(Editor’s note: We’ve received a few letters from Green River High School students who have recently read “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The students have compared current events to themes found in the book.)
Dear Editor,
My name is Espen and I would like to take some of your time to explain a problem I have with our society. I thought about the theme of crime and punishment when I was reading through “The Scarlet Letter” and how unfair it can be. Especially in our society, today people get off almost scot-free from horrible crimes. Our society had many problems like how people who commit murder or something can be let off with nothing and then you steal a candy bar and get locked up, the fact that our justice system had been broken for a long time and never fixed, and how nowadays your pretty much guilty until proven innocent, somebody can say one thing and ruin your life.
First, there are cases all around the U.S. with people who murder somebody or do something horrible and receive a less serious punishment than those who steal something. Literally, you could go out and kill someone and be let off with no issues in some states and that’s a big problem. The judge is essentially letting a murderer off the hook and right back out there to do it again. It makes our towns and cities unsafe and unfair to the people this person has hurt.
Next, the justice system needs to be fixed it has been broken for a long time and somebody needs to change it. Murderers and rapists are allowed back onto the streets again making it unsafe for anybody to enjoy themselves and not have to look over their shoulder. For some reason, the justice system thinks that prison can change a person, but most of the time it does not and you end up with bad people back on the streets. The system is very broken and we will not last as a whole with a broken system.
Finally, you can be accused of something and your immediately guilty no matter what. Most of the time it’s just somebody crying wolf and lying just so someone can not do something. When Donald Trump became president there were all of these fakers coming forward saying he raped them or did something to hurt them. They were doing it just to make people not like him so he would not become president. Now it’s with Brett Kavanaugh he has been falsely accused of raping a woman back when he was in high school. That’s a big problem for any man or woman in our society and it needs to be fixed.
These are some of the things that are bothering me in today’s society and I hope we can someday fix them.
We have many problems in the United States, but we can hopefully find a way around some of them and better it for the next generations of the human race. We can be better and stronger together if we push through our problems. Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this and listening to me rant a little bit.
Espen Palmer
Green River
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