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Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group, meted out by an
authority Authority is commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group of other people. In a civil state, ''authority'' may be practiced by legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government,''The New Fontana Dictionary of M ...
—in contexts ranging from child discipline to
criminal law Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It proscribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and Well-being, welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal l ...
—as a deterrent to a particular action or
behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of Individual, individuals, organisms, systems or Artificial intelligence, artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or or ...
that is deemed undesirable. It is, however, possible to distinguish between various different understandings of what punishment is. The reasoning for punishment may be to condition a child to avoid self-endangerment, to impose social
conformity Conformity or conformism is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to social group, group norms, politics or being like-minded. Social norm, Norms are implicit, specific rules, guidance shared by a group of individuals, that guide t ...
(in particular, in the contexts of compulsory education or military discipline), to defend norms, to protect against future harms (in particular, those from violent crime), and to maintain the law—and respect for
rule of law The essence of the rule of law is that all people and institutions within a Body politic, political body are subject to the same laws. This concept is sometimes stated simply as "no one is above the law" or "all are equal before the law". Acco ...
—under which the social group is governed. and violates the law or rules by which the group is governed. Punishment may be self-inflicted as with self-flagellation and
mortification of the flesh Mortification may refer to: *Mortification (theology), theological doctrine *Mortification of the flesh, religious practice of corporal mortification *Mortification in Roman Catholic teaching, Roman Catholic doctrine of mortification *Extreme emb ...
in the religious setting, but is most often a form of social coercion. The unpleasant imposition may include a fine, penalty, or confinement, or be the removal or denial of something pleasant or desirable. The individual may be a person, or even an animal. The authority may be either a group or a single person, and punishment may be carried out formally under a system of law or informally in other kinds of social settings such as within a family. Negative or unpleasant impositions that are not authorized or that are administered without a breach of rules are not considered to be punishment as defined here. The study and practice of the punishment of
crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...
s, particularly as it applies to imprisonment, is called
penology Penology (also penal theory) is a Academic discipline, subfield of criminology that deals with the philosophy and practice of various societies in their attempts to repress crime, criminal activities, and satisfy public opinion via an appropriate ...
, or, often in modern texts, corrections; in this context, the punishment process is euphemistically called "correctional process". Research into punishment often includes similar research into prevention. Justifications for punishment include retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. The last could include such measures as isolation, in order to prevent the wrongdoer's having contact with potential victims, or the removal of a hand in order to make theft more difficult. If only some of the conditions included in the definition of punishment are present, descriptions other than "punishment" may be considered more accurate. Inflicting something negative, or unpleasant, on a person or animal, without authority or not on the basis of a breach of rules is typically considered only
revenge Revenge is defined as committing a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. Vengeful forms of justice, such as primitive justice or retributive justice, are often differentiated from more fo ...
or spite rather than punishment. In addition, the word "punishment" is used as a metaphor, as when a boxer experiences "''punishment''" during a fight. In other situations, breaking a rule may be rewarded, and so receiving such a reward naturally does not constitute punishment. Finally the condition of breaking (or breaching) the rules must be satisfied for consequences to be considered punishment. Punishments differ in their degree of severity, and may include sanctions such as reprimands, deprivations of privileges or liberty, fines, incarcerations, ostracism, the infliction of
pain Pain is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging Stimulus (physiology), stimuli. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sense, sensory and emotional experience associated with, or res ...
, amputation and the death penalty. ''
Corporal punishment A corporal punishment or a physical punishment is a punishment which is intended to cause physical pain to a person. When it is inflicted on Minor (law), minors, especially in home and school settings, its methods may include spanking or Padd ...
'' refers to punishments in which physical pain is intended to be inflicted upon the transgressor. Punishments may be judged as fair or unfair in terms of their degree of reciprocity and proportionality to the offense. Punishment can be an integral part of socialization, and punishing unwanted behavior is often part of a system of
pedagogy Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...
or behavioral modification which also includes rewards.


Definitions

There are a large number of different understandings of what punishment is.


