punishment

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noun

Something, such as loss, pain, or confinement, imposed for wrongdoing: castigation, chastisement, correction, discipline, penalty. See reward/punish/deserve.

n

Definition: penalty
Antonyms: encouragement, exoneration, pardon, praise, protection, reward

The deliberate infliction of harm, by authorized agents, on a person, in response to a breach of rules by which, it is claimed, the person is governed, and for which he or she is held responsible. Because of the concentrated coercive power at its disposal, state punishment has been a primary concern of political and legal theory. Here the rules are the laws of the state; the legitimacy of the legal system as a whole is contestable, as is the moral obligation to obey particular laws; and the purposes of the punishment may be variously understood. These purposes are usually identified as deterrence and retribution. Although denunciation, prevention, and reform are also mentioned, many theorists would reject these as objects of punishment (rather than possible side-effects or opportunities presented by it). Some accounts of state punishment define it as deliberate infliction of harm on a person who is guilty of breaking the law, in response to that breach, ruling out the possibility that an innocent person may be unjustly punished. Although this is unhelpful, justifiable punishment requires that there be compelling reasons to suppose the person to be punished is guilty; a realistic account of the practice must allow for the possibility of error, even if it hopes to minimize it. The connection between the breach of the rules and the person punished depends upon a conception of responsibility, which is again liable to be controversial, either because of different understandings of the ‘causes’ of a particular individual's behaviour or because of disagreement about the reasonableness of holding X (e.g. a parent, an army officer) responsible for what Y (e.g. a child, a soldier) did.

— Andrew Reeve

The Bible prescribes various penalties for transgressors (which Maimonides explains as being relative to the seriousness of the offense: Guide III, 41). They include: death (see Capital Punishment); excision (see Karet); Excommunication (ḥerem).

Flogging (see Deut. 25:1-3). The Bible prescribes a maximum of 40 lashes, which the rabbis explained as not more than 39---a third on the chest and the rest on the back. They prescribed this punishment for transgression of a negative biblical command, and also for one who refused to fulfill a positive commandment (ḤuI. 132b).

Retaliation in cases of assault and battery.

Fines and financial compensation were imposed by Scripture in a variety of cases, such as impugning one's bride's virginity (Deut. 22:13-19), rape (Deut. 22:28-29), robbery (Ex. 22:3), and selling a neighbor's property (Ex. 21:37). The talmudic sages levied fines where technicalities limited the jurisdiction of the courts to impose the penalties prescribed by Scripture (BK 84b), or for infractions of rabbinic ordinances (TJ, Av. Zar. 1:6 (39d).

Confiscation of property by the court (hefker bet-din) was employed as a means of enforcing compliance with the law. This was based upon the passage in the Book of Ezra (10:8) "that anyone who did not come [to the assembly summoned by Ezra] would, by decision of the officers and elders, have his property confiscated."

Imprisonment was not prescribed by Scripture as a penalty. However, a person was to be held in custody until the court determined his punishment (Num. 15:34; cf. Ket. 33b, viz. that one who strikes his neighbor is kept in custody until the effect of his assault is ascertained). Though imprisonment for non-payment of debts was contrary to Jewish law, some Jewish communities in the Middle Ages imposed it, following the custom prevalent among non-Jews.

Maimonides enumerates 36 offenses calling for capital punishment; 39 for which the Bible prescribes death "at the hand of heaven" but for which courts could impose a flogging punishment of up to 39 lashes; and another 168 which could also be punished by up to 39 lashes. For all capital punishment or flogging sentences, the crime had to be committed in front of eyewitnesses and after the culprit had been pre-warned of the punishment involved.

