Crime, Punishment & Rehabilitation

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

Why do we punish?

Some people punish in order to teach a lesson. Like a mother punishes a wandering child for its own good. In this sense punishment is used as a form of rehabilitation.

Other people punish primarily not to rehabilitate, but as a form of revenge. The justification here is that the victims feel a bit better knowing that this person is punished.

And yet still others punish and punish harshly not for joy or revenge, and not for rehabilitation of the victim, but to strike fear into others, thereby reducing the number of future crimes.

…

Is it moral for a mother to punish her child for an honest mistake in order to teach a lesson that may benefit the child in the future? I would conclude that it’s a gamble made by the mother, and the moral responsibility for this gamble rests with the mother.

The morality of the second scenario is more questionable. Some would say that if the punishment fits the crime then it serves as rehabilitation as well. This does not really justify punishing someone to appease a victim, but rather makes it more attractive by making it rehabilitative as well as, forgive my frankness at this point, sadistic.

If people should be punished for the pleasure of a victim, what happens if the victim requires a lot of punishment to be administered before they are appeased?

Put simply the damage of the crime committed might be significantly less than the damage inflicted on the criminal required to repay the damage through sadism (the victim feeling better at the displeasure of the criminal). Not every victim would feel better knowing the criminal is punished.

So does an unjustified infringement on the rights of someone else justify the infringement of your own rights? I say yes.

But does this also justify an infringement of your rights above and beyond the level of infringement which you committed originally? i say no.

An argument can be made justifying the infringement of your rights to restore the damage you caused, but i cannot make an argument which justifies any infringement of rights beyond what is required to directly restore damage you caused or to rehabilitate you.

As a side note you could consider a sadistic pleasure as being acceptable recompense, but for reasons i mentioned earlier it would never be practical or possible to make such a proceeding fair. What would happen if you knocked over and destroyed a priceless vase heirloom?

to me there is something inherently wrong about gaining pleasure from the displeasure of others, in whatever form.

The third scenario is the one with the largest moral dilemma.

Let’s say you commit a crime.

Now let’s say i am going to punish you 10 times harsher than what is considered “fair” to make an example out of you.

In fact let’s say i make an example out of the entire prison system.

No matter what you did you are going to suffer large amounts. This i cannot justify, and i can argue for it being wrong simply by pointing out that fact punishing everyone harshly causes harm to people who don’t deserve harsh treatment, they also aren’t rehabilitated effectively as a result of this, and in fact it could potentially destroy people who would have otherwise be successfully rehabilitated. As a utilitarian and beside the point i could also say that the number of lives destroyed might not exceed the number of lives saved through fear. Is the reduction of crime worth the added suffering of the prisoner?

The prisoner does not deserve added suffering or punishment at all.

In fact i have not justified punishment whatsoever because i can think of no justification.

Rehabilitation is the only realistic point of “punishment” and in that sense the “correctional process” doesn’t have to be negative. If someone commits a crime you cannot leave them to keep doing it, so you lock them up. You prevent them from committing more crimes. This does not have to involve harsh treatment. (i might say that harsh treatment to a criminal will only harden them). Once they are quarantined you have to rehabilitate. If you can be reasonably sure this person will stop committing crimes you can release them. Depending on the social system, repayment might be necessary. if this is done in the form of monetary payment, the anguish or burden that causes could be more than adequate in terms of punishment. On the flip side it could drive the criminal further into crime out of desperation. I’m probably getting too far into things here, but depending on the crime either tax payers would have to foot the bill, or the criminal would have to foot the bill or the victim would have to foot the bill, but in any case, the criminal needs to be rehabilitated. Otherwise we might as well start putting monetary values on crimes.

What responsibility does a prisoner have to society beyond restoring the damage they caused?

Wh

2

Jesus Christ this is long!

Interesting topic, though. If it doesn’t offend you, I’ll take it line by line.

Prevention, revenge and rehabilitation.

