The Purpose Of Punishments In Social Justice: An Essay.

The concept of social justice is considered to be fostering the ideas of equality. As per the theories of social justice, all the people in the eyes of law must have the equal access to the wealth, well-being, and privilege, health care facilities as well as same path to the access of equal opportunities regardless of the background of people such as cast, creed, nationality, and sexual orientations, religious values and opinion, income or political views. However, when a criminal does anything offensive, the society punishes the criminal to promote the social justice even though questions arise if the society has the right for punishing the criminal, if so, in what ways and how it the way being implemented to the criminals so that they attain their phase of repercussions and enlightenment to come up with the better versions of themselves.

This essay is going to discuss the purpose of punishments of the criminals of the society with the perspectives of the social justice in the domain of social or the public policies. Further, the essay will be drawing upon the theoretical perspectives of the concept of punishment by highlighting the examples of the contemporary public policies throughout the explanation.

The Purpose Of The Concept Of Social Justice Is That It Emphasizes On Fact That All Human Beings Are Entitled To Be At The Position Of Accessing The Equal Share in terms of economic, political, social, educational, and personal opportunities regardless of the background of people such as cast, creed, nationality, and sexual orientations, religious values and opinion, income or political views, as per the claims and opinions by Gardiner (1958). This concept is same for the purpose of punishments of the people who are considered, acknowledged as well as sought to be criminals in the eyes of the society. In other words, if the concepts of the social justice is considered, the aspects of human rights for all the criminals states that they have the right to attain development as the human beings to lead a better life as per the claims and opinions by Sudarti and Sahuri (2019). They have the equal rights to rectify themselves as per the law in the society without having to lose their lives in the same manner through punishment or to be stuck at the jail with no purpose of improvement or development as a human being.

The term “punishment” can be defined as the measure of the retributive justice. In other words, the goal of the punishment refers to trying for the purpose of rebalancing any kind of unjust advantages which is gained through the process of ensuring that the offenders, too, are in the position for suffering the loss that had been intended to the other innocent person as per the claims and opinions made by Thorburn (2020). The concept of punishment is revolved around involving the processes that is helpful in putting the people who are considered to have committed the criminal offense out from the commitment of performing the criminal offense once again in the near future, according to the claims and opinions made by Das, Ashrafi and Ahmmad (2019). The punishment is also considered to be a sense of the sanction which has been imposed for the criminal offenses that can be considered to having the five elements which help the society to acknowledge an act to be considered it as a deserving to experience a punishment-

1. The act must be involving something unpleasant to that of the victim
2. The act of occurrence must qualify to be a form that is offensive, supposed or being actual according to the victim, according to the claims and opinions made by Werth (2019)
3. The act must be involving someone who performs the act as the offender, actual or the supposed as identified by the victim
4. The act must be performed by the work of the personal agencies. In the other words, the act must not be resorting to the acts which can be acknowledged as the natural consequences of the actions (Garland 2018)
5. The act must involve the imposition by the authority or any kind of institutions of such position against whose set of rules the criminal offense had been committed. Therefore, if case of the criminal offense does not apply to such conditions set by the authoritarian positions, the act cannot be considered to be a criminal offence or can be termed as to simply be an act of hostility. In the same way, the direct actions committed by a person who has been entitled to pose for no special authoritarian actions is not been regarded to be titled as to receive any sorts of punishments, therefore, the actions can be termed to be intended to take revenge or can be regarded as an act towards performing any kinds of hostilities (Okada 2020).

What is punishment?

The valuation of the above mentioned definition of the concept of punishment along with its five types of characteristics can be considered to be residing in the presentation of the punishments in the terms of some of the systems of the set of rules as well as that it happens to distinguish the types of punishment from the other types of the intended unpleasantness. One of the other definitions of the punishment as being put forwarded by Garland is that “the legal process whereby violators of criminal law are condemned and sanctioned in accordance with specified legal categories and procedures”, according to the claims and opinions made by Feng et al. (2018). The moral values of the concept of punishment can be thought as the actions that can be rested upon the set of the theories regarded to be of the values of the deterrence, just deserts, incapacitations, retribution, rehabilitation, as well as, the most recently added values of the restorative sense of the actions of justice, according to the claims and opinions made by Delmas (2019).

The application as well as the concept of the punishment gave rise to a significant number of set of questions. The most fundamental question regarding the application of punishment is dictated to be whether the offenders of the criminal offenses are required to be punished at all (Sandøy 2020). The answers to the questions might call for the below mentioned responses-

• All the types of the offenders are deserved to be punished for the types of crimes that they have committed
• The application of the punishments will help the offenders to be stopped from attempting to commit any sort of further criminal offenses (Martufi 2018)
• The punishments for the criminal acts are helpful in conveying the messages to the victims that the society is there in order to disapprove any kinds of harms that the he or she had been suffering due to the commitment of the criminal offenses
• The application of the punishment is also helpful in the discouragement of the other people from the thought of attempting to do any kinds of criminal offenses of similar kinds
• The punishment also helps in the protection of the society from the types of dangerous types of criminal offenses and the various kinds of the dishonest people who have the potential of committing the criminal offenses
• The application of the punishment is helpful in allowing the offenders in order to make any kinds of amends for the purpose of attempting the harmful acts that he or she has been on the motive of causing to the other people (Condry and Minson 2021)
• The application of the punishments is also helpful is ensuring that the people are able to understand that the laws of the authority are significantly prevalent in the system for the purpose to be obeyed by the people.