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The deliberate infliction of harm upon somebody, or the withdrawal of some good from them, by an authority, in response to their being supposed to have committed some offence. Sometimes punishment may be inflicted upon an animal, or ritualistically upon an inanimate thing. The philosophical problem with punishment is that since it involves the infliction of some kind of harm, or deprivation of some kind of good, it transgresses normal ethical boundaries, and therefore requires specific ethical justification. The major elements in such a justification have been felt to be: (i) retribution: if a person has inflicted some harm on another, then justice requires retribution (see also justice, retributive); (ii) reparation: if a person has harmed another, then he owes a duty of reparation to the victim, which his punishment provides; (iii) reformation: the harm inflicted teaches the criminal to behave better in the future; (iv) deterrence: knowledge of the penalties deters potential offenders; (v) prevention: an offender who is deprived of opportunity (e.g. by being imprisoned) cannot repeat the offence. Features (iii) and (iv) are often conjoined with (v), in an indirect utilitarian approach, in which it is argued that a society with an institution of punishment in place will enjoy better conditions of life than any without it. A thought more popular among judges than philosophers is that punishment simply expresses society's revulsion at some kind of behaviour, and needs no other defence. The difficulty is that judges are often revolted by too many things, such as long hair, youth, and poverty.

An unpleasant stimulus presented immediately following a particular behaviour. Punishment is applied to weaken the response to which it is associated. Compare negative reinforcement, reward.

Punishment, in law, is the official infliction of discomfort on an individual as a response to the individual's commission of a criminal offense. That general definition invites attention to two related matters: the purposes for which punishment is visited upon an offender and the forms that punishment takes.

The purposes of punishment in American tradition cannot be determined from surviving records or inferred from experience but must be culled from the academic literature. That literature explains that government has punished offenders for reasons that fall roughly into utilitarian and nonutilitarian categories. Utilitarian objectives have in common the desire to prevent or to reduce crime. For example, government punishes criminals officially in order to preempt private retaliation by mob violence (vengeance), to restrain an offender while he or she undergoes discipline (incapacitation), to discourage an offender from misbehaving in the future (specific deterrence), to discourage others by making an example of the individual (general deterrence), and to dissuade an offender from committing more crimes by reforming him or her in some manner (rehabilitation). Nonutilitarian objectives are less eclectic. Governments punish an offender because the offender deserves to be punished for his or her crime and should be made to atone for it (retribution). The underlying Kantian idea is that a criminal has gained an advantage over others by virtue of his or her offense. That advantage must be eliminated via punishment to restore the proper balance of benefits and burdens in society.

The forms of punishment employed historically are fairly well documented. The colonists chiefly employed monetary fines and corporal punishments. They tortured slaves brutally and, outside the institution of slavery, they executed miscreants even for minor crimes. Offenders who were not hanged were whipped, branded, pilloried, ducked in water, placed in stocks, or banished from the colony (run out of town on a rail). It is difficult to say whether any of those punishments was consciously imposed to achieve utilitarian or nonutilitarian goals. Flogging slaves was part of the terror of slavery itself. Punishments of free colonists by public shaming may have had either utilitarian or nonutilitarian rationales. Punishments groomed to particular offenses may have been primarily retributive. Branding Hester Prynne with a scarlet letter A may have condemned her misbehavior more than it discouraged future illicit sexual liaisons.

Late in the eighteenth century the Quakers in Philadelphia conceived the notion that incarceration could substitute for the death penalty and physical torture. In the antebellum period custodial detention gradually became the preferred means of punishment in most states. The Pennsylvania Quakers' rationale was utilitarian. They meant to confine convicts in penal institutions to "reform" them and thus to reduce the risk that they would commit additional criminal acts. The very name of the Quaker institutions, "penitentiaries," conveyed the message that their purpose was moral reform. Other proponents of incarceration expressed similar ambitions. As penal facilities of varying kinds were established over the next century, the theoretical justification was, by contemporary standards, humane: the ideal of rehabilitating citizens so they might become law-abiding and productive members of the developing industrial society.

The "rehabilitative ideal" dominated American penology throughout most of the twentieth century, implicating a variety of familiar policies, including the indeterminate sentence, probation and parole, vocational training, and educational programs for inmates. The working idea was that an offender should be incarcerated not for any fixed term but for as long as necessary to ensure rehabilitation. During and after confinement the offender should receive "treatment" to help foster a normal, law-abiding life. In 1949 the Supreme Court recognized that rehabilitation had become an important goal of criminal jurisprudence. In 1972 the National Council of Crime and Delinquency declared that convicts should be subject to reformative programs befitting their individual characteristics and circumstances.

