In many situations, people who break the law should be warned instead of punished. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Punishments

have long been seen as an effective way of teaching people about the right and wrong ways of doing things. The social awareness of their existence solely encourages people to abstain from committing a

crime

.

While

some claim that punishment can be effectively substituted with a warning in several cases, I would argue that

this

method will not prove very efficient.

To begin

with, simple notices do not possess as much effect on

criminals

as

punishments

do. Many

criminals

, even the light ones are commonly not afraid of the warnings that bear no significant monetary loss for them.

Thus

, if they are able to get away with simple notices and rehabilitation curses, there is a large chance that offenders turn to

crime

repeatedly in the future.

Furthermore

,

punishments

in the form of prison and financial compensation

also

serve a demonstrative purpose.

For instance

, when one criminal is assigned a serious punishment, that serves as a lesson for many other individuals who have intentions to break the law.

Therefore

,

punishments

do not only help to discipline revealed

criminals

but

also

to prevent others from committing a

crime

.

On the contrary

, it may suffice for a few people to give warnings to change their behaviour.

For example

, those who have unintentionally broken the law or committed light forms of

crime

may rethink their actions after being detected.

However

,

such

cases constitute only a small proportion of all offences and identifying whether an offender deliberately committed a

crime

is nearly impossible for the police.

Also

, if courts do not assign any serious punishment for all sorts of light crimes, that will motivate many novice

criminals

to turn back to their unacceptable jobs. In a nutshell,

punishments

are the most prevalent method of maintaining peace in society and ensuring that

criminals

extract a lesson from their actions.