How Does King Hammurabi Deserve Punishment

Written by King Hammurabi of Babylon around 2285-2242 B.C., the first mentions of death as a punishment for breaking the law can be found in this text. This text covers all the areas of law that we currently still use in modern society. Slander, theft, slavery, trade, food are just some of the areas covered by the Code of Hammurabi, we can see these areas codified in modern codes as well. Composed of a prologue, the text of the laws and an epilogue, King Hammurabi ruled Babylon founded on this text. “If anyone ensnares another, putting a ban upon him, but he cannot prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death.” While not all the penalties in the code had to do with death, it is important to our discussion to note that, even in the beginning of time the …show more content…
The ancient texts and the modern ones all have this last one in common, retribution. Retribution is defined as, “punishment for doing something wrong.” Retribution has always been about punishment, about paying back the illegal act, nothing less. But, there is a distinction between social retribution and individual vengeance. Paul Bordeaux explains it as, “[t]he distinction between social retribution and individual vengeance is that the former is supposedly a socially created notion that the criminal “deserves” punishment, whereas the latter is an individual-oriented observation that individuals in society gain individual satisfaction from knowing that a criminal is being punished.” There’s an old Puerto Rican saying, “one cannot feel someone else’s pain” this is to say that pain is personal, and as such individual vengeance is also personal. It is understandable that victims of crimes want individual vengeance yet, most times the system fails them on this. This failure is called “the second wound” in the criminal justice system. The second wound refers to the wound inflicted by the system (criminal justice) to the victim, when the victim does not get the justice that they