why do we punish people

Hey, listen, I’m all for not punishing people and instead letting the victim take vengeance as they deem appropriate. It doesn’t warm my heart that the drunk driver that ran over my grandma got 5 years parole, I’d much rather carve out various parts of the fucker, cook them, make him eat them, and then force him to guess what part he ate. But violence is a state-controlled monopoly, and the state gets pissy when others realize monopolies are destroying the market and bring only downsides to us regular buyers.

Also, some shithead said at some point “an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind” without realizing that once we finish the initial “eye for an eye” scenario justice has been met and we don’t need to continue ad infinitum, and for some reason a bunch of cretins who want to hold onto their eyes agreed with him and now Hammurabi would shit upon our flawed society and its insane rules.

As an aside, I was looking into Hammurabi’s code of laws while writing this, and the man seems to have been both just and metal as fuck. Here are some snippets I’d prefer to live my life by:

If a man breaks into a house, they shall kill him and hang him(?) in front of that very breach. (21)[80]

Like, fuck yeah - fuck around, find out.

If a man accuses another man and charges him with homicide, but cannot bring proof against him, his accuser shall be killed. (1)

More of the same, yes please.

If a man has a debt lodged against him, and the storm-god Adad devastates his field or a flood sweeps away the crops, or there is no grain grown in the field due to insufficient water—in that year he will not repay grain to his creditor; he shall suspend performance of his contract [literally “wet his clay tablet”] and he will not give interest payments for that year

Pay your insurance premium? No thanks, I don’t need it, it’s included in THE FUCKING LAW.

If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make it conform to specifications so that a wall then buckles, that builder shall make that wall sound using his own silver. (233)[85]

Great. Fuck civil court where the builder’s army of lawyers can bully my $5/h law student cause that’s all I can afford while also rebuilding my house

If an ox gores to death a man while it is passing through the streets, that case has no basis for a claim. (250)

Fair. Why the fuck are you next to the goddamn ox, dipshit?

If a slave should declare to his master, “You are not my master”, he [the master] shall bring charge and proof against him that he is indeed his slave, and his master shall cut off his ear.

Yeah maybe some of them need some work, but fuck if most aren’t perfectly reasonable.

So I go back to my question…does a convicted child molester finish their jail sentence and the can go and work around children? Or do we also accept that maybe, even after the person has finished their sentence, that the “punishment” continues to protect society?

If the latter, then the question becomes when this is appropriate, and not if it is ever appropriate.