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Retributive Justice
What is retributive justice? It is a system of criminal justice based on the punishment of offenders rather than rehabilitation. According to our notes, it is the oldest sense of the word justice. Others think of it as “an eye for an eye” or “getting even”. Justice should be more than getting even for crimes and offenses. Retributive justifications of punishments have largely endured the test of time.
Kant's views on retributive justice is the punishment itself has a larger purpose. The demonstration of respect for free and equal agents. Another interpretation he had was that the law generally and particularly the criminal law, is an instrument of social power that was meant to maintain a condition of the greatest freedom possible for each individual. Retributive may be thought of as an implication of the arguments about the distribution of punishment. Justice is not getting even for crimes and offenses. It concerns the running of a society as a whole in a day-today civil matters; as well as the more dramatic criminal concerns.
When it comes to justice distribution of privileges and power are equally important. The balancing act retributive, holds that an offenders suffering is justified because it maintains justice over time. The very idea of retributive punishment, is that it restores, rectifies and re-tributes the crime. It will over time lose its intelligibility. Aristotle argued that we should fix or equalize past injustices. He called it rectification justice.
The essential idea of rectification is a need to maintain justice over time. In our justice system, we punish an offender after the crime is committed. In our country over 6.7 million adults or 3.1% of the adult population is behind bars, on ...
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...or a death I don't think that punishment is reasonable. Our justice system needs to get a hold of itself before it gets a hold of any member of society.
Works Cited
Adams, Joseph Q. "Retributive Prepunishment." Social Theory & Practice 39.2 (2013): 213-222. Religion and Philosophy Collection. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Armour, Marilyn. "Restorative Justice: Some Facts And History." Tikkun 27.1 (2012): 25-64. Religion and Philosophy Collection. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Landa, Dimitri. "On The Possibility Of Kantian Retributivism." Utilitas 21.3 (2009): 276-296. Religion and Philosophy Collection. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
RYBERG, JESPER. "Retributivism And Resources." Utilitas 25.1 (2013): 66-79. Religion and Philosophy Collection. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Solomon, Robert C. Introducing Philosophy, “A text with integrated readings”. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005. Print.
Roach, K. (2000). Changing punishment at the turn of the century: Restorative justice on the rise. Canadian Journal of Criminology. 42, (2), 249-280.
Rehabilitation, retribution, and restoration are seen as the three tenets of justice in Canada. Rehabilitation seeks to help the offender reintegrate into society, restoration focuses on the needs of the victim, and retribution solely looks to punish the offender. Regarding the incarceration system, it is crucial to acknowledge that cruel and unusual punishments doled out through retribution only hold society back from progressing and bettering itself.
The symbol of the Canadian judicial system is the balanced scales of justice. When a wrongful act is committed, the scales of justice are greatly misplaced and require a solution to counterbalance the crime and restore balance. Additionally, the scales represent the idea that law should be viewed objectively and the determination of innocence should be made without bias. The Canadian criminal justice system encapsulates the idea of the scale of justice, to control crime and impose penalties on those who violate the law. One of the most important aspects of this system is that an individual charged with a criminal offence is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The current system has two prevailing methods involved in the process of dealing with crime: Retributive and restorative justice. This paper will analyze aspects of retributive justice and restorative justice, with reference to their respective philosophies, for the purpose of finding which is more effective at achieving justice and maintaining balance.
Retributive justice is a type of justice, which believes a punishment should be both rightful and proportionate to the immoral act. This type of retribution is similar to that of the concept “what goes around, comes around” and is prominent is various unethical acts such as an individual committing the act murder and then going to prison. Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and William Shakespeare’s King Lear are perfect examples of literature that integrate retributive justice into the plot. Both literary works have characters that make similar decisions
In Joel Feinberg’s article, The Expressive Function of Punishment, Feinberg determines that the best tactic to justify punishment is the expressive function of punishment rather than retributive theory. Clearly, Feinberg is referring to the expressive theory of law which states that a theory that evaluates legal actions of officials can symbolize or express an idea or opinion. Also, the retributive theory is the theory of justice that states that the best response to a crime is a punishment that is proportionate to the crime and serves for its own sake such as a deterrence. In order to make this claim to justify punishment, Feinberg must first define punishment in which he states, “in effect, as the infliction of hard treatment by an authority
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.
