Accountability and Responsibility

Our prisons are full of "innocent" men. I'm sure you've heard it before. How many inmates will honestly say "yep I did bad things that I shouldn't have done. I deserve to be here." ? It is a very small number to be sure. But if you break things down rationally step by step most of them will agree to the individual logical steps that end with them spending time in jail.

It is commonly accepted that most people cannot govern themselves. Therefor there must be laws and people to enforce them. There do need to be penalties when those laws are broken to discourage people from breaking them. And most people are aware that going to jail is a potential consequence of breaking those laws. Yet still the guilty often say that they do not belong in jail. That what happened is not their fault. Why is this?

When we hold a person accountable for something we are saying that they are responsible for that thing. These two words are often used almost as synonyms for one another, as they should be. If the problem isn't with the terminology then where is the breakdown?

It's with the people.As children our parents are responsible for everything that we do. They can be and often are held legally accountable for any actions that we take. This is okay because when we are children we are too young to properly understand what is right and wrong and what the repercussions of our actions are. That's practically the definition of being a child.

It is the primary job of a parent to teach their children what is right and wrong and that every action or inaction has consequences. Then when we become adults, we can be mature responsible adults that are truly accountable for our every action. Sadly many of our parents failed to instill this sense of morals and ethics into us, just as their parents failed to instill it in them.

And so it is that we have hundreds of thousands of people doing things every day in this country, things which they know are wrong, yet claiming that its not their fault. They say he made me do it or she tricked me into it. But that is not the truth..

If a person lies to you, blackmails you or threatens to hurt you in order to get you to do something wrong, that doesn't absolve you of responsibility. If you did something wrong you did something wrong. They are not responsible for the thing that you did. You are. They are just responsible for their part in getting you to do it. 

Laying blame on another person does not change the actions you took.You are responsible for every single thing which you decide to do. You, as an adult,  can and will (trust me) be held accountable for every single thing that you do.

We, as a country, as a world, need to start instilling this in ourselves and our children  because our prisons aren't going to get any less populated as long as people can always point a finger at someone else instead of admitting that what they did is their fault and theirs alone.