Not only that, there is also future prevention of this person committing a crime. Knowing of the punishment prior to committing a crime also decreases the liklihood of people commiting a certain crime.

That, and to deter the person being punished from commiting the crime again.

It is a gamble by the Mother. As a Father, I would not punish for an honest mistake, if the mistake is honest, the result of said mistake is typically punishment enough in and of itself.

Punishment is not generally for the victim, or for closure, or for any of that. The victim thinks it is, but feels just as hollow after the punishment is decided and/or carried out. The whole closure spin is something created for people to justify the death penalty. I am all for the death penalty, but I carry no delusions as to why I am for it.

In most cases it is. Especially in crimes where there is no direct victim, per se. That is why deterrence and fear are the primary motivators for punishment and not absolution.

Prevention of future crimes. Prevention of repeat offenses.

Fair by your standards or fair by the books?

Bare minimum necessary for healthy survival.

Really?

Some crimes have monetary values, fines, they call them.

Anyway, criminals don’t exactly suffer terribly at the hands of the law:

1.) They committed a crime.

2.) They are guaranteed three square a day.

3.) Some do not have to work…at all.

4.) They have access to free health care.

5.) Many have access to free education.

The responsibility of not having committed the crime to begin with.

3

Prevention of future crimes is pretty much considered rehabilitation.

There comes a time in society when it’s simply feasible to lock people up with the bare minimum necessary but this works as a deterrent works via fear and suffering, which can be construed as a crime in the first place. the prisoner has no responsibility to be a scarecrow for other members of society, and cruel and unusual punishment tends to work too well on the prisoner itself.

Spite for criminals makes sense on many levels, but not on any moral ones in terms of punishment, in my opinion.

How would you feel about trading time in jail for X amount of lashings?

p.s, in the case of someone breaching a responsibility not to commit a crime, a punishment policy to scare people into not committing crimes works, but making the punishment harsher than it has to be is immoral, and by punishment i mean rehabilitation/restoration

p.p.s, i’m not sure if you responded to this bit or not

"In fact let’s say i make an example out of the entire prison system.

No matter what you did you are going to suffer large amounts. This i cannot justify, and i can argue for it being wrong simply by pointing out that fact punishing everyone harshly causes harm to people who don’t deserve harsh treatment, they also aren’t rehabilitated effectively as a result of this, and in fact it could potentially destroy people who would have otherwise be successfully rehabilitated. As a utilitarian and beside the point i could also say that the number of lives destroyed might not exceed the number of lives saved through fear. Is the reduction of crime worth the added suffering of the prisoner?

The prisoner does not deserve added suffering or punishment at all."

4

It makes one want to consider the ratio of habitual offenders to a one time desperate act. I’m sure there is a statictical profile of offenders which bases the juducial system’s view of how punishment should be dealt with.

5

Just wanted to throw a nuance into the revenge aspect which I think is incompletely covering the non-pragmatic end.

Revenge is personal, even on a societal level, it is an outlet of rage.
But I think some people see punishment as something deserved. It is not that they get to hit back. But that a proper balance forms when the person is punished.

LIke any perpetrator walking around unpunished is like a picture hanging slightly askew on the wall.

It is out of balance. One need not be angry.

In fact the need is really in the perpetrator. It is not the agrieved’s need to express the hatred and revenge desire, but the perpetrator who needs to be righted - and not really for any practical reason.

These overlap of course and get mixed in with the practical concerns about the future.

6

A means to control the future, I suppose. A crime occurs. Punishment ensues. Crime does not happen again (if punishment is successful).

7

Disagree. Revenge is sweet. Feels good.

But agree, not for the victim. It’s for the rest of us. You could say order and safety are created off the backs of criminals. The suffering that they endure is what make our lives possible. In a way they’re as much heroes. They set an example for us to follow. We see the mistakes they make and the price they pay and we don’t make those mistakes. They are living lessons.

