andrewducker | All you need is

Almost 5 years ago I moved into a flat with a few friends (Saint, Hal and Emma, if I remember correctly).

We were one floor up, above an optometrist (which, as far as I can tell is an optician posh enough to sell glasses by using pictures of Kate Moss). The window looked out onto a flat roof (which we went out onto occasionally, until the optometrists asked us to stop climbing on their roof), which bumped into a wall from someone's garden. Occasionally a cat would come along the wall, leap in through the window and demand attention. It would wander into the living room and sit on the sofa, meowing and rubbing his head against anyone who was about until he got scratched behind his ears.

He was, however, highly neurotic. He'd demand to be played with and then suddenly, with no warning, would erupt in a small ball of destruction, inflict small wounds on the lower arms of the person playing with him, and streak for the door and back out the window. This seemed like odd behaviour to me, and he never seemed to actively want to cause damage. It looked more like he suddenly became terrified, as if he realised the person tickling him under the chin was about 15 times his size and could be dangerous.

I never, ever retaliated against the cat. And eventually he learnt that I wasn't a threat. It took a few weeks before he was only fleeing the room. A few weeks later, he was running as far as the door, and then turning around to look back and seeing me just sitting on the sofa. Eventually he realised that he had nothing to fear from me, and I stopped having my arms lacerated on a weekly basis.

I feel much the same about people - that most of the problem we have are because people are scared of each other, and this causes them to drive each other away. I could reject people because of their failings, turn them away and move on to those people that are more perfect, but I don't think this is a worthwhile answer. I've known several people who have in some way acted terribly, but have later gone on to be good friends, because they've changed for the better, and got support from those around them.

One of the major thing my current employer does is help jobless people in the local area to find work. These people are usually long-term unemployed (employment rate in the area is below 50% and many of the people stopped going to school at 13 and never did anything after that), many of whom have drifted into very unsavoury areas. I was talking to one of the people I regularly work with, and he told me that he and one other person had both been involved in questionable things when they were younger, but because they were given a chance to turn themselves around, because people believed in them, they were able to make something of themselves. And because people had faith in them, they felt they had a duty to have faith in other people, to help them find a place for themselves.

I, personally, do not feel that punishment does much good whatsoever to most people. I do not think that locking people up for their crimes teaches them not to commit them. I do not think that anything can rehabilitate people apart from helping them to build their lives up so that they can be a person who doesn't want or need to commit them any more. And I think the same applies in our personal lives as much as it does in public life.