and social status. That is the productive way of reducing crime.

We shouldn't just fucking sit and pity criminals, giving them soft allowances for their actions just because some of us have a guilty conscience. Because at the end of the day that's all pity does; it doesn't alleviate their standard of living, it doesn't make their lives any better, it just enhances our ability to feel good about ourselves because we're able to 'sympathise' with the Other. Bullshit. All this leads to is people thinking they can get away with committing atrocious acts, while leaving their victims to feel helpless and frustrated at their inability to protect their own rights under the eyes of the law.

Get off your fucking high horse I say, and start looking constructively at the situation. 

[picture taken from I'm the Goddamn Batman! or The moral flexibility of the depiction of Batman as defined by the alignment classification of Dungeons and Dragons. Fuckin A.]