Justification of Punishment

I have been thinking about the idea of punishment for a long time. And by this I mean punishment by the government for breaking the law. And I have come up with 2 rules that I think should always be followed by any government that considers itself humane.

1) No human rights can never be voilated.
there is one exception to this rule: If a person endangers another person it is allowed to take steps to prevent him from doing this even if it voilates this persons rights(for example. serial killers can be put into prison and drunk drivers can lose their license).


2) A punishment should be effective.
This basically means that a punishments effect should be that the person who voilated the rules does not do this again. Ofcourse the punishment can't voilate rule number 1 even if it is effective.


What these 2 rules come down to is that punishment should always be seen as a humane conditioning and never as vengeance.


Ok im interested in what you guys think about this

There's only one thing I would alter and that's in the above rule, number 1.

It's ot that a human right is being violated when someone is being punished. I think that's an incorrect perspective. When one violates someone's rights, they then submit themselves to abandoning said right that's violated. A serial killer violates someone's right to life and property and will and a variety of other things, hence, prison, which accomodates his or her dismissal of these very rights for themselves.

One cannot perform an action to someone without implicitly giving permission to perform a similar action unto them.

Well thats not really a humane approach to punishment is it? This is actually precisly my point, your punishment should be conditioning not vengeance. Let me illustrate it with an example.

A man steals a candy bar from a store.

Now following your idea we should take his right to property, this would effectivly stip him of every thing he own even his house. This would be more like vengeance because he broke the law it wouldnt be effective conditioning.

I think my rules would give a more logical solution to this problem:

rule 1) You don't cut of his hand, you don't take his property, you dont put him in jail,...
The rules exception however means that you can for instance monitor him, this would be violating his rights to prevent him from being dangerous to other peoples rights.
Now ofcourse you could say that jail or even killing him would also fall under the exception. My solution to this is that it should be the least harmfull but still effective method. Now since this is arbitrary I suppose you could let him choose from a list of punishments.

So if putting him in jail is effective but killing him is also effective then he should be able to choose the one he finds the least harmfull.

rule 2) And this for me really defines the essence of punishment, it is not for the sake of vengeance, it is not just to make you suffer because you did something bad, it is to teach you not to do it again.
I know this sounds like animal training but I think if you think about it logically that is the only thing that can justify punishment.

So by rule number 2 you look for the most effective punishment so for instance banning him from the shop would be a bad punishment because it wouldnt teach him not to steal.


Ofcourse in practice a lot of things have to be done to make this useable and defined. But I think today there are lots of punishments done by humane governments that break these rules.

While it is an interesting point, shouldn't you list what would be considered "Human Rights"? It seems to me that many different cultures have different criteria for human rights and what constitutes violating them. And even for the ones which are shared by different nations, there are still minor differences which should be taken into account.

For more serious crimes; I would agree with BigLundi, as one who is willing to disregard (oh, let's just say right to life) another's right should, in turn, be subject to the same disregard they had previously shown. At least in my opinion, one who acts like a "monster" should be treated as such.

Now in terms of punishment, therein lies a fairly difficult question. Do you attempt to rehabilitate the criminal (in either a positive or negative fashion), do you attempt to "teach" them the proper , or do you simply make an example of them in order to cause some form of trauma. The problem is that each of these options are exceedingly similar (when you get down to it, they can all cause some form of underlying trauma) and can all be seen a violating "human rights".

As to letting the criminal choose a punishment, I can see to possibilities.
1. They simply choose the punishment that would either be the easiest or the "lightest".
2. If the punishments are all equal in severity, then even their choosing of a punishment could be a traumatic experience.
In either case, one would have to carefully weigh that of "human rights" to "Justice" (or at least what the main culture would consider "justice" and "human rights").

Well I think that is clear for a state wich considers itself umane it this point in time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights . But other then that if a country agrees with certain human rights they should thus also apply to criminals with the exeption I stated already. The content is not really important it's about the fact that a lot of punishment voilates human rights without any good reason.




Well I think that you can't say that if you asspire to be humane. YOu can only use punishment as a defence, so you can't kill someone just because he is a murderer.

Take a look at this situation:

A person shoots 10 people in a mall and is arrested. Now let's say that for some reason this man is crippled and cant move his body from the neck down. Now what would be a logical punishment? This man is not a threat to other persons rights so what should be done with him?




Well try to follow me here on looking at punishment in terms of effectiveness instead of severity. It doesn't matter what punishment he chooses because they are all equally effectives.

What I want to propose is a shift from looking at punishment as a means for vengeance and thus looking at severity. To looking at punishment as conditioning and thus looking at effectiveness.

