Criminal Punishment: Its Effectiveness and Effects on Society, Research Paper Example

Criminal punishment is the use of a negative or unpleasant deterrent on an individual in order to prevent or regulate behavior that has been deemed morally wrong by a group or culture.  Different cultures treat punishment in different ways, generally depending on the groups specific moral and ethical beliefs. In some society’s, the focus of punishment is on rehabilitation while in others the focus is on a more physical type of punishment or retribution. Punishment is a central part of the American criminal justice system because the belief is generally held that punishment is the best way to protect society at large from harm, both by preventing crimes from being committed and by deterring offenders from committing more crimes in the future.  It is believed that those who act in deviant ways which threaten the morality and security of the society should be reprimanded in such as way that it deters them and others from repeating the act. Punishment is understood in this sense from a utilitarian perspective, meaning that any harm caused to the offender by the punishment is morally and ethically justified because it is done in order to better serve society at large. However, whether or not it is justified depends on if the punishment leads to this goal. There is some controversy among experts as to whether or not the four types of punishments used in America – retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation and societal protection or incarceration –  are effective in preventing crime, and whether or not the punishment is even justified morally from a utilitarian perspective.

Retribution is a punishment that causes the offender to repay for the offense committed, either with a fine or with labor.  There are many crimes in America for which retribution is used as punishment. These include traffic tickets and other misdemeanor crimes. The retribution for the crime committed is either money paid to the state (a fine) or through the individuals labor to aid a charity or the state (community service). The idea behind retribution is that people will be less likely to commit a crime because they wish to avoid a financial penalty. While this type of punishment does have its benefits, being funding for the state and free labor, there have been suggestions that individual’s adapt to retribution punishment and that after time it no longer becomes a crime deterrent. “People initially experience such events negatively, but they adjust quickly and rebound toward their pre-event levels of subjective well-being (Bronsteen et al, 2010).” Some law enforcement agencies have reacted to the adaptation to fines by increasing them. However, larger fines have not been shown to make a difference. “There may only be small differences between the negative experience typically imposed, respectively, by large and small fines. While retribution brings benefits to the state through added funding, it may not be the best punishment for preventing crime.

It has often be a presupposition in criminal law in America that the threat of punishment will deter individuals from committing crimes or immoral acts. This type of punishment is called deterrence. However, in their report, Is Deterrence Effective? Results of a Meta-Analysis of Punishment, authors Dolling, Entorf, Hermann and Rupp (2009) find that the literature is not clear as to whether or not this type of punishment is effective in deterring all types of crime. Some crimes, the authors say, cannot be deterred by the threat of punishment. “It appears that the most significant deterrent effects can be achieved in cases of minor crime, administrative offenses and infringements of informal social norms. In cases of homicide, on the other hand, the meta-analysis does not indicate that the death penalty has a deterrent effect (Dolling et al, 2009).” These results indicate that while deterrence will work in preventing the average citizen from committing white collar crimes, serious offenders may have a very different moral compass than other members of society, viewing their criminal acts as more important than any punishment society can throw at them, even death.  While deterrence may keep some from becoming criminals, which is a benefit to themselves and to society at large, it will not keep others from a life of crime which puts individuals in society at a continued risk for violent crimes.

Rehabilitation is general consensus on what most types of criminal punishment should aim for. The thought is that most criminals are just those who have made errors of judgment, and through time spent in incarceration, reflexion and possibly therapy as well, offenders will see the error of their ways and return to the morally correct path.  The idea of rehabilitation as a form of punishment was first introduced in America by the Quakers, who wanted to end the brutal criminal justice system that they had previously experienced and observed in England. “The system of passive confinement provided the opportunity for prisoners to quietly reflect on their misdeeds and hopefully change their ways as well as the opportunity to pay their debt to society by a period of confinement (Patrick et al, 2001).” In today’s prison system, the idea of rehabilitation has been elaborated on, with prisons offering optional group and private therapy sessions for offenders to help them to overcome their criminal tendencies and to re-emerge as morally functioning, productive members of society. Rehabilitation, when it works, benefits society by taking offenders out of society and re-integrating them later as reformed men and women.  In order for rehabilitation to work, however, the offender must want to change and perceive the prison environment as a rehabilitation center instead of as a place of incarceration and punishment. This perception, researchers has found, “appear to be related to the physical environment of the prison (Patrick et al, 2001).” Rehabilitation can be of great benefit to society as well as to offenders if it done correctly, however, it is important to do so without the illusion of pampering the offenders since it is still important for prisons to remain deterrents to offenders and not appear to be simply places of recovery.

