Kant On Rehabilitation

Society can be a scary place with criminals all around us. People being mugged, children being kidnapped, the darkness seems like it will never go away. Men and women are being incarcerated daily to help serve society. Does this really help? Individuals who are released from prison tend to return to prison because it is the only thing they know. Are we serving the greater good by locking these people away? Shouldn’t we be trying to help the criminals turn their lives around and become law-biding citizens? Rehabilitation is the key to help the criminals in doing so. The government should be rehabilitating criminals because it will benefit the victims of crime, serve as a means to an end to crime, and serve the greater good.
The government
Kant argues that to “act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end” (O’Neill 167). Using people to end crime is wrong because the fact that everyone has basic rights. Using a person through rehabilitation as a means to social ends violates the respect for the persons. One should be felt that that they are being used, instead that they should feel that they have their own rights to decide if they decide if they want to be rehabilitated. Kant says the government should not let criminals act on their own because they are not rational beings, so we should dehumanize the
The rehabilitation of criminals would help keep criminals from committing crimes and would prevent them from returning prison. Victimization will be down with the rehabilitating of criminals. Confucius said “guide them with laws and discipline them through punishments and the people will stay out of trouble but will have no shame” (Analects)”. If the government guides the criminals through rehabilitation then according to Confucius criminals will learn to stay of trouble. If criminals are socialize with their peers with the same practices and beliefs this will cause them a sense of shame which will encourage the criminals to form to others’ way of living (Analects). Confucius’ moral self-cultivation theory says that if we don’t produce better people, than we won’t have a better community (Arjo). Producing law-biding citizens through rehabilitation will serve the great good. People including criminals are concerned about what other people think of them so putting them into a setting where they are around others who share the same beliefs they will want to change from being criminals to be law-abiding