Cruel and Unusual Punishment

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Is it okay to give someone ten years in prison for stealing an outfit they thought was cute? Is it okay for a police officer to beat someone just because they are not in favor of their race? Cruel and unusual punishment has been a part of society since the government began and still exists today. People everywhere are being unfairly punished and this is unconstitutional according the the Eighth Amendment. Many authors have portrayed this unfairness in novels such as Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees. Throughout history cruel and unusual punishment has been a widely discussed topic and is evident in Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees through the struggles of characters in the book.
Cruel and unusual punishment has been seen throughout history and has been shaped and molded ever since the constitution we have today was ratified. Being apart of the Eighth Amendment the cruel and unusual punishment clause can have many interpretations when it comes to what is considered “cruel and unusual”. Kenneth Jost explains in his article by CQ Researcher called “Sentencing Debates”, “1960’s-1970’s: Calls for sentencing reform: Liberals seek to reduce disparities; conservatives want to provide certainty, check ‘leniency’ by judges, parole boards” (Jost). The author discusses how in the early 1960’s people were trying to limit the rights of a judge's ability to sentence someone unfairly by invoking a sentence reform. This sentence reform would then be a basis for which all judges would use to sentence someone who is said to be guilty for a crime. In 1988 new laws were set that went along with the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. In the subarticle “Are the federal guidelines unconstitutional?” Jost explains, “ Supre...

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...e still today are debating this and will continue to argue their case for a long time. There are many good literature examples that express cruel and unusual punishment and they make things much easier to understand it and how the natural basis is set. In the near future people need to discover a more concrete way to decide what is cruel and unusual and what is not.

Works Cited

Jost, Kenneth. "Sentencing Debates." CQ Researcher 5 Nov. 2004: 925-48. Web. 11 May
2014.
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. New York, New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.
Kozak, Ellen M. "The Eighth Amendment." The Everything U.S. Constitution Book: An
Easy-to-understand Explanation of the Foundation of American Government. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2011. 161-62. Print.
"Protection from Cruel and Unusual Punishment." National Paralegal. National Paralegal
College, 2003. Web. 11 May 2014.

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