Differences and Similarities of Theories of Punishment - Essay Example

Punishment Punishment involves correcting wrong doers in order to set an example to others. It involves use of force or persuasion. In order to punish wrongdoers in an ethical manner, the state should determine the circumstances under which one really deserves punishment and the most appropriate method of punishment that is morally acceptable in the society (Duff, 2014). There are three theories of punishment which explain how punishment should be given to wrongdoers. The theories are: retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation. The theory of deterrence suggests that the main reason of punishing someone is to deter or discourage future wrongdoing. This theory therefore focuses on the future; it is concerned with what is going to happen in future rather than what has happened in the past. The retributive theory focuses on punishment for past mistakes rather than deterrence of future mistakes (Duff, 2014). The justification of retributive theory is that punishment gives a wrongdoer or a criminal what he deserves. Rehabilitative theory is a forward looking theory like the deterrence theory but instead of discouraging future crime, rehabilitation allows an individual to return to the society as a responsible and productive member of the society. This essay argues in support of retributive theory; retribution is preferred because it brings justice by giving criminals and wrongdoers what they deserve. It would be unjust and unfair if those who have killed or raped others are given freedom to go on normally in the society while their victims are either dead or living with depression and stigma. According to Rachels (2014), retributivism involves giving wrongdoers what they deserve, as a way of paying them back for their wicked deeds and reflecting the feelings of the community. This theory is supported by those who think that giving back to people exactly what they give is a satisfying deed. Retributive theory suggests that villains should not get away with their wrongdoing. Racheles (2014) supports the retributive idea that “people deserve to be treated exactly as they voluntarily choose to treat others” (p.466). In other words, people should be paid back with their deserts. This view reflects the general understanding of morality in the society. The opponents of the retributive theory argue that the feelings of giving back to criminals what they deserve are primitive and unenlightened (Rachels, 2014). Religious views also consider retribution as revengeful and unacceptable. Critics suggest that vengeance is not the best and acceptable course of action. However, Rachels (2014) suggests that this objection is misguided because paying back to people what they deserve is not a primitive call for vengeance but a cause for morality. He gives an example of two people who need promotion in an organisation; one person (Worker) has given his best to the company while the other one (Slacker) has given his least to the company. In this case, the Worker deserves the promotion because he deserves it. In a similar way, people should be punished because they deserve it and not because they need it. Opponents further pose the question of whether factors other than past performance could determine what one deserves. Ethically, people do not deserve something due to their natural or native endowments but only due to their past actions (Mautner, 2009). One cannot be punished for causing death accidentally. Another criticism of retributive theory is that retribution increases the amount of suffering in the world rather than decreasing it (Reiman, 2014). This criticism is supported by Bentham who argues that paying back harm with harm increases the total misery in the society. In this case, punishment or retribution is evil. This is in line with the virtue theory of ethics. In this theory, acting rightly should involve developing good virtues such as courage, temperance, wisdom and compassion; and avoiding evil vices such as jealousy, selfishness and jealousy (De Vries and Kim, 2011). In this case, good virtues lead people to avoid paying harm for harm. Rachele (2014) responds to this criticism by suggesting that punishment should be used as a means of preventing crime. Punishment in form of retribution is considered as the fairest and most just form of punishment. This can be shown by the principles of guilt, equal treatment, proportionality, and excuses. In terms of guilt, only a guilty person should be punished. This is fair because people who do not commit any crime cannot be punished by law. Equality is also achieved through equal treatment when people who have committed the same level of crime are punished with an equal measure (Gay, 2002). The punishment should also be proportional to the crime and people who give genuinely good excuses should not be punished (Pojman, 2014). When these principles are achieved, punishment is considered to be fair and just; hence justifiable. According to Rachele (2014), the justification for punishment is based on utilitarianism theory of ethics. According to this theory, the best social practices are those that maximize happiness and minimize suffering; hence maximize overall welfare. This is because people are better off when they are treated as they deserve, taking into account deserts. Retributive feelings make human beings to be happy when criminals are given what they deserve through punishment. Therefore, retribution maximizes happiness among victims. This means that utilitarianism supports the principles of retribution theory. Utilitarianism also argues that social practices should result in outcomes that give advantage to majority of the people affected (Norcross, 2009). When a villain is beaten thoroughly, it puts him and a few other criminals at a disadvantage, but majority of the affected will be happy. Therefore, retribution is justified under utilitarian perspective as well as the virtue and contract theories of ethics. Racheles explains the retributive theory using the principle of moral desert. In this case, moral deserts are considered as the deserts that one has as a result of his/her relationship with others rather than the amount of work he/she has performed. The retributive theory argues that what people deserve depends on how well or badly they treat others. This principle of the desert relates to the ethical theory of contract theory which suggests that ethics is an agreement between people in the society (Mautner, 2009). Doing the right thing means abiding by the agreements of a rational society but doing the wrong thing means violating those agreements. In this case, it is ethical to treat people well and unethical to treat people badly. Therefore, wrong-doers deserve punishment because they have violated the agreement of a rational the society. Racheles (2014) argues that punishment corrects things in order to achieve greater equality. The rehabilitation theory entails changing offenders in order to bring them back into the society as changed members willing to engage in productive activities. Wright, Cullen and Beaver (2014) suggest that rehabilitation is the most socially utilitarian and empirically measurable form of punishment. In this case, punishment is considered to be functional. This means that to punish criminals is a way of changing the likelihood that such a criminal will commit crime again in future. Rehabilitation enables offenders to deviate from their criminal behaviour with a correctional goal. Rehabilitation is based on the