A question about punishing crime

 I sometimes wonder, in reading the news, what our society is trying to do, what the collective intention is.

I read a story about how the police had solved a decades-old crime and arrested the culprit, who is now in his 70s. He’d been living quietly and peacefully all that time.

The authorities are sending him to prison, and perhaps that’s where he belongs. But at least part of the notion of a prison is that it’s a place where bad behavior is corrected. I grew up calling the Texas prison system The Department of Corrections.

In cases like this, perhaps we are just seeking vengeance. Maybe we’re pursuing a sense of justice, which requires consistency in punishment. But I don’t think we can talk about correcting behavior at this point.