In philosophy

Various philosophers have presented definitions of punishment. Conditions commonly considered necessary properly to describe an action as punishment are that # it is imposed by an authority (single or multiple), # it involves some loss to the supposed offender, # it is in response to an offense and # the human (or other animal) to whom the loss is imposed should be deemed at least somewhat responsible for the offense.


In psychology

Introduced by B.F. Skinner, punishment has a more restrictive and technical definition in psychology. Along with reinforcement, it belongs under the
operant conditioning Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process in which voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition (or removal) of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior ma ...
category. Operant conditioning refers to learning with either punishment that discourages the measured behavior, or a reward that encourages the behavior. In psychology, punishment is the reduction of a behavior via application of an unpleasant stimulus ("''positive'' punishment") or removal of a pleasant stimulus ("''negative'' punishment"). Extra chores or spanking are examples of positive punishment, while grounding a teenager or removing
screen time Screen time is the amount of time electronic devices are used. Screen time, Screentime or Screen Time may also refer to: * Screen Time, an iOS and macOS feature that tracks how long devices are used * Screentime, an Australian-based television pr ...
privileges are examples of negative punishment. The definition requires that punishment is only determined after the fact by the reduction in behavior; if the offending behavior of the subject does not decrease, it is not considered punishment. In operant conditioning terms, punishment does not need to involve any type of pain, fear, or physical actions; even a brief spoken expression of disapproval, or calmly telling a student that they answered a question incorrectly, is a type of punishment, if the result is a decrease in the behavior (e.g., a decrease in giving that wrong answer to that question). There is some conflation of punishment and aversives, though an aversion that does not decrease behavior is not considered punishment in psychology. Additionally, "aversive stimulus" is a label behaviorists generally apply to negative reinforcers (as in avoidance learning), rather than the punishers.


In socio-biology

Punishment is sometimes called '' retaliatory'' or '' moralistic aggression''; it has been observed in all species of social animals, leading evolutionary biologists to conclude that it is an evolutionarily stable strategy, selected because it favors cooperative behavior. However, other evolutionary biologists have argued against punishment to favour cooperation. Dreber et al. demonstrate that while the availability of costly punishment can enhance cooperative behavior, it does not improve the group's average payoff. Additionally, there is a significant negative relationship between the overall payoff and the employment of costly punishment. Individuals who achieve the highest total payoffs generally avoid using costly punishment. This indicates that employing costly punishment in cooperative games may be disadvantageous and suggests that it may have evolved for purposes other than promoting cooperation. Achieving a certain proportion of trust in the population can lead to self-governance without the need for punishment.


Examples against sociobiological use

There are also arguments against the notion of punishment requiring intelligence, based on studies of punishment in very small-brained animals such as
insect Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...
s. There is proof of honey bee workers with mutations that makes them fertile laying eggs only when other honey bees are not observing them, and that the few that are caught in the act are killed. This is corroborated by computer simulations proving that a few simple reactions well within mainstream views of the extremely limited intelligence of insects are sufficient to emulate the "political" behavior observed in great apes. The authors argue that this falsifies the claim that punishment evolved as a strategy to deal with individuals capable of knowing what they are doing. In the case of more complex brains, the notion of evolution selecting for specific punishment of intentionally chosen breaches of rules and/or wrongdoers capable of intentional choices (for example, punishing
human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...
s for murder while not punishing lethal viruses) is subject to criticism from coevolution issues. That punishment of individuals with certain characteristics (including but, in principle, not restricted to mental abilities) selects against those characteristics, making evolution of any mental abilities considered to be the basis for penal responsibility impossible in populations subject to such selective punishment. Certain scientists argue that this disproves the notion of humans having a biological feeling of intentional transgressions deserving to be punished.