Within a few years, however, many Americans discarded rehabilitation and embraced instead the competing idea that criminal offenders should be punished because they deserve it and for no other reason, pragmatic or humanitarian. Analysts have offered three explanations for the rapid shift to retribution. Critics on the right argued that rehabilitative programs rendered incarceration insufficiently punitive, critics on the left contended that rehabilitative programs constituted unacceptable ideological indoctrination, and professional penologists conceded that rehabilitation could not be shown to reduce recidivism.

Retribution's hegemony was not complete at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Imprisonment continued to serve forward-looking, preventive goals and conventionally was understood to be justified at least in part on utilitarian grounds. For example, prison terms for young offenders were commonly defended as a means of incapacitating young men during their most dangerous years. Retribution in 2002 is not necessarily regarded as meaningless or ineffective. When offenders are given sentences commensurate with their crimes rather than with their own individual circumstances and "need" for rehabilitation, individuals who committed roughly the same offenses received roughly the same penalties. That result in turn conforms to the American predilection for equality. After 1980 the federal government and many states adopted sentencing guidelines grounded in the idea that like crimes should be treated alike. In the punitive atmosphere of the times, however, the sentence for any given offense tended to be harsh. Moreover, repeat offenders often received enhanced sentences. Thus sentencing guidelines made prison terms not only more uniform but uniformly long, especially in nonviolent drug cases. Lengthy sentences to distant penal facilities in turn revived the colonial utilitarian policy of banishment.

The Eighth Amendment bars "cruel and unusual punishments." The Supreme Court has held that physical punishments once commonly accepted may become "cruel and unusual" as society's standards of decency evolve. Apart from the death penalty, corporal punishments are extremely rare and are probably unconstitutional when they occur. Political support for the death penalty has ebbed occasionally, but the Supreme Court has declined to hold that capital punishment necessarily violates the Eighth Amendment. Instead, the Court has held that the Constitution limits the death penalty to certain classes of homicides committed by especially culpable offenders.

Bibliography

Allen, Francis A. The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal: Penal Policy and Social Purpose. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979.

Mitford, Jessica. Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business. New York: Knopf, 1973.

Rotman, Edgardo. Beyond Punishment: A New View of the Rehabilitation of Criminal Offenders. New York: Greenwood, 1990.

Von Hirsch, Andrew. Doing Justice: The Choice of Punishments: Report of the Committee for the Study of Incarceration. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

The imposition of hardship in response to misconduct.

Punishments authorized in modern U.S. law include community service, monetary fines, forfeiture of property, restitution to victims, confinement in jail or prison, and death.

Some civil sanctions are punitive in nature. The primary aim in most civil cases is to compensate the victim. However, a judge or jury may assess punitive damages against a party in a civil case if that party's conduct was especially wicked. Punitive damages are intended to punish a party or set an example for similar wrongdoers. Though onerous, punitive damages in a civil case do not carry with them the same stigma attached to criminal punishment.

Human transgressions have been punished in various ways throughout history. The standard punishments in ancient Greek and Roman societies were death, slavery, mutilation (corporal punishment), imprisonment, or banishment. Some punishments were especially creative. In ancient Rome, for example, a person who murdered a close relative was enclosed in a sack with a cock, a viper, a dog, and a monkey, and then cast into the sea.

The ancient punishments were brought to England. Until the nineteenth century, the death penalty, or capital punishment, was imposed in England for more than two hundred different crimes. Most of these crimes were petty violations, such as pickpocketing or swindling. A defendant could be hanged, burned at the stake, or beheaded. In some cases the process of death was drawn out. A person found guilty of treason, for example, was placed on a rack and stretched, hung until not quite dead, then disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered (cut into four pieces).

Until the nineteenth century, corporal punishment in England could consist of whipping, branding, or the cutting off of a body part. Noses, ears, hands, fingers, toes, and feet were all subject to removal for criminal acts. Often the body part sliced off was the part thought responsible for the act. A pickpocket, for example, might have a hand cut off, and a spy might lose an ear, tongue, or eye. Corporal punishment could be inflicted in addition to other punishments, such as banishment, forced labor, or short-term incarceration.

