Retribution, Deterrence, Rehabilitation, And Social Protection

Today’s criminal system has four justifications for punishment; these justifications for punishment are Retribution, Deterrence, Rehabilitation, and Social Protection. Retribution: “an act of moral vengeance by which society makes the offender suffer as much as the suffering caused by the crime,” Deterrence: “the attempt to discourage criminality through the use of punishment,” Rehabilitation: “a program for reforming the offender to prevent later offenses,” and Social Protection: “rendering an offender incapable of further offenses temporarily by imprisonment or permanently by execution”. The following paragraphs will explain each in further detail and address the history of each justification. Near the end an explanation as to the effectiveness
Deterrence came about in the eighteenth century when society deemed that anyone capable of rational though would clearly not commit a crime if they knew that the punishment for said crime would outweigh any of the benefits of committing said crime. In other words they would not be dumb enough to commit a crime when they knew that they would get in to more trouble than it was worth to commit the crime. Every day on the way to work you have a choice to leave early reaching your destination without breaking the law by speeding. If you are late, you might choose to speed knowing the consequences of speeding ahead of time. A speeding ticket may be a worthy risk to someone who is late to work for the third day in a row. Murder on the other hand may not be a worthy risk since the pain of Murder’s punishment is much worse than a ticket to most citizens. Deterrence was meant to stave off harsher punishments such as death in hopes the imprisonment would scare them off from committing the crime in the first
They believed that if one could control the environment that a criminal or lawbreaker of some sort lives in, then they could be ‘taught’ to confirm to acceptable societal norms. Places such as reformatories and houses of corrections were implemented. One common example of how rehabilitation is used today is when a drunk driver is convicted he may be sentenced to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings rather than jail time. Once the citizen has completed rehab, through the proper reformatory chosen for them, they can choose to stay on the same path of freedom contributing to society or revert to their old ways. Some offenders were sentenced to probation where they had to report to a probation officer and had to follow certain rules to avoid incarceration. Somewhere sent to military style ‘boot camps’ with the hope that hard work and military style discipline would reform these rejects of