If a criminal is simply punished, and then at some point reintegrated into society without any counseling, there is a very high likelihood of his finding himself back as a resident of the prison system. For instance, released convicts in California have a 60% chance of being convicted of another crime down the line.
Although prisoners can be subject to a highly violent environment in jail, that level of violence does not lead towards a change in lifestyle or life choices.
In other words, if Batman’s choice of methodology when encountering criminals is exclusively the application of violence, the real world results would not be any different than the statistics that law criminologists are all too familiar with.
What the Batman fails to take into account is that every person is responding to internal and external stimuli. A criminal is not innately a criminal, but an individual who believes his choices are limited based on what have been his or her personal and cultural experiences.
There is a significant differentiation between removing a dangerous individual from a communal setting, and turning a misguided person into a hardened perpetrator.
While there are a multitude of detailed approaches, all roads to ending a cycle based on desperation must pass under the umbrella of opportunity.
