Summary Of Chapter 8 Wilma Derksen

The chapter that I want to write about is Chapter Eight: Wilma Derksen, “we have all done something dreadful in our lives, or have the urge to”. In this chapter I find the story line I quite interesting as it exemplified the current problem paced by society nowadays; crime. First of all, this chapter can be regarded as the chapter that tied most of the stories in the book including the undesirable difficulty, the inverted U-shaped concept and the principle of legitimacy. As I read the book, the topic discuss by Gladwell makes me think critically of the action taken by Mike Reynolds and Wilma Derksen. Both of them faced the same situation or what we like to called, difficulty, which is the death of their child. But what differ between them is

In chapter seven, the author elaborates on the principle of legitimacy that tells us the authority also have to take part in creating a better society. Authority often assume that only society have to change their attitude towards other people and the law. I think people nowadays, especially places that have high crime rate, also belief this statement is true. The primary reason is they do not trust the justice system anymore. If we live in a society that often have unfair and predictable punishment for a crime, people will have negative perspective towards the authority- justice system. In the chapter, Mike Reynolds react to his daughter’s death by enforcing the Three Strikes system, but Wilma Derksen didn’t do anything and just forgive, these contrast reaction shows a big different towards the outcome of their action. In my opinion, the Three Strikes can be considered the effect after the peak in the inverted U-shaped graph. Forgiving, on the other hand, is the “less” version of the graph as it didn’t change the criminal to be a better person despite it didn’t have major aftereffect towards the crime system. Situation like this is ‘dependable situation’ where the people have to consider punishment depending on the criminal’s crime. Not every method is suitable for all crime and people have to start acknowledging it whether they are the higher-ups or citizen in a