The last stop for an offender who has not been deterred from criminal activity by deterrence, retribution and who has not been rehabilitated is societal protection, or what is known as incarceration. Incarceration is the physical detainment of an offender in a prison or jail. Incarceration has mixed effects for society. One positive effect is when incarceration removes a violent and dangerous offender from society. With non-violent criminals, beneficial effects on society are less clear because the cost of incarcerating the offender must also be taken into account. Putting offenders in prisons is not free and the cost to society must equal the benefits to society. In addition, there is the potential criminogenic effect of causing the offender to become a more violent criminal. According to a report prepared by Avinash Singh Bhati entitled, Studying the Effects of Incarceration on Offending Trajectories: An Information-Theoretic Approach, “a comparison of the counter-factual and actual offending patterns suggests that most releasees were either deterred from future offending (40 percent) or merely incapacitate (56 percent) by their incarceration. About 4 percent had a criminogenic effect (Bhati, 2006).” This study showed that less than half of prisoners were deterred from offending future crimes due to incarceration, making its benefit to society in these cases less clear. Longer periods of incarceration do not appear to be as strong a deterrent for crime as believed, according to the report Retribution and the Experience of Punishment, where the authors discover that “the negative experience associated with imprisonment is disproportionately front-loaded such as the difference between a one-year sentence and a two-year sentence is not nearly as great as had been assumed (Bronsteen et al, 2010).”Incarceration can still be beneficial to society by keeping offenders off the street and by helping to rehabilitate some offenders, however its high cost and unclear effectiveness with other crimes makes it a punishment that does not fit all types of crimes.

While the four types of punishments – rehabilitation, deterrence, retribution and incarceration – are not all 100% effective all the time, they still have a success rate that makes them, in general, beneficial to society and to offenders based on the philosophy that those that break the moral code, or law, be punished. If American society invokes punishment for crimes based on the fact that offenders deserve punishment for the moral wrong they committed, a philosophy championed by Immanuel Kant, then punishment is beneficial no matter what its future consequences are to society or the individual.  Kant claims that offenders should be punished, and that future consequences of the punishment are irrelevant,  “and that to adjust the punishment on the expectation that it will increase or decreases future offenses is quite immoral (Carlsmith, 2008).” If we agree with Kant, then all punishment is successful, whether or not it deters future crime. From a utilitarian perspective, however, punishment should instead be morally and ethically justifiable by bringing benefits to society (such as safety and peace) that justify its cost and actions upon the individual offenders. In this case, punishment statistics should be examined with a more critical eye to ensure that they are bringing about the benefits within society that they are supposed to be.

References

Bhati, A.S.(July, 2006) Studying the Effects of Incarceration on Offending Trajectories: An Information-Theoretic Approach Urban Institute Justice Policy Center. Retrieved from http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411427_Effects_of_Incarceration.pdf

Bronsteen, J., Buccafusco, C., and Masur, J.S. (October, 2010) Retribution and the Experience of Punishment. California Law Review 98(5), 1463-1496. Print.

Carlsmith, Kevin M. (May, 2008) On Justifying Punishment: The Discrepancy Between Words and Actions Social Justice Research 21(1), 119-137. Print.

Dolling, D., Entorf, H., Hermann, D., and Rupp, T. (March, 2009)Is Deterrence Effective? Results of a Meta-Analysis of Punishment European Journal of Criminal Policy Research 15, 201-224. Print.

Patrick, S. and Marsh, R. (2001) Perceptions of Punishment and Rehabilitation Among Inmates in a Medium Security Prison: “A Consumer’s Report” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 33(3), 47-63. Print.