About Punishment

Offenders should be punished in a way that makes them suffer in order to absolve them of their guilt and stop them from profiting from their misdeeds. Punishment should serve to make the offender feel bad for their crimes. On the basis of retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and society protection, punishment can be justified.

The goal of retributory punishment, which is the oldest type of punishment, is to appease society’s need for vengeance for the crime committed so that those who were harmed won’t feel compelled to engage in vigilantism (Zaibert, 2016). On the other hand, deterrence seeks to discourage future offenses Deterrence involves making crimes less profitable by ensuring that the punishment is more severe in comparison to the severity of the crime committed (Chau, 2016). The idea of this approach is that individuals will not commit crimes if they know that the pain of penalty will outweigh the pleasure they derive from the offense. According to Chau (2016), punishment can deter crime through specific deterrence that convinces criminals that committing an offense does not pay, or through general deterrence that discourages other future criminals by allowing sacrifices in criminal cases if that is seen to improve the collective welfare.

The aim of rehabilitation, a justification for punishment and the most recently used approach, is to strengthen the ability of the criminals to stay within the law, by using therapy to change the habits and characters of the criminals. Rehabilitation does not focus on the severity of the crime but rather, on the background of the offenders (Zaibert, 2016). Punishment allows for societal protection, by rendering offenders unable to commit other offenses either permanently by execution, or temporarily through imprisonment. Societal protection, like deterrence, is a rational method of punishment that seeks to protect society from crime.

Overall, Punishment is justifiable on the grounds of retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and societal protection. Through such approaches, punishment serves to purge offenders of their guilt by exposing them to unfavorable settings to make them suffer and hence deter them from committing further offenses.

References

Chau, P. (2016). Bennett’s Expressive Justification of Punishment. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 1-19.

Zaibert, L. (2016). Punishment and retribution. Routledge.