Scope of application

Punishments are applied for various purposes, most generally, to encourage and enforce proper behavior as defined by society or family.
Criminal In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...
s are punished judicially, by fines,
corporal punishment A corporal punishment or a physical punishment is a punishment which is intended to cause physical pain to a person. When it is inflicted on Minor (law), minors, especially in home and school settings, its methods may include spanking or Padd ...
or custodial sentences such as prison; detainees risk further punishments for breaches of internal rules.
Child A child () is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking ...
ren, pupils and other trainees may be punished by their educators or instructors (mainly
parent A parent is either the progenitor of a child or, in humans, it can refer to a caregiver or legal guardian, generally called an adoptive parent or step-parent. Parents who are progenitors are First-degree relative, first-degree relatives and have ...
s, guardians, or
teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...
s, tutors and coaches)—see Child discipline.
Slaves Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
, domestic and other servants were subject to punishment by their masters. Employees can still be subject to a contractual form of fine or demotion. Most hierarchical organizations, such as military and police forces, or even churches, still apply quite rigid internal discipline, even with a judicial system of their own ( court martial, canonical courts). Punishment may also be applied on moral, especially religious, grounds, as in penance (which is voluntary) or imposed in a theocracy with a religious police (as in a strict Islamic state like
Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
or under the Taliban) or (though not a true theocracy) by Inquisition.


Hell as punishment

Belief that an individual's ultimate punishment is being sent by God, the highest authority, to an existence in Hell, a place believed to exist in the after-life, typically corresponds to sins committed during their life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each sin committed (see for example Plato's myth of Er or Dante's '' The Divine Comedy''), but sometimes they are general, with condemned sinners relegated to one or more chamber of Hell or to a level of suffering.


History and rationale


Seriousness of a crime; punishment that fits the crime

A principle often mentioned with respect to the degree of punishment to be meted out is that the punishment should match the crime. One standard for measurement is the degree to which a crime affects others or society. Measurements of the degree of seriousness of a crime have been developed. A
felony A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "''félonie''") to describe an offense that r ...
is generally considered to be a crime of "high seriousness", while a misdemeanor is not.


Possible reasons for punishment

There are many possible reasons that might be given to justify or explain why someone ought to be punished; here follows a broad outline of typical, possibly conflicting, justifications.


Deterrence

Two reasons given to justify punishment is that it is a measure to prevent people from committing an offense - deterring previous offenders from re-offending, and preventing those who may be contemplating an offence they have not committed from actually committing it. This punishment is intended to be sufficient that people would choose not to commit the crime rather than experience the punishment. The aim is to deter everyone in the community from committing offences. Some criminologists state that the number of people convicted for crime does not decrease as a result of more severe punishment and conclude that deterrence is ineffective. Other criminologists object to said conclusion, citing that while most people do not know the exact severity of punishment such as whether the sentence for murder is 40 years or life, most people still know the rough outlines such as the punishments for armed robbery or forcible rape being more severe than the punishments for driving too fast or misparking a car. These criminologists therefore argue that lack of deterring effect of increasing the sentences for already severely punished crimes say nothing about the significance of the existence of punishment as a deterring factor. Some criminologists argue that increasing the sentences for crimes can cause criminal investigators to give higher priority to said crimes so that a higher percentage of those committing them are convicted for them, causing statistics to give a false appearance of such crimes increasing. These criminologists argue that the use of statistics to gauge the efficiency of crime fighting methods are a danger of creating a reward hack that makes the least efficient criminal justice systems appear to be best at fighting crime, and that the appearance of deterrence being ineffective may be an example of this.


Rehabilitation

Some punishment includes work to reform and rehabilitate the culprit so that they will not commit the offence again. This is distinguished from deterrence, in that the goal here is to change the offender's attitude to what they have done, and make them come to see that their behavior was wrong.


Incapacitation

Incapacitation as a justification of punishment refers to the offender's ability to commit further offences being removed. Imprisonment separates offenders from the community, for example, Australia was a dumping ground for early British criminals. This was their way of removing or reducing the offenders ability to carry out certain crimes. The death penalty does this in a permanent (and irrevocable) way. In some societies, people who stole have been punished by having their hands amputated. Crewe however, has pointed out that for incapacitation of an offender to work, it must be the case that the offender would have committed a crime had they not been restricted in this way. Should the putative offender not be going to commit further crimes, then they have not been incapacitated. The more heinous crimes such as murders have the lowest levels of recidivism and hence are the least likely offences to be subject to incapacitative effects. Antisocial behaviour and the like display high levels of recidivism and hence are the kind of crimes most susceptible to incapacitative effects. It is shown by life-course studies that long sentences for burglaries amongst offenders in their late teens and early twenties fail to incapacitate when the natural reduction in offending due to ageing is taken into account: the longer the sentence, in these cases, the less the incapacitative effect.


