An effective punishment would be one that deters crime and offers alternative outcomes other than incarceration, which is a harsh tactic that serves only one purpose: to protect the public. This is the primary role of a retributive approach to punishment, to protect the public by deserting the offense and inflicting the equivalent harm as caused (Banks, 2014). However, retributive punishment philosophy neglects the future welfare of society and of the offender. With social and economical barriers placed in society against offenders it limits the opportunity to excel in areas other than criminal. Also within the retributive theory is proportionality, which holds that the punishment inflicted cannot exceed a level of harm necessary to balance
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Although crimes such as murder, in some cases, are spontaneous or premeditated, more common crimes such as theft or the engaging of drugs can be deterred. In the comic, The Cost of Prison (Jones, Miller-Mark, & Ahrens, 2005), it portrays the suffering of the offender and the community when reentering into society. If one engages in the act of theft, then it assumes that it was a survival instinct. This questions the effectiveness and proportionality in resulting in incarceration for theft and drug use rather than offering an alternative such as resources to assist the problem (e.g., financial concerns, educational programs) or reform institutional policies that initially target vulnerable populations. The same would apply to a person reentering the community with a criminal record. After a potential employer discovers a criminal record, it is an instant stigma, and the offender is at a lost of opportunity to engage in productivity. Additionally, retributivist as Newman (1983) would refer to modern punishment strategies has “lost moral courage.” Nevertheless, institutional restraints cause no more harm than does physical punishment, as would do no harm to aim resources into less severe solutions (i.e., …show more content…
The norms of yesterday are not exclusively the norms of today, and will at the foundation level be the norms of tomorrow. Therefore, punishment must be socially adaptive and evolve with the temperaments of society. This concept is evident in the evolution of punishment. In the early 1700’s to inflict corporal punishment was socially acceptable and publicly displayed as a form of deterrence. Whereas, corporal punishment in the modern era remains a controversial issue and imposed inconsistently. As for being a deterrence in today’s society, technology and the media have managed to desensitize social responses to physical harm or fear of incapacitation (Banks, 2014). Essentially, modern punishment depicts an era of mass incarceration rather than imposing old English tactics such as banishment or decapitation and is highly affected by political
Although crimes such as murder, in some cases, are spontaneous or premeditated, more common crimes such as theft or the engaging of drugs can be deterred. In the comic, The Cost of Prison (Jones, Miller-Mark, & Ahrens, 2005), it portrays the suffering of the offender and the community when reentering into society. If one engages in the act of theft, then it assumes that it was a survival instinct. This questions the effectiveness and proportionality in resulting in incarceration for theft and drug use rather than offering an alternative such as resources to assist the problem (e.g., financial concerns, educational programs) or reform institutional policies that initially target vulnerable populations. The same would apply to a person reentering the community with a criminal record. After a potential employer discovers a criminal record, it is an instant stigma, and the offender is at a lost of opportunity to engage in productivity. Additionally, retributivist as Newman (1983) would refer to modern punishment strategies has “lost moral courage.” Nevertheless, institutional restraints cause no more harm than does physical punishment, as would do no harm to aim resources into less severe solutions (i.e., …show more content…
The norms of yesterday are not exclusively the norms of today, and will at the foundation level be the norms of tomorrow. Therefore, punishment must be socially adaptive and evolve with the temperaments of society. This concept is evident in the evolution of punishment. In the early 1700’s to inflict corporal punishment was socially acceptable and publicly displayed as a form of deterrence. Whereas, corporal punishment in the modern era remains a controversial issue and imposed inconsistently. As for being a deterrence in today’s society, technology and the media have managed to desensitize social responses to physical harm or fear of incapacitation (Banks, 2014). Essentially, modern punishment depicts an era of mass incarceration rather than imposing old English tactics such as banishment or decapitation and is highly affected by political