The American colonies adopted and cultivated the traditional punishments of England. The most common punishments were corporal and capital. Petty criminals were often sentenced to a combination of corporal punishment and incarceration in jail for several months. The punishment for more serious crimes was usually death.

Punishment was the most comprehensive and severe in colonies founded on religious principles. In Massachusetts, controlled by the Puritans, a woman who committed adultery could be forced to wear the letter A in public as a punishing reminder of her conduct. Men who committed adultery were put to death, as were those who engaged in bestiality.

The witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, illustrated the inventiveness of punishment in some of the colonies. In 1692 nineteen people were executed after children claimed that several women were practicing witchcraft. One of the alleged witnesses, who refused to participate in the trials, was slowly pressed to death under the weight of heavy rocks.

After the colonies won freedom from English control, enlightened social discourse led to the imposition of restraints on punishment. In 1791 the states ratified the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to prohibit excessive bail, excessive fines, and the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments. Because the amendment did not define "cruel and unusual punishment," lawmakers and courts have had to determine what punishments are cruel and unusual. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause was interpreted to prohibit only torture and barbarous punishments.

After the ratification of the Eighth Amendment, corporal punishment was replaced by incarceration in jail or prison. Capital punishment, essentially the ultimate form of corporal punishment, survived into the 1970s, when it was held to be cruel and unusual (Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S. Ct. 2726, 33 L. Ed. 2d 346 [1972]). That decision was overturned four years later in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S. Ct. 2909, 49 L. Ed. 2d 859 (1976), and capital punishment was restored in many jurisdictions.

The United States is the only western industrialized country to use the death penalty. Most states authorize the death penalty as a punishment for first-degree murder. Hanging, death by electrocution, and the firing squad are still used, but the most common form of capital punishment is death by lethal injection.

For more than a century after the Eighth Amendment was ratified, lawmakers and courts did not interpret its prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment to include a prohibition of disproportionate punishment. Federal and state lawmakers were free to impose punishment on convicted criminals without concern for whether the punishment fit the crime.

In 1910 the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the proportionality concept in Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 30 S. Ct. 544, 54 L. Ed. 793. In Weems, Paul A. Weems was convicted of falsifying a single item of a public record and sentenced to hard labor for twelve to twenty years while chained at the wrists and ankles. The Court in Weems examined the nature of the crime, compared Weems's sentence with punishment in other jurisdictions for the same offense, and looked at the punishment for more serious crimes within the same jurisdiction.

In light of the comparisons, the Court found that the punishment of Weems was too harsh. According to the Court, the Eighth Amendment was designed to protect against such disproportionate punishment, and it ordered the case against Weems dismissed. Since the Weems decision, courts and lawmakers in the United States have attempted to find the right amount of punishment for various criminal acts.

Both legislators and judges determine punishment. Legislators identify the range of punishments that a court may impose for a certain crime. Punishment for crimes is listed in federal, state, and local laws. In most cases statutes name a variety of punishments appropriate for the crime, and courts have discretion in determining the precise punishment. However, many federal and state laws on narcotics identify a mandatory minimum prison sentence that must be imposed, and this takes sentencing discretion away from the judge.

In Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957, 111 S. Ct. 2680, 115 L. Ed. 2d 836 (1990), Ronald Harmelin challenged the punishment he received for possession of more than 650 grams of cocaine. Though he had no prior felonies, Harmelin was convicted in Michigan state court and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. On appeal the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the sentence, ruling that "severe, mandatory penalties may be cruel, but they are not unusual in the constitutional sense, having been employed in various forms throughout our Nation's history."

Critics argue that the Harmelin opinion sidestepped the proportionality requirement created in earlier High Court cases and threw into doubt the standard for cruel and unusual punishment. Under Harmelin, proportionality is not required; what is relevant is whether the punishment has been used in the United States in the past. If it has been used, it is not unusual, and therefore not violative of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause.

Because lawmakers can change laws, the list of acts that warrant punishment is not static. Before the twentieth century, many acts, such as sodomy, adultery, and premarital sex were punished with prison terms. In most states either these acts are no longer illegal or the laws prohibiting them are no longer enforced. Possession of most psychotropic substances was not punished until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol was punished in the United States from 1919 to 1933 (Prohibition). Debtors used to be punished with imprisonment, but this practice was discontinued in the 1830s.