Retribution

Criminal activities typically give a benefit to the offender and a loss to the victim. Punishment has been justified as a measure of
retributive justice Retributive justice is a legal concept whereby the criminal offender receives punishment proportional or similar to the crime. As opposed to revenge, retribution—and thus retributive justice—is not personal, is directed only at wrongdoing, ...
, in which the goal is to try to rebalance any unjust advantage gained by ensuring that the offender also suffers a loss. Sometimes viewed as a way of "getting even" with a wrongdoer—the suffering of the wrongdoer is seen as a desired goal in itself, even if it has no restorative benefits for the victim. One reason
societies A society () is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. ...
have administered punishments is to diminish the perceived need for retaliatory "street justice", blood feud, and vigilantism.


Restoration

Especially applied to minor offenses, punishment may take the form of the offender "righting the wrong", or making restitution to the victim. Community service or compensation orders are examples of this sort of penalty. In models of
restorative justice Restorative justice is a community-based approach to justice that aims to repair the harm done to victims, offenders and communities. In doing so, restorative justice practitioners work to ensure that offenders take responsibility for their ac ...
, victims take an ''active'' role in a process with their offenders who are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, "to repair the harm they've done—by apologizing, returning stolen money, or community service." The restorative justice approach aims to help the offender want to avoid future offences.


Education and denunciation

Punishment can be explained by positive prevention theory to use the criminal justice system to teach people what are the social norms for what is correct, and acts as a reinforcement. Punishment can serve as a means for society to publicly express denunciation of an action as being criminal. Besides educating people regarding what is not acceptable behavior, it serves the dual function of preventing vigilante justice by acknowledging public anger, while concurrently deterring future criminal activity by stigmatizing the offender. This is sometimes called the "Expressive Theory" of denunciation. The pillory was a method for carrying out public denunciation. Some critics of the education and denunciation model cite
evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...
ary problems with the notion that a feeling for punishment as a social signal system evolved if punishment was not effective. The critics argue that some individuals spending time and energy and taking risks in punishing others, and the possible loss of the punished group members, would have been selected against if punishment served no function other than signals that could evolve to work by less risky means.


Unified theory

A unified theory of punishment brings together multiple penal purposes—such as retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation—in a single, coherent framework. Instead of punishment requiring we choose between them, unified theorists argue that they work together as part of some wider goal such as the protection of rights.


Criticism

Some people think that punishment as a whole is unhelpful and even harmful to the people that it is used against. Detractors argue that punishment is simply wrong, of the same design as " two wrongs make a right". Critics argue that punishment is simply
revenge Revenge is defined as committing a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. Vengeful forms of justice, such as primitive justice or retributive justice, are often differentiated from more fo ...
. Professor Deirdre Golash, author of ''The Case against Punishment: Retribution, Crime Prevention, and the Law'', says: Golash also writes about imprisonment:


Destructiveness to thinking and betterment

There are critics of punishment who argue that punishment aimed at intentional actions forces people to suppress their ability to act on intent. Advocates of this viewpoint argue that such suppression of intention causes the harmful behaviors to remain, making punishment counterproductive. These people suggest that the ability to make intentional choices should instead be treasured as a source of possibilities of betterment, citing that complex cognition would have been an evolutionarily useless waste of energy if it led to justifications of fixed actions and no change as simple inability to understand arguments would have been the most thrifty protection from being misled by them if arguments were for social manipulation, and reject condemnation of people who intentionally did bad things. Punishment can be effective in stopping undesirable employee behaviors such as tardiness, absenteeism or substandard work performance. However, punishment does not necessarily cause an employee to demonstrate a desirable behavior.


See also


Citations


References

*
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Legal Punishment

Etymology Online
* * * * *


External links

* * {{Authority control Social philosophy Criminal justice