The Distributive Justice System In The United States

Justice is a concept that can be broken down into a series of smaller beliefs or ideas. In many societies, justice is a system in which the people of a community or group are treated according to their actions and behavior. In societies such as this, people typically have roles that are delegated or earn where the people who disobey or do not follow the laws or regulations are punish. The idea of what kind of justice a person is entitled to is called distributive justice. This type of justice attempts to determine how and why a person should receive certain benefits or things. Need-based justice explains that people should receive more if they are more in need. Merit-based justice is the belief that benefits and other things should be given
to those who deserve them. Equality-based justice is the idea that all people should get the same amount of benefits no matter their needs or merits. Today, a merit-based justice seems to be present in many communities (CrashCourse, 2:04-3:24). A large problem in this merit-based society is the problem of capital punishment, which is also known as the death penalty. The United States of America currently has approximately 5 percent of the world’s population while it has 25 percent of the world’s prisoner population (Hinman, 134).
This definitely helps one understand the state that the US is in right now. With high rates of imprisonment, it follows that crime rates are also high which means that there has to be a type of justice or punishment for the crimes that have been committed. This is where the two types of punishment are introduced that attempt to right the wrongs that have taken place. One type of punishment is one that looks back upon the committed crime and attempts to exact retributive justice. The other type of punishment is one that looks ahead towards the future and how it is affected in an effort to implement restorative justice (Hinman, 136). These two concepts will be explained in detail later on. In response to these crimes and criminals, the United States uses the death penalty system, where an individual is executed for his or her crimes. This method, however, is ineffective and should be abolished, replacing it with a more rehabilitating method to create a better
future. The two types of punishments to restore balance or bring justice are retributive justice and restorative justice.
Retributive justice is a system that looks back upon the crime that a person has committed and then punishes the person for that crime. This system uses what is done to determine what should be done to the individual who has committed this wrongdoing so that the punishment is proportionate to the crime. Restorative justice is punishment that looks forward into the future in order to better the future. This justice tries to better the individual so that when the offender leaves prison, he or she will not return and benefit society in some way (Hinman, 137). In the retributive spectrum, research and data on whether or not the death penalty deterring crimes from happening is inconclusive after all the years that the death penalty has been around (Hinman, 150). This means that there is no definitive proof that the death penalty is an effective method to deter criminals from committing crimes. The application of the death penalty is not helping better society because reasons such as its cost to maintain, false accusation, and its dehumanizing effect on us as a
society. The price to maintain the death penalty is extremely costly and takes away from many other branches that help keep the justice system in order. Money for law enforcement is reduced and instead, is used to take care of death row inmates and death penalty cases. This has many adverse effects on the economy and the justice system as a whole. According to Richard Dieter’s article, “Millions Misspent: What Politicians Don’t Say about the High Costs of the Death Penalty,” Dieter talks about the costs that go into the cases of the death penalty and the caring of the inmates. He says that in Texas, there are over 300 people on death row and that, on average, Texas spends about 2.3 million dollars on each case. Despite the high number of inmates, Texas still maintains one of the highest rates of murder in the United States (par. 1-2). With this information, it can be said that putting money back into the other parts of the justice system would be more beneficial towards the greater good of society while the spending of money towards the death penalty does not seem to be benefitting anything.