8) Punishment

Punishment describes the imposition by some authority of a deprivation - usually painful - on a person who has violated a law, a rule, or other norm. In society there is a formal process of accusation and proof followed by imposition of a sentence by a designated official, usually a judge.

In Western culture, four basic justifications have been given: retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation.

In the last centuries toward more lenient sentences in Western countries. Capital and corporal punishment, widespread in the early 19^th century, are seldom invoked by contemporary society.

Criminal sentences ordinarily embrace four basic modes of punishment : incarceration, community supervision, fine, and restitution. The death penalty is now possible only for certain types of atrocious murders and treason.

Punishment is an ancient practice whose presence in modern cultures may appear to be out of place because it purposefully inflicts pain. In the minds of most people, however, it continues to find justification.

9. From the History of Punishment- c 45

For the most history punishment has been both painful and legal in order to act as deterrent to others. Physical punishments and public humiliations were social events and carried out in most accessible parts of towns, often on market days when the greater part of the population were present. Justice had to be seen to be done.

One of the most bizarre methods of execution was inflicted in ancient Rome on people found guilty of murdering their fathers. Their punishment was to be put in a sack with a rooster, a viper, and a dog, and then drowned along with the three animals.

One of the most common punishments for petty offences was the pillory, which stood in the main square of towns.

In medieval Europe some methods of execution were deliberately drawn out to inflict maximum suffering. Felons were tied to a heavy wheel and rolled around the streets until they were crushed to death. Others were strangled, very slowly. One of the most terrible punishments was hanging and quartering. The victim was hanged, beheaded and the body cut into four pieces. In England ‘block and axe’ was the common method but this was different from France and Germany where the victim kneeled and the head was taken off with a swing of the sword.

10) Treatment of criminals c-49

(1) Various correctional approaches developed in the wake of causation theories . The old theological and moralistic theories encouraged punishment as retribution by society for evil..

betham approach Bentham urged definite, inflexible penalties for each class of crime; the pain of the penalty would outweigh only slightly the pleasure of success in crime; it would exceed it sufficiently to act as a deterrent, but not so much as to amount to wanton cruelty. This so-called calculus of pleasures and pains was based on psychological postulates no longer accepted.

(2) neoclassical school This school, rejecting fixed punishments, proposed that sentences vary with the particular circumstances of a crime, such as the age, intellectual level, and emotional state of the offender; the motives and other conditions that may have incited to crime; and the offender's past record and chances of rehabilitation.

(3) preventive school Members of this school argued that individuals are shaped by forces beyond their control and therefore cannot be held fully responsible for their crimes. They urged birth control, censorship of pornographic literature, and other actions designed to mitigate the influences contributing to crime.

(4) psychiatric and case-study members The contemporary scientific attitude is that criminals are individual personalities and that their rehabilitation can be brought about only through individual treatment.

(5) Rehabilitative programs Parole boards have engaged persons trained in psychology and social work to help convicts on parole or probation adjust to society.

. Criminologists recognize that both adult and juvenile crime stem chiefly from the breakdown of traditional social norms and controls, resulting from industrialization, urbanization, increasing physical and social mobility, and the effects of economic crises and wars.