8

I think there ought to be a distinction made between punishment and instructional consequence. In cases like a mother and wandering child, punishment may be “moral” insofar as a mother is not skilled in providing more effective consequences, but only in a weak sense of morality. Punishment teaches a child that they are bad; a more skilled form of consequencing would dissociate valuation of a behaviour from a child. This is not yet rehabilitation, as rehabilitation requires the person has fallen out of normal social capacity per se.

It is that fear aspect of punishment, I think, which is both its primary strength and ultimate weakness. We’ve stopped strapping students in most North American school systems because we’ve discovered that, for the most part, for students who respond to strapping there are better (non-violent, constructive) means of redirecting their behaviour, and for students who are perpetually strapped, the punishment is not only ineffective, it creates a hardened and resentful offender.

Prisons fuck up already fucked up people, many (perhaps most) being persons with mental disorders suffering for behaviours they are to significant extents unable to control. It is true that a lock-up situation may be all that society is practically able to provide for these unfortunate people, but insofar as that may well be true, such doesn’t purposefully have to be a punishing experience on top of it all.

Punishment is an inferior, most often lazy alternative to more enduring solutions. It comes around.

9

Punishment is society’s way of maintaining it’'s conatus.

10

Maybe we should get a better “conatus”

11

The real beef of this thread is that punishment in and of itself has no real justification outside of scaring the rest of the population and some sort of sadistic revenge for the victims.

Using prisoner in these ways is are morally reprehensible. In the revenge scenario, we wouldn’t allow someone to take their own revenge on a thief or assailant.

If you subdue a criminal you have no right to torture them. It’s only when they are turned over to due process that their “come uppins’” are served.

It’s like teaching a child a lesson by spanking it. It tells the child not to get caught and that it likes it’s mother less and less.

12

Yes and no. Jail exists to punish which will simply make the person not want to commit a crime again out of fear of going back to jail; whereas true rehabilitation would put an individual in a position (if successful) where they no longer even had the desire to commit a crime, fear or not.

I disagree. When we talk about bare minimum necessary, we’re talking about the bare minimum necessary for a relatively healthy survival (at least when it comes to being fed). That may result in a fear of going back to jail, but there is no reason for them to have undue suffering. Basically, I just feel as though those who committed a crime and ended up in jail/prison should have a quality of life no better than one of the worst off people that has never committed a crime.

I’d be totally against it. The main precept for there even being a jail is to take an offender’s freedom away, lashings fail to accomplish that. Third-offense drunk driving, ok, two years or 100 shots with the cat o’ nine tails, then release after you have taken all of your knocks.

That’s why jail is about more than revenge, if it were not and someone stole from me, then they could just be tied up and I could punch them in the nose ten-fifteen times, but it’s not about revenge (entirely), it’s about keeping order.

Understood, but then how do we determine what a punsihment ought be when we have little more than our own personal opinions to go by?

I did not respond because that is not the way it is in either of our countries and conceivably not the way it is going to be.

If there is any true suffering in the correctional system, it is mostly stuff that the prisoners do to each other, just like it is stuff we do to each other outside of prison.

13

so what’s the point of punishment?

to condition through fear and pain?

If we simply want them to not commit crimes again should we condition through pain or make a genuine attempt to rehabilitate?

Where does rehabilitation end and teaching a lesson begin?

you have a point. in a capitalist society we should be spending the bare minimum in terms of upkeep for prisoners, and in fact should be putting prisoners to work. As it is some states pay up to 70 thousand a head for prisoners per year, which is more than most people make in a year.

I’d be totally against it. The main precept for there even being a jail is to take an offender’s freedom away, lashings fail to accomplish that. Third-offense drunk driving, ok, two years or 100 shots with the cat o’ nine tails, then release after you have taken all of your knocks.