The above mentioned answers to the question of whether the offenders are to punished at all or not have been on the basis on different types of reasons which significantly has a great contribution of preventing the types of criminal offenses. On the other hand, another section of the society has been considered to have a thought of the actual forms of the punishment being present at the list of the deserving categories of the criminals or the offenders of the society at large. In other words, the phrase is meant to say that when a criminal offender is sentenced to suffer the punishment of death after being sentenced to months of imprisonment by the highest court of law as he or she might have taken the life of people is not considered to be justified by a set of theorists or philosophers (Murray, Coker and Elsey 2019). This is because, as per the views of these theorists or philosophers, the death sentence for the taking of life of another person is almost the same act performed by the law of the countries before the highest court of law. If the punishment of the death sentence happens to be replaced by the mindfulness activities performed by the criminal offenders that will be helpful in the reconstructing, developing as well as for the purpose of improving the lives, intentions and the acts of the criminal offenders which will be helpful in the reconstruction of the lives in the better way so that they can lead a better version of the lifestyle (Dragojlovi? and Subotin 2018).

Theoretical perspectives of punishment

Over the years of the theoretical approaches, there had been some of the shifts in the penal theories, as well as, therefore, in the purpose of the application of punishments for the complex series of the reasons include the politics, social movements, public movements as well as the public policies (Tonry 2018). The concepts of the punishments of the criminal offenders has been approached as well as theorised by many moral philosophers, the social theorists, as well as the criminologists who have tried to give the contemporary public policies regarding that of the punishments of the criminal offenders. It has been taken into account that the complex concept of the punishment has been limited to the moral philosophy of the society that has been failing to represent the types of the full dimensions as well as the complexity of the matter of the placement of the criminal punishments to the criminal offenders. However, the concept of the punishment should be in a way that the process involves the improvement, betterment as well as the development of the human nature of the offenders so that they can lead a meaningful life as per the public policies (Lorca 2021). For example, a sadistic murderer can kill a victim, but society should condemn the same form of punishments to the offender. It can be concluded that the death sentence constitute a relevant punishment, however, it should be abolished as a part of “the civilizing mission of modern states” in the significant society.

Conclusion

The moral concept of the punishment attempts to justify the placement of the offenders in order to indeterminate the sentencing as well as the guidelines related to the sentencing in order to fixate the proportionate of the deliberate process of the sentence of the penalty of the punishments to the criminal offenders. The approach of the criminological purposes had been in there to focus on the difference of the facts that the imprisonments as well as on the policies of the penalty of the punishments had been controlling the number of the crimes. However, the theoretical as well as the philosophical approach had been on the opinion that the if the punishment of the death sentence happens to be replaced by the mindfulness activities performed by the criminal offenders, it will be helpful in serving the purpose of the reconstructing, developing as well as be up for the purpose of improving the lives, intentions and the acts of the criminal offenders which will be helpful in the reconstruction of the lives in the better way so that they can lead a better version of the lifestyle as well as make the society a better place to live in for people.

References 

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Das, A.K., Ashrafi, A. and Ahmmad, M., 2019, February. Joint cognition of both human and machine for predicting criminal punishment in judicial system. In 2019 IEEE 4th International Conference on Computer and Communication Systems (ICCCS) (pp. 36-40). IEEE.

Delmas, C., 2019. Civil disobedience, punishment, and injustice. In The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Ethics and the Criminal Law (pp. 167-188). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Dragojlovi?, J. and Subotin, M., 2018. Conceptual Theoretical Dilemmas Of Punishment. Culture Of Polis-Journal for Nurturing of Democratic Political Culture, 15(37), pp.323-338.

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Gardiner, G., 1958. The Purpose of Criminal Punishment. Mod. L. Rev., 21, p.221.

Garland, D., 2018. Theoretical advances and problems in the sociology of punishment. Punishment & Society, 20(1), pp.8-33.

Lorca, R., 2021. Could We Live Together Without Punishment? On the Exceptional Status of the Criminal Law. Criminal Law and Philosophy, pp.1-10.

Martufi, A., 2018. The paths of offender rehabilitation and the European dimension of punishment: New challenges for an old ideal?. Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, 25(6), pp.672-688.

Murray, J., Coker, J. and Elsey, H., 2019. Care farming: Rehabilitation or punishment? A qualitative exploration of the use of care farming within community orders.

Okada, I., 2020. A review of theoretical studies on indirect reciprocity. Games, 11(3), p.27.

Sandøy, T.A., 2020. Alternative (to) punishment: Assessing punishment experiences in youth diversion programmes. The British Journal of Criminology, 60(4), pp.911-929.

Sudarti, E. and Sahuri, L., 2019. The Sanction Formulation In Corruption Crime Due To Indonesian Criminal Law System To Realize The Punishment Goals. Ganesha Law Review, 1(2), pp.55-64.

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