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the purpose of punishment and sentencing
the purpose of punishment and sentencing
the purpose of punishment and sentencing
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In this chapter I will explore into the vireos issues regarding the concept of punishment and justification of the state. Why state punish and how much punish? What is the justification of state for punishment? Furthermore I will look at the comparison of theoretical arguments concerning the state punishment and the justification, than I will proceed to outline the concepts of minor and major offences. What kind of punishment inflicted for those offences? In the final part I will investigate the punishment in today's systems. There are numerous form of punishment which has been implemented in the human society. This can be different from one jurisdiction to another, the rules and regulations of punishment are based on the constitution of state …show more content…
The main questions will arise but what can justify and gives this right to the state to enforce formal, legal punishment on those who are committing criminal offences? It is important to note that other punishments have their impacts on the society. However my research is concerning state’s punishments. Hence I will avoid traditional punishment such as religions, family, or any other particular group’s punishment. The state’s legal system responsible to control and prevent other punishments I have stated. Punishment are intended to be undesirable and are for something done by the person punished or at least, either wrongly or indirectly, imputed to him. What was done must be for something wrongdoing. It can be morally or socially wrong. Moreover it can be for a wrong behaviour which is prohibited by the law, convention or some other rules. One cannot punish someone for nothing, the convicted person must be involved with an offence to punish and must be based on some evidence to accomplish his punishment. Each country have different law, some have very serious condemnation and other have softer approach. The punishment can vary it is depend on level of crime what damage has been done. The police force enforce the law and judicial system deliver the verdict. Now I will turn to some arguments to support this allegations with reference to state punishment. All countries around the world practicing mixed theory of punishment, including utilitarian, deterrent and reformative, for instance in the United States constitutes a federal system, each state have their own sovereign system, state constitution and state judicial system. Some states practice the capital punishment others do not, according to the statistics released by Federal Bureau
All the laws, which concern with the administration of justice in cases where an individual has been accused of a crime, always begin with the initial investigation of the crime and end either with imposition of punishment or with the unconditional release of the person. Most of the time it is the duty of the members of constituted authorities to inflict the punishment. Thus it can be said that almost all of the punishments are an act of self-defense and an act of defending the community against different types of offences. According to Professor Hart “the ultimate justification of any punishment is not that it is deterrent but that it is the emphatic denunciation by the community of a crime” (Hart P.65). Whenever the punishments are inflicted having rationale and humane factor in mind and not motivated by our punitive passions and pleasures then it can be justified otherwise it is nothing but a brutal act of terrorism. Prison System: It has often been argued that the criminals and convicted prisoners are being set free while the law-abiding citizens are starving. Some people are strongly opposed the present prison and parole system and said that prisoners are not given any chance for parole. Prisons must provide the following results: Keep dangerous criminals off the street Create a deterrent for creating a crime The deterrent for creating a crime can be justified in the following four types Retribution: according to this type, the goal of prison is to give people, who commit a crime, what they deserved Deterrence: in this type of justification, the goal of punishment is to prevent certain type of conduct Reform: reform type describes that crime is a disease and so the goal of punishment is to heal people Incapacitation: the...
To begin with, punishment is an act that involves intentional infliction of agony or misery to a person for wrong doing, with the aim of correction. Capital punishment involves penalty by death or life imprisonment killing of the person who has been found guilty. In Philosophers endeavors to justify punishment, they have come up with theories, which explain the core objective of punishment. The theories are Utilitarianism and Retributivism (Fieser, 2001).
Arguably, there are many reasons for punishment, including: retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, restoration, and rehabilitation. The main aim of criminal law is to punish anybody who does wrong to the society; however, it is clear that there are different goals and forms of punishment as listen above. Notably, these differences exist because of the severity of the crime and its punishment. A murderer can be sentenced to die but a shoplifter cannot face the same sentence. The first type of punishment, retribution, punishes the crime doer because the system believes that it is right and fair. Therefore, it looks back at the crime and matches it with the best possible punishment (Schmalleger, 2013). The second type, incapacitation, is forward
What effects Death Punishment causes to society? My first instinct about the topic as a part of the society was “People, who private another person of his life, should not have any right to conserve his own life either”. Putting ourselves in the positions of the victims, the families’ victims and the fear caused to` society in general.
There are several types of punishment that can be inflicted upon an offender including, fines, community sanctions and imprisonment (The Judicial Conference of Australia, 2007). Punishment is described as a sanction which inflicts a certain amount of pain and loss on the offender, used for payback and deter (The Judicial Conference of Australia, 2007; Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002). There are three ways society justifies punishing offenders, through the
This paper considers the desert arguments raised to support retributivism, or retribution. Retributivism is "the application of the Principle of Desert to the special case of criminal punishment." Russ Shafer-Landau and James Rachels offer very different perspectives on moral desert which ground their differing views on the appropriate response to wrongdoing. In "The Failure of Retributivism," Shafer-Landau contends that retributivism fails to function as a comprehensive theoretical foundation for the legal use of punishment. In contrast, in his article "Punishment and Desert," Rachels uses the four principles of guilt, equal treatment, proportionality and excuses to illustrate the superiority of retribution as the basis for the justice system over two alternatives: deterrence and rehabilitation. Their philosophical treatment of the term leads to divergence on the justification of legal punishment. Ultimately, Rachels offers a more compelling view of desert than Shafer-Landau and, subsequently, better justifies his endorsement of a retributive justice system.
