Philosophy of Punishment

According to the (freedictionary.com) Corrections is referred to as the treatment of offenders through a system of penal incarceration, rehabilitation, probation, and parole, or the administrative system by which these are effectuated. There are various types of punishment in the field of corrections. Firstly, Retribution can be seen as the idea that an offender should be punished for their wrongdoings or in other words “the punishment should fit the crime”. A perfect example of an application of this philosophy applied in contemporary correction for example the death penalty. The death penalty in the United States is mostly served on offenses such as 1st degree murder or in some severe cases of treason; it highlights the idiom “an eye for an eye”. There is a lot of criticism for these methods of punishment because according to (author, J. Dignan) there are certain mitigating factors which make this form of punishment unfair and unacceptable at times. Secondly, Deterrence is an objective of putting away a person who has committed a crime to serve as a scapegoat to the offender and to everyone else who might commit a crime. This philosophy can be found in contemporary correction. Examples of this include the 3 strike law; a system which requires state court to imprison an offender who has committed 3 serious crimes 3 separate times. Another example of this would be the Rockefeller law which calls for the immediate imprisonment of an offender who is caught with anything above two (2) pounds of narcotics. This serves to be one of the most controversial methods of punishment because these laws are not seen as justified. Thirdly, Rehabilitation simply means restoring an offender’s status in the society after they have completed serving their time in jail. This kind of philosophy can be found in the contemporary correction: - correction programs. Rehabilitation includes drug dependency recovery, education, psychotherapy, the learning of vocational skills and so on.