Theories of punishment - Term Paper Example

Crime and punishment consider the philosophical concept of cause and effect. Crime causes suffering, pain, and losses to someone. Punishment also causes suffering, pain, and losses (“Crime”). Punishment is the effect in the form of penalty inflicted on an offender through a judicial procedure. Society imposes retribution on an individual who committed an act that public laws forbid. Society has numerous answers to the issue why an offender should be punished. Some of them are to stop them from committing further crimes, tell the victims that the society disapproves the act, and share their feelings, stop others from doing similar acts, and protect the community.

The set forth above review indicates that society tries to punish all offenders who commit index crimes. Whether a sentence is carried out or not is exclusively law enforcement and judicial authority’s tasks and only statistical appraisal can confirm it, which is beyond the scope of this assignment. An index crime is committed willingly and non-index ones are perpetrated non-willingly. Non-index crimes consist of non-physical confrontation. For example, violation of liquor laws is a non-index crime, which does not cause pain, loss and suffering to another person.

It is a non-index crime. . The concept of utilitarian theory is: Does consequence (result of punishment) relate to the happiness of the largest number? Punishment in this theory works for the prevention of future crime. Retributive theory is past oriented and it seeks retribution from offenders for their crimes. It also conveys to the offender that the purpose of the punishment is to impose moral responsibility, and punishment does not account offender's future conduct. The salient feature of the above analysis points to the fact that society is more eager to punish those whose crimes consist of physical confrontation.

We can conclude that non-index crimes are punished less often. The described above definition of the index and non-index crimes states that index crime consists of physical confrontation and non-index crimes consist of non-physical one. For example, homicide, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault cannot be committed without physical contact with the victim, while fraud, forgery, gambling, drug abuse, and disorderly conduct do not involve physical contact. That is why index crime, as a whole, causes more physical harm and financial loss than a non-index crime.

According to the FBI report, property crimes in 2011 resulted in estimated losses of $156.6 billion (“Crime Statistics for 2010”). Part II The criminal justice system in general uses two punishment theories: utilitarianism and retributivism. The first theory states that criminal laws’ purpose is to prevent future harms while the following states the purpose is to punish past wrongs. Retributive justice has undergone different criticism. One of them defines that punishment for the same crime is different in different jurisdictions of the same country.