The four primary justifications for criminal punishment include retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation.
Retribution has two related meanings.
- The first deals with the natural human emotion of vengeance or the desire to get even with the offender - to give the offender his or her just desserts.
- The second meaning of retribution deals with a more rational approach to justice. It assumes that when an offender commits a harmful act against a victim, he or she has gained an unfair advantage to which he or she is not entitled under the law. Punishment must be administered to re-balance the scales of justice. In essence, when rules are broken, rule breakers must be punished.
Incapacitation involves restricting the freedom of the offender so that he or she cannot offend again. The United States is currently on an incarceration binge that is unprecedented in world history. Incapacitation takes two major forms - general and selective.
- In general or collective incapacitation, society makes an effort to utilize incarceration and other forms of incapacitation as a general punitive strategy for many forms of criminality.
- In selective incapacitation, these punishment mechanisms are reserved for the most dangerous offenders, who require incapacitation because they are likely to repeat their criminality.
Deterrence is based on the logical notion that being punished for criminal activity will make people fearful so that they will not want to commit crimes. There are two types of deterrence - special or specific deterrence and general deterrence.
- The former punishes an offender with the specific intent of instilling fear in that individual so that he or she will not commit future crimes.
- The latter punishment attempt to instill fear in society in general so that the rest of us will not want to commit crimes.