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The Concept of Jain Penology
Visualizers of this dreamland do, however admit: "it is a failing in sociological theory that it has rarely examined concepts such as guilt and conscience". This single but solid confession has brought the ship of penology to the shores, from the gusty winds seeking fundamental social changes over the turbulent waters of punishment and waves of treatment. Now the ship can easily sail into the deep waters of religious philosophy and in the right direction towards the infinite realms of conscience, veiled and clouded as it is by the fog of Karmas.
Jain-penology is the child of Karma Philosophy, The Criminologists know Karma in its retributory and retaliatory role. In this thesis, material role played by Karma in the causation and prevention of crime is sought to be established. Karma has a determining effect on the events but the Karma Philosophy is not the philosophy of pre-determinism. There is ample scope, of course, for free-will and for effort purushartha, hence the call for fight against Karma.
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Investigations at the psychic and psychological strata and the ideas of fundamental social changes by way of social re-arrangement, however laudable, are certainly not the last word for crime-causation and crime-prevention. More subtle than the psyche and more visible through its effects, the Karma influences the individual souls, subjecting to births and deaths, gains and losses, pains and pleasures
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