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Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

/^t/Those who think that we should stop punishing criminals and lead them through the process of reeducation in order to improve their behavior and respect for the law, unavoidably follow the path of thinking established by some nineteenth century philosophers and criminal lawyers. According to this approach, criminals do not commit offenses because they are bad by nature, but rather it is because of the society which forced them to be who they are. How dangerous can accepting this point of view be, may be illustrated by a popular case of a murderer accused in nineteenth century Germany of killing somebody. He said to the court that he was sorry for having committed the crime, but he couldn't be punished, because he had been brought up by the people who regarded crime as something natural and accepted, and therefore the society in general is to be blamed for what had happened. Now we must ask ourselves this question: should we allow killers to get away with a not guilty verdict? Of course not! The judge in the case supported this point of view. He said to the accused that he was sorry, but he, in turn, had been brought up by the people who despised crime and he returned the death sentence verdict.