Wisdom from Law & Order

Claire, "So, people are just good or bad, period."

Jack McCoy, "It's better than healthy or sick.
You deny evil, you deny responsibility. 
Open up the jails and send everyone to a shrink."


(Law and Order episode 135, 1995.)

Yep, "you deny evil, you deny responsibility." By admitting and taking responsibility for our actions we grow, we mature, we learn empathy and we learn humility.  We learn it feels good to be good and to do good. We learn sorrow and we learn to forgive.  If we don't allow the people who chose to do wrong to suffer the consequences, we disrupt their learning and their potential and we put society at risk.

Sure we all want to be forgiving and we all want to take the higher road, but there are natural  consequences to our behaviors.  And if we disrupt those consequences we are doing more damage and we are in essence saying, you are too fragile/weak/sick/ignorant to learn and grow, so we will save you from your actions and not hold you responsible.  "We" ends up swooping in and saving wrong actions from suffering the natural consequences.  And in the meantime we put all people and society in peril and disrupt the learning and growing process of the individual.