Truth is not repaid in the world – it is punished. If a man in the courts says absolutely what he has done, is the court going to release him with honor because he has been truthful? If the court is not going to release him with honor, then the court is forcing the man to lie – and everybody has the right to protect himself. Then your oaths don’t mean anything.

It is so simple to make the whole world full of truth. Just reward truth, and lies will disappear. Your oaths and your courts and your punishments have not destroyed criminals; on the contrary, criminals go on increasing. And you must be blind that you don’t see that your jails, your courts create criminals. They don’t destroy crime. Your jails are universities for criminology where amateur criminals learn from master criminals and come out of the jail after two, three years, more mature.

All your laws and all your courts have created only one idea in the mind of criminals: that to commit a crime is not unlawful, but to be caught is unlawful. So the only thing is not to be caught. You have to be more intelligent and more skillful, more sophisticated.

This whole system of jurisprudence has failed. We need a totally new kind of jurisprudence where truth is rewarded; certainly, if the man has done something wrong he should be rewarded for telling the truth. And he should be sent not to the jail, but to a psychiatric, psychoanalytical caretaker, to a university where he can learn that what he has done was wrong, and that a society which rewarded truth…. He will feel embarrassed to do anything that goes against human life, human culture.

And anybody who is committing a crime…it simply means he is psychologically sick; he needs treatment, not punishment. Truth should be rewarded, and the person should be given to people who can treat him. And this is not condemnation. The individual is respected; just some sickness is there in his psychology for which he receives treatment. And within a few years, all crimes can evaporate from the earth.

But with the crimes evaporating, what will happen to the judges, to the advocates, to so many people who have vested interests; to the jails and the jailers? Millions of people are engaged in this stupid business. The criminals are providing employment for millions of people. If crime disappears, this employment also disappears. That’s why the judges are going to continue the old way; it is their bread and butter, it is their respectability.

Jailers are going to do the same thing they have been doing for centuries – creating more and more criminals, stronger and stronger criminals, because those are the people who are giving them employment. Without them, they will be nowhere. We have to see this whole situation.

I am reminded of a story by Kahlil Gibran. A few friends go to a pub and drink too much, enjoy, sing and dance and fight, and do everything that drunkards are bound to do. The pub owner is very happy because business has never been so good.