That’s why jail is about more than revenge, if it were not and someone stole from me, then they could just be tied up and I could punch them in the nose ten-fifteen times, but it’s not about revenge (entirely), it’s about keeping order.
[/quote]
you take freedom away to keep order, but why make them suffer?

it must be about revenge…

The time convicts serve is supposed to rehabilitate them while keeping them from committing more crimes.

as i asked before, where does rehabilitation end teaching a lesson begin?

ethical arguments… i think…

You don’t think prison guards ever cause any undue suffering?

14

Prevention of future crimes by the individual being punished and to deter those who have not already committed a crime from doing so.

Let’s posit that retribution exists as it relates to one human to another, makes sense. All that the penal system does is organize and systemize that retribution, that’s it. Before the evolution of the prison system, when one person committed a wrong against another it may be up to the person against whom the wrong was committed to attempt to gain retribution. When that happens, the retribution the person attempts to obtain is according to his own system of justice, maybe he tries to execute you for stealing a chicken, who knows?

With the system we have in place, it’s a simple matter of, “This is what happens to you if you do this,” the only thing that ends up being an unknown is exactly what charge will be brought against a person, minimum and maximum sentences for that charge and things of that nature.

In the majority of cases, the pain comes from one prisoner to another.

It depends on the person, but then there are people that come through the system that have failed to be rehabilitated. I’m sure there are people that are tried, found guilty, and that whole process scared them so shitless they would never commit the crime again, but rehabilitation is not the only goal.

Eaxctly, I think that they should be denied comforts that some, “free,” people do not even have access to, so I would say in any society, capitalist or not. I’m perfectly fine with feeding them as they need to be fed, them having library cards so that they can read books, having clean toilets and all of that stuff.

They should have to clean their own toilets, I am a more productive member of society and I have to clean my own toilet. If a prisoner decides to use his Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner to try to get high or drinks it and gets sick, so be it. That’s Darwinism right there…lol

What suffering? In what way do they have it so bad?

Rehabilitation is mostly psychological, anyway. For many of these inmates it is going to take more than x amount of days in prison for them to be truly rehabilitated.

Many inmates have free access to on-line higher education services, though, what else could you want? I mean, the guys that are in there just because they are poor, uneducated, and desperate can get an education as it is right now, then maybe when they get out they can go work somewhere and try to be productive.

The problem I have is that we spend more on prisoners than on the physically disabled who get Social Security, makes no sense.

That, “ever,” is a nasty word. Of course they sometimes do, nobody is perfect at their job every single day. Although, they have a very strict system by which these prison guards must adhere or it is pretty easy for them to get the axe.

But, let’s turn it around, have the prisoners ever caused the guards undue suffering?

15

Reward and punishment are the basis of civilization. The reason we all get along is because we can expect a certain standard of behavior from those we encounter in society. It’s called culture and without it, we couldn’t form relationships of any kind. This culture is the product of years of rewards and punishments that have shaped people into what we are today.

Example: If you’re teaching your child to speak, and he says a word incorrectly, you say “no, thats wrong.” That’s a form of punishment. The child feels ashamed. Without that shame, how could the child ever learn to speak? And if no child ever learns to speak, how do we communicate? And if we can’t communicate, how do we form a society?

It doesn’t matter if you call it rehabilitation. Rehabilitation still requires pain. If the argument is just that “piling on” or making an example of somebody with excessive punishment is wrong, well, who’s going to disagree with that? Why state the obvious? Of course it’s wrong.

16

But are either reward or punishment sufficient or necessary? I agree with you that they are mainstays in the history of basic human psychology, and that on a pragmatic level they’ve been necessary. But from a developmental perspective, ought they to be assumed to be necessary, or rather just fall-back positions? For instance, whom of two otherwise equal prospective employees would you hire: one who works to get his paycheck (consequentially motivated) or one who has a solid work ethic (deontologically motivated)? There’s an issue of punishment/reward versus discipline to be considered. A well disciplined person may well find their manner of behaviour “rewarding”, granted; but that is secondary to their more foundational motivation of doing good work simply because it’s the “right thing to do”. I don’t mean to say, mind you, that strong work ethic is the single-most important aspect of a citizenry, though surely it rates right up there…

Perhaps it would be better to simply repeat the word correctly, and not make too much of an issue of it. Children don’t learn to speak out of a sense of shame; they are innately motivated to do so. Better that it’s a playful game, insofar as possible.

