Five Punishment Justifications in the U.S.
Introduction
Punishment and the basis for punishing criminals considering a person’s right to dignity, as well as his or her rationality and responsibility, have been the subject of debate among philosophers, politicians, and jurists for centuries. The choice of punishment is further complicated by the differences between various classes of criminals. Various theories of punishment justification have been developed, each attempting to justify the practice in one form or another and establish its proper goals. The threat of punishment controls offenses because the definition of crime is not complete without penalty. That is due to the fact that no one can be charged with a crime if there is no punishment for that crime. Therefore, punishment can be justified in different ways depending on the purpose of the crime or offense.
Retribution
Proponents of retaliatory measures argue that humans are rational beings capable of making informed decisions, and therefore breaking the law is a rational, informed decision. It is a fact that the punishment must be proportional to the offense committed (Stohr & Walsh, 2022). Retribution is probably the oldest justification for punishment and can be found in the theories proposed by Kant and Hegel (Geeraets, 2021). Although the idea of retribution as a justification for criminal punishment often enjoys intuitive support, it is subject to various types of criticism.
Incapacitation
Incapacitation is primarily used to protect the public from criminals deemed dangerous enough to be ‘removed’ from society for a specified period. It is usually achieved by sending the criminal to prison (imprisonment). In most countries, imprisonment is applied for a range of different crimes but is almost certainly applied to those who commit serious assaults, murders, or sexual offenses. Thus, incapacitation aims to deprive offenders of the opportunity to commit future crimes through imprisonment rather than rehabilitation or prevention (Stohr & Walsh, 2022). In the penitentiary system itself, prisoner safety classifications are used to classify prisoners based on their level of risk and place them in an environment that sufficiently deprives them of their ability to create problems.
Re[A1] habilitation
Rehabilitative justice focuses on the offender, identifying their needs in order to help and ‘heal’ them. In this case, the offender is seen as a patient who needs to be cured and assisted to accept future behavior in accordance with expectations. The aim is to reduce the rate of recidivism or people committing another crime after being released from prison (Kirkwood, 2022). The court may combine rehabilitation with imprisonment, probation, or parole (Kirkwood, 2022). Thus, effective therapy or education is usually responsible for rehabilitation, which prevents future crimes by changing the defendant’s behavior.
Reintegration
Reintegration or restitution prevents future crimes by punishing the defendant financially. It means that the court orders the defendant in a criminal case to pay the victim any damages and resembles the award of damages in a civil suit. Restitution can be bodily injury, loss of property or money, and, in rare cases, emotional distress (Crime Prevention 2019). It can be a fine that covers part of the costs of criminal prosecution and punishment as well.
Deterrence
The principle behind deterrence is that the threat of punishment discourages people from committing crimes. The police deter crime when they do something that makes the criminal more confident that he or she will be caught. Strategies that use the police as ‘watchmen,’ such as guarding hotspots, are particularly effective. The criminal’s behavior is more likely to be influenced by the fact that they see a policeman in handcuffs and with a walkie-talkie than a new law that toughens punishment. Deterrence can be either specific or general; the first one refers to the effect on the future behavior of individuals who experience it (Stohr & Walsh, 2022). For specific deterrence to work, the previously punished person must knowingly make a connection between the alleged criminal act (Stohr & Walsh, 2022). The punishment incurred as a result of similar acts committed in the past.
Important Components in the Concept of Punishment in the United States
The risk offenders pose to society depends mainly on how people perceive the offense. As a result, how one country’s justice system treats a particular crime will differ significantly from the level of prohibition and punishment imposed for the same crime in another country. However, imprisonment renders criminals incapacitated, physically removing them from society. The justice systems often use long-term imprisonment with the intent to incapacitate common offenders who recidivate (recidivism) (Tatalovich, 2019). In the US, where the five significant punishments predominate justifications, strategies of retribution and deterrence reflect the concept of punishment most clearly.
Different philosophical theories give separate interpretations of why punishment is an immoral act, as well as different justifications for this act. Retributivists consider the independence and freedom of the individual to be fundamental values. They see the immorality of punishment precisely in its coercive nature since it is applied to offenders against their free will (Lavazza & Corso, 2021). From this point of view, the system can only be justified by demonstrating that such coercion is accompanied by due respect for the offender as a reasonable, sovereign, and independent.
As mentioned above, retribution raises the issue of human rights and awareness, which is very important for a personality-oriented state like the U.S. In addition, the justification of deterrence along with retribution is more in line with the due process model that the United States tends to use (Stohr & Walsh, 2022). Factual guilt only becomes legal if the evidence used to determine it was obtained procedurally correctly. The due process model is more worried about the judicial process’s integrity than its effectiveness and legal guilt rather than the actual guilt of the defendant.
It is important to note that the objectives of the criminal justice systems described above are not static and may evolve, change, and even merge over time, often due to contemporary cultural values and political priorities. There is still a lot of debate today about the importance of punishment justifications. It is increasingly argued that almost any punishment should be studied in detail and, if necessary, could be balanced. That is, it concerns the possibility of rehabilitation of the offender without losing the possibility of compensation to the victims. From an ideal perspective, one should speak of protecting society in the long term by preventing possible crimes.
Conclusion
However, it can be assumed that the concept of punishment in the U.S. tends to be proportionate to crime. It means a person should be punished only to the extent necessary to destroy an unfair advantage. Therefore, excessive punishment would be disproportionate and unjust, and insufficient punishment would not completely destroy the offender’s advantage due to his or her crime. At the same time, a clear demonstration of the inevitable punishment for an offense should prevent the development of crime in the country.
References
Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice. (2019). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Web.
Geeraets, V. (2021). The enduring pertinence of the basic principle of retribution. Ratio Juris, 34(4), 293–314. Web.
Kirkwood, S. (2022). A practice framework for restorative justice. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 63, 101688. Web.
Lavazza, A., & Corso, F. (2021). Retributivism, consequentialism, and the role of science. Neurolaw, 251–274. Web.
Stohr, M. K., & Walsh, A. (2022). Corrections: The essentials (4th ed.). SAGE.
Tatalovich, R. (2019). Social regulatory policy: Moral controversies in American politics. Routledge.