Since the year, 1976 one thousand- three hundred and ninety-two individuals have been sentenced to capital-punishment. The term capital punishment has been coined to kindly identify the death penalty or execution. The death penalty has remained a major controversy for quite some time. Today, one of the most debated issues within the criminal justice system is the issue of whether or not the death penalty should be seen as being an ethical procedure. Prior to the year 1972, it had been seen as being legal. In 1972, the Supreme Court evaluated the terms of the death penalty and ruled it as being unconstitutional (History of the Death Penalty). The right or execution violated citizens eighth and fourteenth amendment rights. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court contradicted themselves in 1976 and reinstated the death penalty. Today, it is up to the states discretion rather or not they are going to permit capital-punishment. Through this essay the reader will read the pros and cons of the death penalty and the writers standpoint in regards to the capital
Many people assume that punishment by death will prevent crime, but if that was true then crimes would not have been committed in the dread that the offenders will be prosecuted and put to death. History and behavior of man has revealed that normal human instinct does not prevent people from committing crimes because if it did capital punishment would never have to be used. People would have been informed about the consequences of breaking the law and everyone would be in fear of committing crimes. Unfortunately when people commit crimes they seem to not care of the consequences; so whether capital punishment is in force or not crimes are going to be committed. This paper therefore presents a strong argument that the capital punishment does not deter people from committing crimes
Have you ever wonder if there is any good justification for the policy of punishing people for breaking laws? Boonin’s definition of punishment consists of Authorized, Reprobative, Retributive, Intentional Harm. The problem of punishment incorporates three different answers. Consequentialism, which makes punishment beneficial (will do good for the people later in the future). Retributivism punishment is a fitting response to crime. As well as, the option of ‘other’ punishment can be a source of education, or expressive matter. Moreover a fourth answer can be an alternative called restitution, punishment is not necessary for social order. In The Problem of Punishment, by David Boonin deeply studies a wide range of theories that explain why the institutions is morally permitted to punish criminals. Boonin argues that no state , no-one succeeds with punishment. To make his argument stronger, he endorses abolitionism, the view
The problem of the correct legal response to crime has produced passionate discussions within the study of criminology. The classical theories of justice present consistent legal action of all offenders who have committed identical crime while emphasising the notion of punishment as deterrence. Opposing this is the theory of the positivist school, which denies punishment as a preventative measure and instead promotes the rehabilitation of offenders through the recognition that each offender is an individual in their own right. In this essay, we will first understand the principles of proportionality and consistency and the importance of these principles in sentencing and then explore the effectiveness of both fixed punishment and open ended
ABSTRACT: Both utilitarians and the deontologists are of the opinion that punishment is justifiable, but according to the utilitarian moral thinkers, punishment can be justified solely by its consequences, while the deontologists believe that punishment is justifiable purely on retributive ground. D. D. Raphael is found to reconcile both views. According to him, a punishment is justified when it is both useful and deserved. Maclagan, on the other hand, denies it to be justifiable in the sense that it is not right to punish an offender. I claim that punishment is not justifiable but not in the sense in which it is claimed by Maclagan. The aim of this paper is to prove the absurdity of the enquiry as to whether punishment can be justified. Difference results from differing interpretations of the term 'justification.' In its traditional meaning, justification can hardly be distinguished from evaluation. In this sense, to justify an act is to say that it is good or right. I differ from the traditional use and insist that no act or conduct can be justified. Infliction of punishment is a human conduct and as such it is absurd to ask for its justification. I hold the view that to justify is to give reason, and it is only a statement or an assertion behind which we can put forth reason. Infliction of pain is an act behind which the agent may have purpose or intention but not reason. So, it is not punishment, but rather statements concerning punishment that we can justify.
Punishing the unlawful, undesirable and deviant members of society is an aspect of criminal justice that has experienced a variety of transformations throughout history. Although the concept of retribution has remained a constant (the idea that the law breaker must somehow pay his/her debt to society), the methods used to enforce and achieve that retribution has changed a great deal. The growth and development of society along with an underlying, perpetual fear of crime are heavily linked to the use of vastly different forms of punishment that have ranged from public executions, forced labor, penal welfarism and popular punitivism over the course of only a few hundred years.
The concept of retribution is that criminals should be punished for the damage they have cause to society. This theory is believed to
Laws serve several purposes in the criminal justice system. The main purpose of criminal law is to protect, serve, and limit human actions and to help guide human conduct. Also, laws provide penalties and punishment against those who are guilty of committing crimes against property or persons. In the modern world, there are three choices in dealing with criminals’ namely criminal punishment, private action and executive control. Although both private action and executive control are advantageous in terms of costs and speed, they present big dangers that discourage their use unless in exceptional situations. The second purpose of criminal law is to punish the offender. Punishing the offender is the most important purpose of criminal law since by doing so; it discourages him from committing crime again while making him or her pay for their crimes. Retribution does not mean inflicting physical punishment by incarceration only, but it also may include things like rehabilitation and financial retribution among other things. The last purpose of criminal law is to protect the community from criminals. Criminal law acts as the means through which the society protects itself from those who are harmful or dangerous to it. This is achieved through sentences meant to act as a way of deterring the offender from repeating the same crime in the future.
According to David Garland, punishment is a legal process where violators of the criminal law are condemned and sanctioned with specified legal categories and procedures (Garland, 1990). There are different forms and types of punishment administered for various reasons and can either be a temporary or lifelong type of punishment. Punishment can be originated as a cause from parents or teachers with misbehaving children, in the workplace or from the judicial system in which crimes are committed against the law. The main aim of punishment is to demonstrate to the public, the victim and the offender that justice is to be done, to reduce criminal activities and to deter people from wanting to commit any form of crime against the law. In other words it is a tool used to eliminate the bad in society or to deter people from committing criminal activities.