You could make an analogy with dog: (now this might be controversial to link humans and animals but I think it illustrates the point)

Lats say you don't want your dog to bite you. You don't bite him back to punish him, you look for an effective way to make him change his behaviour. Same can be applied to crimes, you don't take away a mans property for stealing, you just try to change his behaviour.

As I am too tried to even attempt to properly adjust the quote, I will respond with numbers marking the arguments.

1. But there is the problem, "Perspective". States can declare themselves humane, and demonize others that do not follow their ideals. The same can be said about countless other issues. Some could argue that "Sharia Law" is monstrous, yet there are still many people that claim it is completely fair. Hell, the prison systems in the US are considered inhumane by most European standards (though it is difficult to say if it is indeed true, or if they simply want another way to "vent" about Americans).
1a. Oh, and this is just a suggestion, not critical towards you. The link you have keeps directing me to a blank wiki page due to the period that included itself in the link. Just a heads-up in case others notice it.

2. Now, was he crippled WHEN he committed the crime, or afterwards? Either way, the man should be punished for his actions, regardless of his physical disabilities (though if he committed that crime while cripple, we might be dealing with some kind of super villain). Punishment isn't simply to show the person that their actions have consequences, but to show the public what is and is not acceptable in today's society. The one best ways to try and deter actions would be to show examples of what happens when the action in question is committed (playing the "States" game whilst driving on the highway... I wont' bother explaining this one now). If commit a crime, you will (must) be punished for it.

3. Here's a problem with the punishment being condition or rehabilitation, it's nothing more than text book brainwashing. While it does have a moderate success rate (not counting psychological breaks in during or after the process), it does bring into question "What is Humane?". Though I'd hate to bring a fictional film into the argument, "Clockwork Orange" offers a fair portrayal of such "rehabilitation" take to an extreme.
3a. Actually, biting a dog on the ear is a way to punish the dog (though it is really to assert dominance so that they won't disobey the "pack leader") and is occasionally used in conjunction with "shaming".

True but this is not what I mean. I'm not trying to find an absolute law, I just want to logically deduce how punishment should be shaped.

So let's say there is a country that has installed a form of human rights (the content is not important, just the fact that they installed it). Then I think it would be hard to argue that criminals should be stripped of such rights. So voilating the rights you set is in my opninion only acceptable when it is to savegaurd the rights of an onther person.



Afterwards ofcourse, if it was before the crime I couldnt really call him harmless. I think you can't really use setting an example as a reason to voilate laws this would lead to absurd situations. From the point of setting an example it would be really effective to publicly torture people for their crimes. Now we don't do this because we think ourselfs "humane" so where is the line with setting an example? I think there is no line and the act of setting an example is not acceptable.

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True succesfull brainwashing would be acceptable and even preferable in my rules.
I think "brave new world" explores brainwashing in an advanced form and with it actually creates a theoretical perfect society.

This ofcourse gives birth to the question: "Do we want a perfect society where everything is smooth and perfect or do we prefer the imperfect nature of our society as it is".

(This is not what I wanted to go into with my first post but it is an interesting topic)

I also think this is an interesting route for the topic. Hence why I am foregoing sleep at... 11pm to continue discussing it.

Righto, second (or third) verse, same as the first.

1. It really tends to beg the question of what is safeguarding the rights and lives of others in that society. On could easily argue that by stripping the rights of the criminal and making and example of them, it would be to better illustrate the government (or really what society at large) thinks of certain crimes, and what they believe is acceptable... Actually, it's a pretty good way to see what a society is like, but that's a different subject. If they can show a "This is what happens when you break the law" example, it could be said that it can deter others from committing similar crimes.


2.I'm not saying torture would be acceptable... well, actually the definition of torture is EXCEEDINGLY vague. Really, it's pretty much open to whatever you could think constitutes torture. But I digress, people need to be held accountable for their crimes. Even if a mass murderer became a quadriplegic, it doesn't change what he did. And hell, some could argue that "sending him to the gallows" would be "humane" (JOKE: Or cure him of his disability... worked for The Batman). The example would be that no one is above the law, regardless of physical condition (Though putting a corpse to death would be difficult [heh heh heh, I kill me])
2a. If a "harmless" man manages to kill several people, he wasn't harmless.

3. The topic of brainwashing is pretty controversial, and don't get me wrong, I think it could be used in some very beneficial ways. However, you must also weigh in on whether or not rewriting who and what a person is is actually an acceptable solution. If you do this simply to promote peace in a society, wouldn't you have given up what made your society human? To actually have different people with different thoughts co-existing with one and other? To reach this "humane" alternative to punishment, you would have to give up your own humanity.
3a. Another film, though significantly more action involved: Equilibrium (Though this really has to do more with ridding society of emotions, one could still draw some similarities).