To address slightly some of the issues that Carakeel raised, it's very often true that some offenders are offenders because they were victims. This is very true of violent and sexual crime in particularly. In my own instance my father was very physically abusive, which caused me to a. view extreme violence as somewhat normal
b. become resentful, hurt , angry and agressive
c. rely on drink and drugs to make myself feel better
d.because of a, b, and c, have no normal sense of empathy with other people.
I do think that although offenders clearly do in some instances give their victims a life sentence as it was put, they are also often living silently with one themselves.Certainly a huge amount of people I encountered in prison had been victims of someone else themselves, so I do believe that whenever possible we should also recognise the victim within them and address their problems as well. What we need to strive for is a more emotionally empathic and functional society where perhaps less value is put on the material and more is placed on the wellbeing of children and other vulnerable groups. Certainly if my wife had not helped me deal with my own isues I seriously doubt that I would still be here or indeed be happy and stable as I am now. I would hate to think that say, a four year old boy's fate is sealed to rot in prison because when adult he's unable to deal with the rage inside him, when his father first beats him unconscious. That is a thought too terrible to accept and I think we have to work far harder, not so much on the punishing of offenders but on making sure they don't come into existance in the first place. Happy people do not hate, harm and kill, it takes a very special sort of self loathing to do that.If we take away child abuse, alcohol and drug addiction fuelled by poverty and lack of education then we will go a long way in securing ourselves a far better, less crime ridden, future.