Some acts have always been illegal, but the level of punishment inflicted for the crime has fluctuated. Drunk driving, for example, is punished more severely now than it was before the 1970s. The possession of a small amount of marijuana used to warrant a long prison term in most jurisdictions, but modern statutes limit the punishment for this crime to monetary fines and probation.

In assigning punishment for drug offenses, most laws differentiate between distribution and possession. State and federal statutes generally punish the selling or distribution of drugs more severely than possession. Repeat possession violators may receive short-term incarceration, but long prison terms are usually reserved for purveyors of illicit drugs. Lawmakers may vary the punishment within the same offense for different forms of the same drug. Possession of crack cocaine in most states and in the federal system, for example, is punished more harshly than possession of powder cocaine.

Before the Civil War, many states in the South had separate statutory codes for slaves, which imposed more severe punishment on slaves than on free persons. For example, any attempt by a slave to commit a crime punishable by death was punished with death, but free persons were not put to death for attempts. Also, the range of acts punished under slave codes was wider than that punished under the statutory codes for free persons.

Since the end of the Civil War, statutory codes in all states have purported to punish all persons equally. However, the issue of fairness concerning who gets punished has not disappeared. Many analysts of punishment in the United States cite the disproportionate number of African Americans in prisons as proof of selective prosecution and punishment. Scholars and others have also questioned a system that punishes drug offenses more harshly than violent offenses.

Critics also note disparities between punishment of impoverished persons and punishment of wealthy persons, noting that poor defendants are punished more harshly because they do not have the resources necessary to mount a vigorous defense to criminal charges.

The United States relies primarily on incarceration as punishment. However, many states have sought alternatives to incarceration. Many states use short-term boot camps to rehabilitate first-time offenders. These highly regimented camps are intended to give offenders the discipline and respect for authority necessary to succeed in society. Other states and localities are experimenting with alternatives to imprisonment for drug offenders, such as treatment, probation, and work requirements. Others have supplanted long periods of confinement with a small dose of public humiliation and a variety of deprivations.

In Nevada, for example, a person convicted of one drunk driving offense may be ordered to perform forty-eight hours of community service dressed in clothing that identifies the person as a drunk driving offender. Additionally, the defendant is deprived of his or her driver's license for ninety days; ordered to pay a fine ranging from $200 to $1,000; and required to attend, at the defendant's own expense, an alcohol abuse education course.

See: Salem witch trials; slavery; Criminal Law; Drugs and Narcotics; Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act; Sentencing.

IN BRIEF: Pain or suffering for having done wrong.

Let the punishment match the offense. — Cicero (106-43 BC)

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Quotes:

"Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime." - Woody Allen

"The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness." - Aristotle

"Punishment is justice for the unjust." - St. Augustine

"Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion." - William Blake

"Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?" - Jerry Brown

"Hanging is too good for him said Mr. Cruelty." - John Bunyan

See more famous quotes about Punishment

Punishment in a dream reflects guilt or shame about some actions committed by the dreamer. Even if the punishment is being inflicted upon someone else, the dreamer is most probably "feeling" the punishment as well.

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The use of an undesirable stimulus to modify or prevent an undesirable behavior.

For a list of words related to punishment, see:

• Prison and Punishment - punishment: penalty imposed by legal system on convicted offender

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This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - straf, ublid medfart

Nederlands (Dutch)
straf, afstraffing

Français (French)
n. - punition, châtiment, (Jur) peine, (fig) rude épreuve

Deutsch (German)
n. - Strafe, Bestrafung

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - κολασμός, τιμωρία, ποινή

Italiano (Italian)
punizione, castigo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - punição (f)

Русский (Russian)
наказание

Español (Spanish)
n. - castigo, sanción

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - (be)straffning, stryk

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
处罚, 惩罚, 刑罚

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 處罰, 懲罰, 刑罰

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 벌, 형벌

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 処刑, 刑罰, 懲罰, 虐待, 罰すること, 処罰

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) عقاب, عقوبه, قصاص, جزاء‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮עונש, נזק, טיפול גס, התעללות, סבל‬

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