I was reminded of this thread over the weekend, when I began flipping between “Inmates: Raw” on MSNBC (my brother-in-law, a Corrections Officer in a Max. penitentiary recommended it) and “Dog Whisperer” on the National Geographic channel (where did the find that guy!!!). Before there’s rehabilitation, there’s habilitation… but in any event, there may of course be pain experienced through the process of rehabilitation, but it is not the purpose of rehabilitation to administer pain. It is the purpose of Punishment to administer pain. The purpose of Rehabilitation is to “work through the issues”.

I admit there’s scads of opportunity to be committing the Naturalistic Fallacy and Ought/Can indiscretions here; nonetheless, as an issue of moral development, I think the perspective of a punishment/reward system is one which lacks vision.

17

punishment is useful in that it is grounded in social morals of vengeance and revenge for disobedience to the established order of things. it is used not only as a whip to keep people in line through fear and deterrence, but also (perhaps most importantly) as the means of keeping the REST of law-abiding citizens in line, when faced with criminals.

when the community is harmed, citizens view it, FEEL IT, as if THEY were harmed. if criminals were not punished, the rest of society would not be satisfied. they need to feel that they have taken their revenge against the criminal, the outcast, because he is a threat and represents instability and a weakening of their power and security.

punishment has just as much “social use” and “justification” in society because of people’s emotional need to exact revenge, an eye for an eye-- the average joe on the street, the common “good citizen” is powerless to take his revenge into his own hands (this would make him a criminal); he has been ROBBED by society of his power in the face of lawless brutality and threatening instability… therefore, society offers him the substitute activity, to witness and partake, vicariously, in the inflicting of pain and punishment on those whom he would LIKE (in the form of an instinctive, primal, subconscious desire) to punish personally, but cannot.

punishment is a pressure-release for social tension. this is a very justified use, from the perspective of social cohesion, control and order.

18

so you’re saying injecting pain as a form of punishment is actually a form of rehabilitation in that it prevents the individual from committing crimes in the future through deterrence or conditioning?

so the point of punishment is to deter others from crime, and to rehabilitate the criminal, is this your definition as presented above?

if you steal someones chicken, are they justified in executing you?

“retribution”

working from your basic precepts, when someone goes to jail and suffers (presumably jail causes suffering), their suffering is a part of a rehabilitative process and in that is partially justified. Are you saying as well that the suffering is justified because it provides retribution for the victim?

If you steal my cow, am i justified in taking one of your cows of equal value? i would say yes.

If i take your cow, are you justified in causing me suffering for a vengeful retribution?

If i torture your wife, can i settle by giving you a hundred cows?

Can you settle by torturing me?

Basically you would be taking the same sadistic pleasure that i took in torturing your wife. you would be equalizing things by committing another wrong, creating more harm, which though can be considered retribution, solves nothing.

You could say that torturing me teaches me a lesson, but it probably wont. If i had the chance i would probably come back and torture my torturer even harder, just as you might torture me for retribution.

in this case the retribution is a crime of passion. vengeance.

You are responsible for what you do to a criminal. My step dad used to say he would probably kill a thief if he could catch one stealing from him.

I used to say that would cause him more of a headache than just letting them steal whatever they were after.

What if striking back (emotionally or physically) won’t solve any problems, and just create problems for the thief (let’s say he broke your priceless vase and you have him tied up).

Is striking this thief for retribution moral?

Is putting him in jail and letting him suffer along with violent offenders moral?

