Punishment has been around for ages. From century to century the thoughts of punishment have changed for good and bad, but the focus of punishment has not changed. With two sides to the story one being to reform or rehabilitate and the other to be punitive and ask for a penalty in return for the wrong doing done. It is hard not to see that there is plenty of controversy revolving around the subject, punishment has with stood the test of time and with good reason. Some would say the need for punishment is obvious, but others believe it has been taken too far. I say, the glue that holds society in order is punishment. Without our government’s systematic penal code to enforce the social norms that are set in place, our neighborhoods might not be as safe. The issue with this type of mentality though, is deciding how far is too far, and how to judge properly.
The story of punishment is a sad and troubling one. From birth, philosophically speaking it was doom with a father by the name of Retribution. “On our standard theory of retribution, then, punishment is inflicted in order to make the punisher pay for his offense” (Cottingham pg.1). Also, a mother by the name of Punitive. The word or concept of punishment has root word meanings derived from punitive, “< post-classical Latin punitivus inflicting or involving punishment (13th cent. in British and continental sources) < classical Latin pūnīt-, past participial stem of pūnīrepunish v.+ -īvus-ive suffix. Compare Middle French, French punitif(c1370 in Middle French in sense ‘(of a person) inclined to punish’, late 18th cent. in sense 1), Spanish punitivo(early 16th cent.), Portuguese punitivo(1569), Italian punitivo(a1406)” (OED.com). Cause and effect, every action has a reaction and t...
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...rigo, Bruce. "Punishment, Freedom, and the Culture of Control: A Review of Torture: America’s Brutal Prisons 1." Contemporary Justice Review 9.2 (2006): 229-33. Print.
Johnson, Dominic D.P., and Oliver Kruger. "The Good of Wrath: Supernatural Punishment and the Evolution of Cooperation." Political Theology 5.2 (2004): 159-76. Print.
McCurry, Jeffrey. "The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy, and Human Value – By John Cottingham." Modern Theology 24.2 (2008): 320-24. Print.
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When the our criminal justice system introduced punishments, sanctions for criminal behavior tended to be public events which were designed to shame the person and deter others. These punishments included ducking stool, the pillory, whipping, branding and the stocks. As years progressed, these punishments have slowly started disappear from our penology and capital punishment was introduced. According to Kronenwetter,
punishment is an asset to society: it is the only punishment that fits the crime, it deters potential criminals
Evans, C. Stephen and Manis R. Zachary. Philosophy of Religion, 2nd Ed. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009. Print.
The proliferation of harsh mandatory sentencing policies has inhibited the ability of courts to sentence offenders in a way that permits a more "problem solving" approach to crime, as we can see in the most recent community policing and drug court movements today. By eliminating any consideration of the factors contributing to crime and a range of responses, such sentencing policies fail to provide justice for all. Given the cutbacks in prison programming and rates of recidivism, in some cases over 60% or more, the increased use of incarceration in many respects represents a commitment to policies that are both ineffective and unfair. I believe in equal, fair and measured punishment for all. I don't advocate a soft, or a hard approach to punishment. But we must take a more pragmatic look at what the consequences of our actions are when we close our e...
Is the intentional pain that an individual experiences justified if there is the potential to save the lives of many? Torture is the most used weapon in the “war against terrorism” but does it work? The purpose of this essay is to identify what the motives for torturing are, the effectiveness of torture, and important issues with the whole process of torture.
Wolf, Susan. "Moral Saints." Gendler, Tamar Szabo, Susanna Siegel and Steven M. Cahn. The Elements of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 220-232.
In the article, “The Torture Myth,” Anne Applebaum explores the controversial topic of torture practices, focused primarily in The United States. The article was published on January 12, 2005, inspired by the dramatic increase of tensions between terrorist organizations and The United States. Applebaum explores three equality titillating concepts within the article. Applebaum's questions the actual effectiveness of using torture as a means of obtaining valuable information in urgent times. Applebaum explores the ways in which she feels that the United States’ torture policy ultimately produces negative effects upon the country. Applebaum's final question is if torture is not optimally successful, why so much of society believes it works efficiently.
In his novel Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, Dr. Victor M. Rios aims to demonstrate the catastrophe of criminalization, the flops of using cruel and humiliating punishments that attempt to “‘correct’ and ‘manage’ marginalized youths” (p. 23), and to display the consequences that these practices will have on the paths that teenagers take. He does this by documenting parts of his experience in observing forty boys of Black and/or Latino who are “heavily affected by criminal justice policies and practice” (p. 8). Then, he clarifies how these flaws impacted the boys in these situations. The aim of this essay is to summarize Dr. Rios’ observations and analyze and critique the primary arguments made in the book.
A Natural Theology for Our Time, Charles Hartshorne, La Salle, Ill. Open Court, 1967, pp. 116-20
Mandatory sentencing is not anything new. It began in the 1970s. The main purpose for mandatory sentencing was to try to get rid of the drug lords and to eliminate most of the nation’s street drug selling. It was to impose that the same crime would have the same sentence all over the nation. Some of the negatives that rose from mandatory sentencing were nonviolent drug offenders and first time offenders who were receiving harsh sentences. Inmate populations and correction costs increased and pushed states to build more prisons. Judges were overloaded with these cases, and lengthy prison terms were mandated to these young offenders. Mandatory sentencing is an interesting topic in which I would like to discuss my opinions in going against mandatory sentencing. I will show the reasons for this topic, as well as give you my personal brief on which I support.
Retribution is something done or given to somebody as punishment or vengeance for something he or she has done. Those who side with retribution usually do not consider trying to improve a criminal in any way and attempting to make him or her an asset to society. Usually, their motto would be, “An eye for an eye.” An example of this would be a person raping a person’s daughter, so someone who knew they daughter reacting and going after the person or maybe even their daughter and raping them. Retribution is usually not carried out by the criminal justice system but by vengeance and society taking the law into their own hands. Several people do not believe that retribution is the most effective way to go about punishing criminals due to the fact that it sends out the wrong message to those around us.
There are many explanations for what punishment characterises. For Emile Durkheim, punishment was mainly an expression of social solidarity and not a form of crime control. Here, the offender attacks the social moral order by committing a crime and therefore, has to be punished, to show that this moral order still "works". Durkheim's theory suggests that punishment must be visible to everyone, and so expresses the outrage of all members of society against the challenge to their collective values. The form of punishment changes between mechanic (torture, execution) and organic (prison) solidarity because the values of society change but the idea behind punishing, the essence, stays the same - keeping the moral order intact not decreasing crime. Foucault has a different view of the role or function of punishment. For Foucault, punishment signifies political control. His theory compares the age of torture with the age of prison, concluding that the shift from the former to the latter is done due to changes in society and new strategies needed for the dominance of it by the rulers. Punishment for Foucault is a show of power first brutal and direct (torture), then organised and rational (prison). Punishment does not get more lenient because of humanitarian reasons but because the power relations in society change.
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
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.