Crime and Punishment

Crime is a major issue in the American society as well as societies all over the world. The only way to rid ourselves of crime is to have a big enough deterrent that will stop people from committing those crimes. Criminal Punishments are measures, usually designed to be unpleasant, which are imposed by governmental authorities on persons who have been convicted of violating provisions of applicable criminal laws (Dostoyevsky: 1950).

Each crime has a different level of response that is needed for instance you are not going to give someone the death penalty for running a stop sign and you are not going to give an Ax murder a warning and send them on their way. Ensuring that the proper deterrent is applied for each crime is an important factor to insuring that a person will not commit the crime again. The theory of deterrence comes from the idea that the punishment must be as severe as the crime committed. Additionally, the punishment has to be given to the criminal so that the punishment is viewed as a result of the crime. When the act of punishment stops one from committing crimes, this is called general deterrence.

There is another form of deterrence, which is "specific deterrence," referring to the inability of criminals to commit additional crimes after punishment has been served. It is completely obvious and clear that capital punishment is classified as a specific deterrent, because the criminal will be dead; therefore, crimes will no longer be committed. Nonetheless, capital punishment is a controversial topic discussed by all people, who cannot come to an agreement whether capital punishment is more effective than spending one's life in prison (Dostoyevsky: 1950).

There are many different types of deterrence for committing crimes. The punishments include rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence, and societal protection. “The oldest justification for punishment is to satisfy a society's need for retribution, an act of moral vengeance by which society makes the offender suffer as much as the suffering caused by the crime. A second justification for punishment is deterrence, the attempt to discourage criminality through the use of punishment. The third justification for punishment, rehabilitation, is a program for reforming the offender to prevent later offenses. The last punishment one could receive is societal protection, which means that the criminal can no longer interact with society, or receive execution.

I think that the societal protection is the type of ...