Mercy vs. Strict Justice

== Overview == The Justice system is an example of strict justice since it punishes criminals for offenses that they commit. Therefore, the justice system can be used as an example and argument for my case. Whilst, my opponent may believe that quantity supercedes quality however this is not a correct assumption. Despite the fact that, I am not covering many other issues not regarding punishment and criminals this is not a reason to vote against me. Criminal offense is a major point that actually covers the strongest point for my case. R1 - Justice as a Principle (1) Family was just an example and I wasn’t talking about family regarding crime. Personally, and I am sure that many people agree with me, when they say that they prefer their family to strangers. This is subjective however it is normal. Crime is a more serious issue (which I am sure that my opponent agrees with) than viewing your family subjectively (not in regards to crime). It is not contradictory. What I thought was implied was not understood by my opponent. What I meant by my argument was that family doesn’t have any major consequences regarding viewing them subjectively. Viewing criminals subjectively will have major consequences (as explained in my arguments). (2) The example that my opponent provided is very different to what my argument actually said. In response to me saying that subjectivity is undesirable, my opponent provides an example regarding the law. I never said that subjectivity should be against the law. If it were to be against the law then of course there would be undesirable consequences however I just said that it is unreasonable to view court cases subjectively (on purpose) and to promote it. R2 - Justice in Application (1) a) This actually has no relevance to what I said. I said that harsher crimes deter crime. My opponent has told me that the prison population has increased however this has no relevance to my argument. My argument specifically spoke about harsher sentencing. Showing the amount of criminals just tells me that there is more crime and this is another reason to increase sentences. It doesn’t show a clear correlation between harsher prison sentences and fear. There are many other factors and this argument doesn’t even mention harsher sentences. Just the amount of prisoners. b) Gun crimes does not cover all crimes and that is one very specific area. This is not a debate that is specific to any country or state and in terms of proportion to the world this is a pretty small area. Due to the fact that this is the only area that we can observe that has had these results there is no evidence that this isn’t a result to many other factors. Here we can observe the other possible factors: employment rate and gun control laws. Since this one area we cannot observe whether or not this will be the same for the majority. c) Firstly, that hasn’t really refuted my case. Even if the effect is only minimal (which is still preferable to mercy), my actual point was showing that mercy wouldn’t be as effective however since there has been a misunderstanding I will refute my opponent’s case. Firstly, I will repeat this again. My opponent agrees that it does prevent crime to some extent. Secondly, this is not specific to everywhere. (2) a) Well, if they are given a long sentence then they have clearly done something wrong. If they have done something wrong then they already know how to commit crimes. Also, extreme violence and murder can result in the execution of the criminal and sometimes life sentence this means that they will not be released until the end of their lives or an extremely long period of time. As a result, this means that they will not be able to commit crimes for a long period of time. Since my opponent has provided no source for this statement I assume that there is no statistical evidence to suggest that long prison sentences actually does increase crime. b) People that have broken the law don’t deserve to have jobs. This was covered in my previous rounds although I will expand upon it. We cannot allow criminals to be part of jobs just to boost the economy. Criminals are a threat to society and since they have committed crimes worthy of a criminal record it is good that they should get a criminal record. I have already given the example of it being unrealistic to give a murderer the job of a teacher so I will provide a more suitable example. Would you allow ‘anyone’ that has committed a crime worthy of sentencing to jail the job of being a lawyer in court or the judge? The answer should be no and I will be happy to debate you separately if you believe that the answer is yes for you (although I find this unlikely). (3) This argument seems to be putting money over lives. My opponent claims that prisons are taking too much money and too much space however is my opponent claiming that we shouldn’t have prisons and should allow murderers and rapists to freely walk around the street? I hope that this is not what they are suggesting. Yes, the government should set the management of money as a high priority but they should not prioritize this over the lives and safety of the public. My opponent has misunderstood my rehabilitation argument that I provided. I said that they should receive all of this whilst they are in prison therefore it is part of the reason as to why they should be arrested and imprisoned if they are found guilty. Rehabilitation alone is pointless since it does not work immediately and often takes several weeks to even begin having an effect. If you keep prisoners out of jail and solely rely on rehabilitation. Rehabilitation was not an argument on its own it was a sub-part of a whole argument. I agree that rehabilitation is an argument pro-mercy however that was not the case in my argument. When I said that the victim / society is allowed to inflict harm upon the felon I never stated the equivalent amount of harm and I never stated that it was necessarily physical harm. Harm can be defined as: “use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose” this does not necessarily imply physical harm. It can even mean prison - which is what I was referring to in this case. My opponent seems to be relying on one example of millions of major crimes that have been committed. What does this tell us about the strength of other examples? The fact cannot be completely dismissed since it is still true in that certain area. The same logical principle applies to your own arguments (as I stated before) you have kept arguments specific to certain areas / states and therefore you cannot completely dismiss my arguments unless you accept the dismissal of your own arguments made by me. R3 - What is mercy? I never contested with the fact that mercy does not have any kind of justice. I specifically said that it is arbitrary, meaning that people will be sympathetic to some people over others. It also opens up the possibility to discrimination and racism in particular since there is no clear margin between right and wrong when acting mercifully in court. A 12 year old child is much more likely to get away with murder in a system of mercy than a 40 year old man. R4 - Miscellaneous I can’t really make a rebuttal on this because my opponent has labeled miscellaneous as a heading and hasn’t referred to anything here other than my sources not being labelled. Conclusion This is just a summary of what has happened in this round because I feel like there is something that I need to mention here. Whilst I have responded to all of my opponent’s claims and clearly labelled each heading and responded to each one. My opponent has failed to properly respond to my framework or provide an alternative one and this is problematic for my opponent since at the moment under my framwork strict justice is preferable to mercy. Sourceshttp://tinyurl.com...