They say “innocent until proven guilty” but that is the only benefit of the doubt i see given, unless you’re rich of course.

some police treat people like garbage and worse.

it seems our regulation and simplification of the retribution process has simplified into a single line. Step over the line and we send you to a miserable place.

This is not rehabilitation, this is what i would consider cruel and unusual. I wonder what percentage of inmates are non violent drug offenders…

The rehabilitation system is broken. it no longer provides “just retribution” (whatever that is) or rehabilitation.

It can only be considered a form of punishment which exists and can be simply understood to take any sort of criminal and make an example of them to inject fear into the rest of society. When someone sadistic holds punishing power, it turns into disgraceful vengeance.

There is no justification for this beyond some screwed up utilitarian arguments which would lose due to the overall quality of society plummeting in terms happiness due to fear and the abused criminals continually being inducted and released from the prison system.

so is it moral to put a thief with a murderer? considering what I said above?

is retribution the other goal? vengeance? to inflict suffering? induce fear into the rest of society?

if i steal a fig, why do i have to have my hand cut off?

to protect society? to scare it?

why is cruel and unusual punishment wrong?

i would try to make the prisoners pay for 100% of their own upkeep by working them. Though it would require proportionate sentencing.

it takes more than some whippings to solve the problem too. whipping just buries the problem.

education is a good thing, but i had to chuckle when you said “maybe when they get out they can go work somewhere”. The reality is that convicts have a hard time getting jobs.

it’s like we’re trying to destroy these peoples lives, where they could have easily been cheaply rehabilitated, psychologically, and for what? Vengeance and fear?

if they did it usually comes back on them a couple fold.

The violent criminals need to be rehabilitated not fought with. letting violent offenders among the general population to harm the other prisoners and the prison guard is just stupid.

do the offenses of some violent inmates attacking prison guards justify or merit the suffering many inmates endure from the prison guards and the other violent inmates and the system itself? They do not.

the group punishment thing crosses many lines. In my opinion rehabilitating with pain is immoral and ineffective.

There is no moral justification to have suffer greatly for a petty crime in order to benefit society by being an example to incite fear. did i win the negative lottery or something?

there are cases where i would say retaliation retribution and even assassinating your enemy is justified.

let’s say you live alone in the woods, or at least you thought you did. some thief keeps stealing chickens, and if he keeps it up, you wont survive the winter due to lack of food. your only way to survive is to kill him.

In this case, you do what you because you must to survive, and the thieves motives are his own prerogative.

in the case of vengeful imprisonment and this regulation of retribution and installation of fear, this is all necessary because ____________ ? ? ?

we are all criminals?

19

i see where you’re going with this but this is a very poor example. I tell children they are wrong not to shame them, but to correct and teach them.

You just posited that you cannot teach a child to speak without repeatedly degrading them…

There is an observed social control mechanism, we call them sanctions. These sanctions are punishments or rewards for good or bad behavior, what they promote society will conform to…

If you want social control for the sake of “getting along” we should all go back to worshiping statues.

no it doesn’t.

IT will probably require some discomfort, but the in for a penny, in for a pound rule doesn’t fly with everyone.

I agree with you there. the fear element of these sanctions is an immoral one to exploit.

but you have to ask yourself if making someone suffer the correct amount to cure them of some deviance is moral in the first place. You have to ask yourself if negativity is really the best way to teach people.

I despise the dog trainer douches. they treat dogs like dogs.

i would like to see a trainer of seeing eye dogs have a conversation with one of them.

maybe I’m rambling, but give some thought to how making crack addicts suffer in jail cures them

20

i agree. One dog show i watched told the family to “pin then dog” 30 times a day each, in order to assert dominance.

This involves putting on a leash and stepping on it, walking on it toward the end attached to the dogs collar, and then standing on the leash directly next to where it’s attached to the dogs collar so that the dogs head is pinned to the ground.

It creates a passive fearful nervous dog. not unlike an abused child. they say some dogs have the minds of a 3 year old…

That dog show was one of the things which inspired this thread.