The Justifications or Purposes of Punishment

Why do we punish? How do we justify punishment? What do we seek to accomplish?

Key points on this page:

1. Distinguish between moral justifications of punishment and pragmatic justifications focused on crime-reducing strategies. Individuals will have different views on the propriety of moral justifications of punishment and of their importance relative to pragmatic justifications. As criminologists, we focus primarily on the pragmatic justifications and take no stance on the moral justifications.
2. When it comes to pragmatic justifications, the theory often works better than the implementation. Research is mixed on the utility of each of these strategies for crime reduction and other strategies for crime reduction than punishment are more effective. However, there are ways to maximize crime reduction through punishment. The key to remember is implementation is not nearly as straightforward as often believed.

While people have come up with many different justifications of punishment (including moral education, value signaling, and community solidarity), the justifications discussed below tend to be the most common, widely accepted justifications or purposes of punishment.

• Moral Justifications:
  • Retribution: Punishing criminals exactly as much as they deserve to restore the moral balance in society.
    • Key considerations: Retribution is both a moral mandate to punish (to right the wrong, to balance the scales of justice) as well as a requirement that punishment be proportionate to the severity of the crime (an eye for an eye).
  • Vengeance: Punishing wrongdoing to appease our anger over a crime
    • Key consideration: Retribution and vengeance are often confused, but a key point of difference is vengeance does not require proportionality. Many current legal commentators do not consider vengeance is legitimate justification of punishment, focusing instead on retribution.
• Crime-Reduction Strategies:
  • Deterrence: using the expected cost of crime (fear of punishment) to dissuade would-be criminals from committing crime
    • General deterrence relates to general knowledge about the expected punishment for a given crime either through the penal code, news of specific cases, or general hearsay. The idea is that would-be criminals are prevented from committing crime because they fear the punishment.
    • Specific deterrence relates to the first-hand experience of punishment. The idea is someone who previously was punished seeks to avoid crime in the future to avoid experiencing (again) such horrible punishments
    • Key considerations: Do would-be criminals believe they will be caught and thus experience punishment? The certainty of punishment is more important than severity of punishment.
    • Ask us about the research on deterrence!
  • Incapacitation: removing one’s capacity to commit crime (such as through incarceration or intense supervision)
    • Key considerations: When determining adequate sanctions and duration of such sanctions, consider what is the risk offenders pose, relative to the cost (to the state/taxpayers) of those sanctions and their duration.
    • Ask us about the research on incapacitation!
  • Rehabilitation: identifying the root causes of one’s criminality and giving them the tools (training or counseling) so they no longer need or want to commit crime
    • Key considerations: When we provide rehabilitative resources in prison, are we also providing resources for after prison? When prisoners return to criminogenic environments, those effects can outweight the benefits of in-prison treatment and training.
    • Ask us about the research on rehabilitation!

Want to know more? We are available for presentations and reports on the varied justifications for punishment and summarizing the research on the efficacy of various punishment-based crime-prevention strategies.