Punishment Research Paper
SOC 120
Punishments 2
Citizens are being arrested every single day for an unlimited variety of reasons. The
reason can be anything from abuse of a family member, robbery, drug possession, or
murder. The criminal system has four ways to justify punishment. Retribution,
deterrence, rehabilitation, and social protection are ways in which punishment is justified.
Each of the four has its own style of punishment together with its own pros and cons for
each Citizen.
By definition, retribution can mean an act with a moral vengeance on how society will
make an offender suffer the same amount of suffering as the crime itself. Retribution has
been playing a role in society since the beginning of the bible. In the middle ages, crime
was considered an offense onto society and to God. Back then crime was an upset to
societys original order as a whole. This is how society got the idea that the crimes
committed should have a punishment equal to the amount of sufferance do to the crime.
This way of punishing is still being used today by the justice system.
By definition, deterrence can mean societys way of preventing criminal behavior
through the act of punishing. Deterrence was noticed by the eighth century. At that time
society thought that if anyone was able to think then they would not commit a single crime
due to the fact that the punishment would overcome the benefit of the crime committed.
With that in mind citizens wouldnt even think about committing a crime because of the
outcome of the punishment. Deterrence was put into place to drop the rise of the death
penalty by scaring citizens from doing any crime at all. Today the rate of crime is still on a
rise so there are some people that feel this type of punishment isnt very effective. If
criminals were at all afraid of the punishment received by committing a crime the crime
rate wouldnt be as high as it is in todays society.
Punishments 3
By definition, rehabilitation is programs that are developed for offenders to reform
themselves and to prevent them from committing future crimes. Unlike the other three
punishments rehabilitation is offender oriented. Rehabilitation was created in the
nineteenth century. At that time sociologist noticed that there was a connection with
criminals themselves and the environment which they were a part of. People felt that if
