PREAMBLE
The claim that forgiveness is compatible with getting the wrongdoer punished is very common.
It seems to be related to the view that giving good things to the person who is in jail for trying to kill your family is separate from the punishment - the incarceration.
A lot of over-simplification is happening.
CAN YOU FORGIVE AND PUNISH?
How can forgiving a person be reconciled with punishing them?
One example is how the parent forgives their child and still imposes consequences for misbehaviour.
Another is you forgiving the criminal who attacked you.
The idea is that a crime attacks you and also society so if you
forgive that does not mean society has to. You are part of society
so in a sense to attack you is to attack everybody. Also, society
needs order and cohesion - letting those who despise it be treated
the same as people who love it makes no sense.
Justice does not require the victim to seek it or be consulted in
determining what the best way to exact justice is.
Justice is society making the person pay for the sake of principle
and cohesion.
Forgiveness means you don’t ask for this but resolve only to do good
for the other.
It can be seen as the wish to get rid of the desire for revenge. And
thus compatible with a person being punished for the sake of the
principle. The principle is that if you harm and do not pay
for it, that implies the harm does not really matter. It sends
a bad message to you and everybody else.
CRITIQUE:
It is obvious that only the victim knows exactly what harm has been done and how it felt. No law can judge that or punish that. The victim is left out of the equation for the sake of rules. For that reason, the claim that justice is about protecting the victim and society is only partly true. That is why the justice system ruins the criminals further. It is corrupt and the criminal sees the hypocrisy.
The forgiver may be saying that the wrongdoing doesn’t matter anymore for it is in the past. But evil does matter. To say that evil is evil and yet does not matter is to become as evil as the person who did the wrong. It will be inside - despite the noble exterior.
Despite the talk of the power of forgiveness, nobody rushes to get criminals out.
Not forgiving was declared by Jesus to be a heinous crime that would stop God forgiving you - because it implied ingratitude for the fact that he forgave you and gave you an undeserved ticked to everlasting salvation. Clearly then it is worse not to forgive than not to punish. If there is a choice you forgo criminal justice.
If punishment is treated like a sad but necessary evil, inferior to forgiveness, that sends a bad message out.
Man was made for religion and religion was not made for man. That is what belief in God logically implies. If you really forgive, you will be upset to see the criminals punished even if you think they should be.
Forgiveness gives the criminals more power to hurt you - as if the criminal action can’t do enough of that on its own.