Punishment
Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group, meted out by an authority. The term punishment is used both within and outside of the criminal justice context. For example, punishment outside of criminal law can include child discipline measures or conscious or subconscious impositions of unpleasant measures in a relationship.
Several theories have been developed to morally justify punishment in both its main forms. Moral justifications of punishment date as back as the ancient civilisation with Aristotle writing extensively of the ethical implications of imposing pain onto an individual or group of individuals
Punishment can differ in its degree of severity, and may include sanctions such as reprimands, deprivations of privileges or liberty, fines, incarcerations, ostracism, the infliction of pain, amputation and the death penalty.
Corporal punishment 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 or behavioral modification which also includes rewards.
Definitions
There are a large number of different understandings of what punishment is. These depend as to whether we approach punishment as a criminal justice or everday practice. It also depends on what discipline we use to understand punishment.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,
- it involves some loss to the supposed offender,
- it is in response to an offense and
- the human to whom the loss is imposed should be deemed at least somewhat responsible for the offence.
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 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 or removal of a pleasant stimulus. Extra chores or spanking are examples of positive punishment, while grounding a teenager or removing screen time 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. 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, 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 insects. 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 is subject to criticism from coevolution issues. That punishment of individuals with certain characteristics 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. Criminals are punished judicially, by fines, corporal punishment or custodial sentences such as prison; detainees risk further punishments for breaches of internal rules. Children, pupils and other trainees may be punished by their educators or instructors —see Child discipline.Slaves, 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.
Punishment may also be applied on moral, especially religious, grounds, as in penance or imposed in a theocracy with a religious police or by Inquisition.
Justification of punishment
There are many possible reasons that might be given to justify or explain why someone ought to be punished. The justification of punishment has captured the interest of many philosophers throughout history including Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham and many others. While some, such as Mill and Bentham, draw its explanation through utilitarian perspectives, others look at liberalism as a philosophy. More recently, additional approaches have been developed to justify punishment including social contract theory and restorative justice pain.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 is generally considered to be a crime of "high seriousness", while a misdemeanor is not. Here follows a broad outline of typical, possibly conflicting, justifications.
The reasoning for punishment may be to condition a child to avoid self-endangerment, to impose social conformity, to defend norms, to protect against future harms, and to maintain the law—and respect for rule of law—under which the social group is governed. Punishment may be self-inflicted as with self-flagellation and mortification of the flesh 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 crimes, particularly as it applies to imprisonment, is called penology, 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 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 the rules must be satisfied for consequences to be considered punishment.