Punishment

Punishment

Most people are familiar with punishment and most of can remember at one time or another receiving punishment from our parents for maybe eating a cookie before dinner. The punishment received was different based of the style of parenting but punishment, whether from out parents or society, would fall in one or more of four different categories: Retribution, Deterrence, Rehabilitation, and Social Protection. All these forms are used within the United States but we will determine which one is most effective?

Retribution
Retribution is the oldest form of punishment (Macionis, 2006). The whole idea is that the punishment should fit the crime. If a person murders another, the punishment for the murderer is death. The whole concept behind retribution comes from the biblical concept of “an eye for an eye,” except the bible also states punishment being tenfold in return. The tenfold rule was the basis for cutting off your hand for petty theft because the punishment was ten times worse than the deed.
Society has always had a need to punish deviant behavior and retribution, in its own perverse way, gives swift appeasement to the victims and society. Lynch mobs in the United States were a form of retribution. Many times, a group of people would capture a person and hand out punishment because the justice system was not quick enough for them. Many people who received a lynching were hanged, tarred and feathered, burned, or shot with the result being about the same; death (Simkin, 2008).
Some say lynching in rural areas was unavoidable because of the lack of justice, but in reality, it was a form of revenge or hate based on race (Simkin, 2008). Today it seems we have evolved and have ridden ourselves of retributional punishment, but wait…there is still the death penalty.

Deterrence
Deterrence is the attempt to prevent people from committing a crime by making the punishment worse than the pleasure of the crime (Macionis, 2006). Deterring people from committing a...