Punishment It Is Interesting to Term Paper

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Part Two Question

It is possible that the debate about the justifications for punishment has been seriously confused about the tacit assumption that the justifications for punishment that makes sense in small-scale family environments also make sense in the larger-scale of the impersonal criminal justice system. In the family-setting, a vast majority of the power of punishment comes from the fact that the person being punished feels that they have disappointed people that they love. In fact, children frequently apologize to their parents for wrongdoing, even if the behavior being punished was something that did not directly harm their parents; for example, the hitting of a peer. Furthermore, when children hide their wrongdoing, they oftentimes do so to avoid parental disappointment, rather than to avoid a specific punishment. How many people, as adults, remember specific non-abusive punishments? On the other hand, how many adults recall specific moments when their parents demonstrated profound disappointment with them? These lasting feelings of remorse and shame are somehow inextricably linked to the notions of parental respect.

Therefore, it seems likely that it is the emotion behind the punishment, rather than the punishment, itself, that creates the learning opportunity for the child.

The problem with suggesting the criminals would have these same feelings of remorse and shame in the broader criminal-justice context is that they have no emotional involvement with the people doing the punishment.

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Therefore, there is no reason for them to feel any shame or embarrassment about their actions. Moreover, the logical assumption is that people who internalized the rules of punishment from their childhoods are not the same people who are criminal offenders as adults. On the contrary, the majority of criminals do not comes from good childhoods, with histories of loving but firm and consistent discipline. Therefore, the criminal justice system is attempting to use family-type methods of discipline on a group of people who were not generally exposed to that type of punishment during their formative years. Most citizens avoid breaking the law, in part, because of the social shame and stigma attached to the status of being a lawbreaker. However, a certain portion of people seem unaffected by this stigma; on the contrary, there is a significant sub-group of society that delights in being labeled outside of the law. Gang members, for example, would be members of that society that would likely be resistant to treatment in the family model, because many of them have not experienced this family-level of punishment. Moreover, given that society has not generally been seen to act in their best interests, they simply lack the respect for authority that would make family-type shame-based punishment an effective tool.

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