Kant, Immanuel, and Mary J. Gregor. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.
Another way that some argue against pure restitution is to say that is does not have an acceptable implication that punishment does have. Pure restitution lacks implications that are backed with punishment. Additionally, it is argued that pure restitution has an unacceptable implication that punishment also shares. Some say that pure restitution is too individualistic. It is also argued that some harm is beyond repair, and restitution will not solve or make these issues better, and the theory of pure restitution allows us to do nothing at all to the offender. A very controversial issue here is the question of murder.
When looking at the Criminal Justice system there are so many different elements make up the system to create a whole, it is sometimes hard to grasp every element. Throughout history people and governments alike have tried to figure out cost saving yet efficient strategies to keep offenders from reoffending and out of jail. Restorative justice is one of these elements; created to focus on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large. Within the realm of restorative justice there are many different types of procedures and programs from alternate dispute resolution to veteran trauma courts and everything in-between. Not everyone will agree that these specialty courts and procedures
As the purpose of restorative justice is to mend the very relationship between the victim, offender, and society, communities that embrace restorative justice foster an awareness on how the act has harmed others. Braithwaite (1989) notes that by rejecting only the criminal act and not the offender, restorative justice allows for a closer empathetic relationship between the offender, victims, and community. By acknowledging the intrinsic worth of the offender and their ability to contribute back to the community, restorative justice shows how all individuals are capable of being useful despite criminal acts previous. This encourages offenders to safely reintegrate into society, as they are encouraged to rejoin and find rapport with the community through their emotions and
Dorter, Kenneth. Equality, Recollection, and Purification. No. 3 (1972). Phronesis Vol. 17. BRILL, 198-218. Web.
Agreeing on a definition of restorative justice has proved difficult. One definition is a theory of justice that focuses mostly on repairing the harm caused by criminal behaviour. The reparation is done through a cooperative process that includes all the stakeholders. Restorative justice can also be explained as an approach of justice that aims to satisfy the needs of the victims and offenders, as well as the entire community. The most broadly accepted definition for restorative justice, however, is a process whereby all the parties that have a stake in a specific offence collectively resolve on how to deal with the aftermath. This process is largely focused around reparation, reintegration and participation of victims. That is to say, it is a victim-centred approach to criminal justice, and it perceives crime differently than the adversarial system of justice.
Ed. Michael Goldman. Teaching Philosophy 36.2 (2013): 181-82. Print. The.
A real world example of retributive justice would be capital punishment. The National Research Council found that in 2012, 88% of people said the death penalty does not deter them from committing a crime that is punishable by execution. The criminal justice system is flawed in the way that for some crimes, such as Victoria’s, officials will treat offenders exactly how the offender treated their victim. When dealing with other crimes, officials will just lock up the criminals, they will receive no media attention and will not be used to entertain citizens with their own boring
“Restorative justice is an approach to crime and other wrongdoings that focuses on repairing harm and encouraging responsibility and involvement of the parties impacted by the wrong.” This quote comes from a leading restorative justice scholar named Howard Zehr. The process of restorative justice necessitates a shift in responsibility for addressing crime. In a restorative justice process, the citizens who have been affected by a crime must take an active role in addressing that crime. Although law professionals may have secondary roles in facilitating the restorative justice process, it is the citizens who must take up the majority of the responsibility in healing the pains caused by crime. Restorative justice is a very broad subject and has many other topics inside of it. The main goal of the restorative justice system is to focus on the needs of the victims, the offenders, and the community, and focus