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:question: Should criminals be punished with lengthy jail terms or re-educated and rehabilitated, using community service programs for instance, before being reintroduced to society? :idea: It is undoubted that those who have committed crime deserve punishment. However, there are different opinions as for the best way to treat criminals. Some people believe that criminals should be punished with lengthy jail terms, while some others are of the opinion that they should be re-educated and rehabilitated before being reintroduced to society. Logically, the kind of punishment which criminals have to undergo depends on the kind of crime they have committed. The more serious the crime committed is, the more severe the punishment should be. All forms of punishment will serve best if imposed on the right wrong-doers for the right reasons. Lengthy jail terms, as this terminology has clearly indicated, are a form of punishment of high-level severity. This kind of punishment will be appropriate for those who have committed very serious or fatal crime, such as the one which causes death for other people, and for hardened criminals, i.e. those who have repeatedly done crime and undergone corrective programs many times before but are found to be hardly curable. Re-education or rehabilitation will serve well for those who committed crime for the first time and the consequences of the crime are not fatal or very serious. In this case, there are some reasons to believe that since they are not yet so deeply involved in crime, they can still be corrected through re-education or rehabilitation. If they are given second chance to correct and improve themselves, they can be expected to live a good and respectable life after undergoing re-education or rehabilitation programs. In short, no size fits all. Before determining the right punishment for any criminal, those in authority have to take many factors involved into account. :)