I do not really think that any type of punishment out there effectively deters a person
from commiting crime. We have several ways that we try and prevent crime, but in this day in
age, I cannot tell that they are working. I see more and more crimes being committed, and people
being sent off to prisons with the thought that it may help them. Every crime is different, and
every criminal has their own motive as to why they are committing the crime. Should there be
one punishment per crime, or is there a way to handle the crime committed on an individual
basis? I think that deciding the punishment is the most important way to ensure that the person
does not commit the crime again. In the United States there are currently four different types of
punishment; retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and social protection. This paper is going to
discuss the four different types of punishment, and how they are related in today’s society. I am
also going to discuss which ones are more effective in deterring a crime, and which one is the
least effective.
Retribution is the oldest justification for punishment. It is society’s way of punishing
those who commit a moral wrong. In principle, a person’s punishment should be as equally
deviant as the crime committed. Like the saying goes “An eye for an eye,” and this form of
retribution has been commonly used as punishment since the Bible times. The death penalty is
the most common form of retribution when used to punish a murderer, and is the most severe
form of punishment. But there are a few states in the United States that find the death penalty to
be too harsh of a punishment and they will not allow it. Currently, there are 12 states that do not
allow the death penalty. Some people feel that the death penalty is too harsh of a punishment,
and they would rather allow these hard core criminals to live out the rest of their days in a prison
cell. Retribution is not an effective way to deter crime. It is more of a benefit to the victim or
their family.
The next form of punishment that we are going to discuss is deterrence. Deterrence is
“The attempt to discourage criminality through the use of punishment.” (Macionis, 2006)
The use of deterrence is to give the public knowledge of what the specific punishment is for each
crime committed. It is not effective if the person does not think about the consequences of what
they are doing when they are committing the crime. To me this form of punishment is the least
effective. People are out there right now committing crimes. They know the consequences if they
get caught, yet they are still out there committing the crimes. Since most crimes are committed
so impulsively, and with little thought to the future, the criminal thinks that they will only be
punished if caught, and they believe they will not be caught.
The third form of punishment used in the United States is rehabilitation. “[Rehabilitation
as it is commonly understood in the offending arena contains some components that meet the
criteria for punishment, in the ethical sense of that term. It is also true that there are aspects of
rehabilitation that are focused directly on assisting offenders to live better lives (higher levels of
well-being) and therefore which do not meet the criteria for punishment.]” (Ward. T, 2011)
Rehabilitation can motivate the offender to conform, also like the punishment; deterrence.
Retribution and deterrence are both constructed to make the offender pay, where rehabilitation is
constructed to give personal treatment to each offender. In rehabilitation, two similar crimes
could be committed, and treated in different ways.
The last form of punishment is social protection. Social protection is; “rendering an
offender incapable of further offenses temporarily through imprisonment or permanently by
execution.” (Macionis, J. J. 2006). Social protection is like deterrence and is intended to protect
society from crime. With the number of drug related arrests being made in the United States, the
prison population has tripled since the 1980’s. “Different offenders have different happiness
baselines, which leads to disparities in the degree of suffering among offenders sentenced to the
same punishment as measured by comparing their pre-punishment baselines to their hedonic
states during punishment.” (Grey, D. 2010). The answer as to whether this type of punishment
really works or not lies in the prison system. Because The Department of Corrections devotes so
much money into security concerns and the maintenance of the prisons, that they are unable to
offer any type of rehabilitation to the prisoners. Prisons are becoming so overcrowded that it is
impossible to try and spend the money to rehabilitate each one individually.
I think the consequences of punishment do provide benefits for criminals and society.
Some people do change, but they really have to want it, and change cannot be “pushed” on them.
Some people just do not want to change, and that’s that. I can speak from experience and say that
I thought prison would be a lot different, but to me, it was like a 15 month permanent housing
situation. It wasn’t anything like I had seen on television. Now, I think “Why did I spend all that
time on probation when I could have spent less time in jail?” Since I got out, I have changed my
perspectives on life to become a productive member of society, but most of the girls I kept in
touch with from my prison days have either returned to prison, or are now dead (unnatural
causes). A benefit that I did receive when I was custody of the state was my G.E.D, and that I am
very thankful for, but there were no other programs to help an addict understand their actions. It
was like a school on how to become better at what you did, because you think about all the
wrong things you done, and what you should have done instead. It wasn’t the prison system that
changed me into who I am today; it is the people I chose to have in my life, the places I choose
to hang out at, and the choice to choose right from wrong.
Society may have a few benefits from a criminal being punished, but they spend a lot of
money in the process. America has more of its population in prison, then any other country. I
feel that if all 50 states were to crack down, and use the death penalty, we would be doing better
off. Show that the death penalty is there for a simple purpose. Quite housing the three time repeat
offenders rehabilitate the ones that we can, and kill the rest. It may seem harsh, but if you look at
Amsterdam’s crime rate; they legalized “drugs” and their crime rate reduced to mere petty
crimes. Instead, we spend millions of dollars to keep these offenders in prison for life sentences.
I believe that if they are going to die in prison, you might as well get it out of the way. Maybe we
could reduce the amount of sex offenders and child molesters by giving them an automatic death
sentence for these crimes being committed three times? I could be too extreme, but I can see that
the number of crimes committed is not going down. I believe that there are people out there that
will commit a crime no matter what the punishment, and these are the people that we should
make examples out of. If we can change our society for the better now, we would be helping the
next generation to see that people pay for the crimes they commit.
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