Philosophical Justifications Behind The Use Of Societal Punishment

To address the philosophical justifications behind the use of societal punishment I drew my conclusions from our readings this week. First, the main philosophical justification is found in the Greenwalt material, this is for retributive punishment. This type of punishment is derived on the concept of whom is deserving of punishment, basically if one violates the law then he or she should be punished to help restore the moral order in said society. According to the Greeenwalt article, there is another justification for societal punishment described by Kant. Society has a right, as well as a duty to punish someone who offends, and if not then society will feel the guilt. Justification further comes into play by determining that society has the right to punish to correct people who have done wrong. To further comment, this theory of retributive punishment considered that there is free will and people who committed crimes were subjected to the legal penalties that they deserve for their particular crime, this is
This use of punishment was using a judge’s guidance on whether or not he thought the offender would reoffend. If there was justification that the criminal would reoffend, then incapacitation was justified so the community would not be harmed. The punishments inflicted were justified due to the thought the judge perceived each case individually; there was no standard necessarily. The judge had the right to inflict incarceration, fines, or a rehabilitation strategy to prevent the offender from returning to a life of crime. In addition, bounded consequentialism was used, this type of practice made it more humane in a sense in regards to the penalty. There was a standard put in place that lesser crimes did not deserve a long sentence, even if the offender might be thought to reoffend. There was proportionality used on how much punishment was justifiable (Hirsch,