view that how individuals change behaviour is based on psychological factors. It is mainly directed to high-risk offenders who are likely to repeat their criminal behaviours again. One of the effective rehabilitation programs is cognitive-behavioural treatment which attacks anti-social values and beliefs and modeling appropriate behaviour (Wright, Cullen and Beaver, 2014). Cognitive treatment is tailored towards individual factors such as motivation and intelligence. Rehabilitation has three goals: justification for punishment, justification for intervention in the life of a criminal, way of reducing the number of crime victims, and method of saving state and federal money (Reiman, 2014). Rehabilitation also involves addressing the problems that caused crime. If causes of crime are known, the best rehabilitative measures are developed to correct behaviour. According to Racheles (2014) such rehabilitative measures include training, education and treatment. Racheles (2014) suggests that these methods are not successful in reducing crime because it is difficult to know exactly the individual causes of crime. However, prisons in United States are considered as correctional facilities; meaning that rehabilitation is becoming successful in the prisons. Rehabilitation is one of the leading forces in shaping modern criminal justice in the world. Deterrence is also another important theory of punishment which suggests that sanctions are useful in preventing or discouraging crime from occurring again in future. Deterrence ensures that there is massive compliance of the law in order to reduce crime. The main argument here is that crime is reduced by increasing the social costs of choosing to engage in crime. Specific deterrence includes sanctions applied on criminals for going against the law. Theoretically, specific deterrence relies on the fact that criminals learn from their mistakes the same way that normal people do. It leads criminals to weigh the costs and benefits of antisocial behaviour in order to encourage them to reform upon their release. Therefore, specific deterrence prevents individuals from future misconduct. General deterrence ensures that criminals learn through observation (Wright, Cullen and Beaver, 2014). Seeing an individual convicted and incarcerated prevents pro-social individuals from engaging in crime in future. Criminal sanction and punishment in relation to deterrence leads to the reduction of antisocial or criminal behaviour. It follows utilitarian theory because punishing offenders leads to increased benefits to the society through the reduction of recidivism by specific deterrence and reduced crime rates by way of general deterrence. Criminologists criticize this theory by suggesting that potential sanctions occurring in a distant future are unable to deter criminals of high propensity from performing criminal activities. The three theories of punishment usually lead to the same general conclusions. They usually agree about the person to be punished and the level of severity of punishment. However, the retributive theory seems to be more ethical, fair and just because it involves giving the criminal exactly what he deserves. If he acts severely on others, they should be punished severely; and that is fair and just (Rachel, 2014). By giving criminals what they deserve, it will also lead to deterrence of future behaviour because other potential criminals will avoid their criminal activities for the fear of being apprehended and punished severely. If a criminal is left free, and other criminals are aware of that, they will be motivated to continue with their criminality because they are less likely to be punished anyway. Furthermore, punishment and deterrence of behaviour is likely to promote rehabilitation of the criminal. From these perspectives, it is clear that the three theories of punishment have some similarities and some differences. In terms of similarity, these theories agree on who should be punished, but they disagree on why such people should be punished. For a person who molests a child, retributive theory argues that the person should be sent to prison in order to pay for the mistake he made. On the other hand, deterrence theory suggests that a person who molests a child should be sent to prison in order to prevent him from molesting a child in future. The rehabilitation theory suggests that the person should go to prison in order to be rehabilitated so that when he comes back to the community he becomes more responsible and can participate effectively in productive activities within the community. While they agree on the outcome and conclusions, the three theories of punishment disagree in terms of the level of justice, whether, when and how to punish a criminal. The severity of punishment given to a criminal in the perspective of deterrence theory is often more or less than the severity of punishment under the principles of retributive theory. For instance, a small mistake like jaywalking may sometimes be deterred by a severe punishment of chopping off the offender’s legs (Rachels, 2014). In this case the offender has unjustly and unfairly received more punishment than what he deserves. The retributive theory avoids this injustice by giving the offender the punishment that he actually deserves. Similarly, if a person commits a crime of torture he may be deterred by a few years in prison. This is not exactly what the criminal deserves. The retributive theory would require this person to be given a greater punishment that would amount to what he actually deserves depending on the crime committed. In conclusion, it is clear that the three theories of punishment have some differences and similarities. All of them aim at reducing criminal and antisocial behaviour, and they all aim at achieving utilitarian goals of maximum welfare in the society. However, retributive theory is the most successful form of punishment because it gives people what they deserve. It achieves social justice and fairness by paying back to criminals what they have done in the past. References list De Vries, M.S.S. and Kim, P.S. (2011). Value and Virtue in Public Administration: A Comparative Perspective. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Duff, R.A. (2014). “Punishment.” In H. LaFollette (ed.) Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. Fourth Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Gay, J. (2002). “Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality”. In Schneewind, J.B. Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mautner, M.N. (2009). Life-centered ethics and the human future in space. Bioethics, 23, 433– 440. Norcross, A. (2009). Two Dogmas of Deontology: Aggregation, Rights and the Separateness of Persons. Social Philosophy and Policy, 26, 81–82. Pojman, L.P. (2014). “In Defence of the Death Penalty.” In H. LaFollette (ed.) Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. Fourth Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Rachels, J. (2014). “Punishment and Desert.” In H. LaFollette (ed.) Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. Fourth Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Reiman, J. (2014). “Against the Death Penalty.” In H. LaFollette (ed.) Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. Fourth Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Wright, J.P., Cullen, F.T. and Beaver, K.M. (2014). “Does Punishment Work?” In H. LaFollette (ed.) Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. Fourth Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Read More