PUNISHMENT INTRODUCTION: Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong

by an individual or groupThe 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 consequences 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". Fundamental justifications for punishment include: retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitations such as isolation in order to prevent the wrongdoer's having contact with potential victims.f the four justifications, only retribution is part of the definition of punishment and none of the other justifications are guaranteed outcomes. 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 is considered either spite or revenge 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 the rules may be rewarded, and is therefore without negative consequences, and so cannot be considered punishment. Finally the condition of breaking (or breaching) the rules must be satisfied to be considered punishment. Punishments differ in the degree of severity of their unpleasantness, and may include sanctions such as reprimands, deprivations of privileges or liberty, fines, incarcerations, ostracism, the infliction of pain, and the death penalty. Corporal punishment refers to punishments in which 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.[3] Punishment can be an integral part of socialization, and punishing unwanted behaviour is often part of a system of pedagogy or behavioral modification which also includes rewards.

Punishment definition

The New Testament lays down the general principles of good government, but contains no code of laws for the punishment of offenders. Punishment proceeds on the principle that there is an eternal distinction between right and wrong, and that this distinction must be maintained for its own sake. It is not primarily intended for the reformation of criminals, nor for the purpose of

deterring others from sin. These results may be gained, but crime in itself demands punishment. Endless, of the impenitent and unbelieving.

In philosophy In common usage, the word "punishment" might be described as "an authorized imposition of deprivationsof freedom or privacy or other goods to which the person otherwise has a right, or the imposition of special burdensbecause the person has been found guilty of some criminal violation, typically (though not invariably) involving harm to the innocent.

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 / prevention One reason given to justify punishment is that it is a measure to prevent people from committing an offence - 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. Rehabilitation Some punishment includes work to reform and rehabilitate the wrongdoer so that they will not commit the offence again.[7] 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 / societal protection Incapacitation as a justification of punishment[7] refers to the offenders ability to commit further offences being removed. Imprisonment separates offenders from the community, removing or reducing their 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.

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,[7] 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. One reason societies have administered punishments is to diminish the perceived need for retaliatory "street justice", blood feud and vigilantism. Restoration For minor offenses, punishment may take the form of the offender "righting the wrong", or restitution. Community service or compensation orders are examples of this sort of penalty.[14] Education/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. It teaches people to obey the law and eliminates the free-rider principle of people not obeying the law getting away with it. 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.[15] The pillory was a method for carrying out public denunciation.[16]

Positive Punishment In an attempt to decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring in the future, an operant response is followed by the presentation of an aversive stimulus. This is positive punishment. A positive punisher is an aversive event whose presentation follows an operant response. The positive punisher decreases the likelihood of the behavior occurring again under the same circumstances.

Negative Punishment In an attempt to decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring in the future, an operant response is followed by the removal of an appetitive stimulus. This is negative punishment. When a child "talks back" to his/her mother, the child may lose the privilege of watching her favorite television program. Therefore, the loss of viewing privileges will act as a negative punisher and decrease the likelihood of the child talking back in the future. A negative punisher is an appetitive event whose removal follows an operant response. The negative punisher decreases the likelihood of that behavior occurring again under the same circumstances. PUNISHMENTS No argument is presented here against such societal practices for adults who have been convicted of socially harmful behavior. If you believe that an eight-year-old is an eighteen-yea-old, then it may seem natural to treat a young person with similar approaches. However, if you believe that young people are not yet adults, then the use of punishment to raise responsibility must be examined. A common myth is that imposed punishments are necessary to change young people's behavior. If this type of punishment worked, then once a youngster is punished the same behavior would not be repeated. If you have used punishments to change behavior and the same behavior was repeated, read on.

Not too many of us remember that the horse pulling the buggy was urged on by a flick of the whip and that information was pounded into students by the cane, the strap, or fear of them. But since then, we have found better ways to teach; yet we are still using the horse and buggy approach to foster social responsibility in an era when both society and the nature of youth have dramatically changed. Punishments operate on the theory young people must experience pain in order to grow into responsibility. We are expecting people whom we "intentionally hurt" to act constructively thereafter. But can you recall the last time you felt bad and did something good? People cannot think positively with negative feelings. People do "good" when they feel good. Imposed punishments can force compliance but never commitment. Have you ever seen anyone punished into commitment? Punishments kill the very thing we are attempting to dochange behavior into something that is positive and socially appropriate. Reward, Punishment & Reputation

Cooperation is abundant in nature and ranges from bacterial colonies and group defense or predator inspection behavior to human interactions including health insurrance, public transportation, environmental issues etc. Nevertheless, it is far from obvious how costly cooperative behavior could have evolved under Darwinian selection. In order to model such situations, social dilemmas such as the prisoner's dilemma and the public goods game have received considerable attention. A social dilemma is characterized by a conflict of interest between the wellfare of the community and the performance of an individual. In pairwise interactions, for example, the act of cooperation produces a benefit for the partner at some cost to the cooperator. If both cooperate they both get the benefit less the costs but each individual is tempted defect hoping to get away with the

benefit without having to bear the costs. Actually, it is always better to defect no matter what the other player does. Consequentially cooperation will vanish - but then both players are worse off than if they had cooperated. This is the famous prisoner's dilemma. Public goods interactions are essentially a generalization of the prisoner's dilemma to groups of arbitrary size. For further details on the prisoner's dilemma see the tutorials on 22 games and on cooperation in structured populations. For an introduction on cooperation in larger groups see the tutorial on public goods games.

References
1. ^ Hugo, Adam Bedau (February 19, 2010). "Punishment, Crime and the State". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-punishment/#PunCriSta. Retrieved 2010-08-04. "The search for a precise definition of punishment that exercised some philosophers (for discussion and references see Scheid 1980) is likely to prove futile: but we can say that legal punishment involves the imposition of something that is intended to be burdensome or painful, on a supposed offender for a supposed crime, by a person or body who claims the authority to do so." 2. ^ a b McAnany, Patrick D. (August 2010). "Punishment". Online. Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. http://gme.grolier.com/article?assetid=0238860-0. Retrieved 2010-08-04. "Punishment describes the imposition by some authority of a deprivation usually painful on a person who has violated a law, rule, or other norm. When the violation is of the criminal law of society there is a formal process of accusation and proof followed by imposition of a sentence by a designated official, usually a judge. Informally, any organized group most typically the family, in rearing children may punish perceived wrongdoers." 3. ^ a b Hugo, Adam Bedau (February 19, 2010). "Theory of Punishment". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/punishment/#2. Retrieved 2010-08-04. "Punishment under law... is the authorized imposition of deprivations of freedom or privacy or other goods to which the person otherwise has a right, or the imposition of special burdens because the person has been found guilty of some criminal violation, typically (though not invariably) involving harm to the innocent. (The classical formulation, conspicuous in Hobbes, for example, defines punishment by reference to imposing pain rather than to deprivations.) This definition, although imperfect because of its brevity, does allow us to bring out several essential points."