Regarding retributive theories, C. He is surely right about this, so, therefore, it is difficult to give a general account of retributive justification. However, it is possible to state certain features that characterize retributive theories generally. Concepts of desert and justice occupy a central place in most retributive theories: in accordance with the demands of justice, wrongdoers are thought to deserve to suffer, so punishment is justified on the grounds that it gives to wrongdoers what they deserve.
It is instructive to look at the form that a particular retributive theory can take, so we will examine the views of Immanuel Kant. If a wrongful act is committed, then the person who has committed it has upset the balance of the scale of justice.
He has inflicted suffering on another, and therefore rendered himself deserving of suffering. So in order to balance the scale of justice, it is necessary to inflict the deserved suffering on him. But it is not permissible to just inflict any type of suffering.
Perhaps the most straightforward application of this principle demands that murderers receive the penalty of death. So, for Kant, the justification of punishment is derived from the principle of retaliation, which is grounded in the principle of equality. Recall that the failure to take desert and justice into consideration is thought by many to be a major problem with utilitarian theory.
However, while Kantian theory may seem superior because it takes desert and justice into account, an influential criticism of the theory challenges the idea that punishment can be justified on the grounds of justice and desert without requiring that the balance of happiness over unhappiness be taken into account. In this world, punishment does not deter or rehabilitate. For whatever reason, incapacitation is impossible. In addition, victims receive no satisfaction from the punishment of those who have harmed them.
In this world, a Kantian would be committed to the position that punishments still ought to be inflicted upon wrongdoers. Furthermore, the individuals that populated this world would be morally obligated to punish wrongdoers. If they failed to punish wrongdoers, they would be failing to abide by the dictates of justice. But surely it is quite odd to hold that these individuals would be morally obligated to punish when doing so would not produce any positive effects for anyone.
According to Ezorsky, this terribly odd consequence suggests that the Kantian theory is problematic. Kant would not agree that this consequence of his theory is odd.
If they do not live up to this obligation, then they will be failing to abide by the dictates of justice, and their lives will be of lesser value. Of course, critics of the Kantian theory are unlikely to be persuaded by this response.
Predictably, the responses to these criticisms vary depending on the particular theory. Many theorists have attempted to take features of utilitarianism and retributivism and combine them into a theory that retains the strengths of both while overcoming their weaknesses. The impetus for attempting to develop this sort of theory is clear: the idea that punishment should promote good consequences, such as the reduction of crime, surely seems attractive.
However, the idea that it would be justified to punish an innocent in any circumstance where such punishment would be likely to promote the greatest balance of happiness over unhappiness surely seems wrong.
So, each type of theory seems to have positive and negative aspects. But how to combine these seemingly opposed theories and produce a better one? Is a compromise between them really possible? In an attempt to explore this possibility, we will examine the theory of H. What is needed is the realization that different principles… are relevant at different points in any morally acceptable account of punishment.
What we should look for are answers to a number of different questions such as: What justifies the general practice of punishment? To whom may punishment be applied? The failure to separate these questions from one another and consider that they might be answered by appealing to different principles has prevented many previous theorists from generating an acceptable account of punishment.
So, the general practice is to be justified by citing the social consequences of punishment, the main social consequence being the reduction of crime, but we ought not be permitted to punish whenever inflicting a punishment is likely to reduce crime.
In other words, we may not apply punishment indiscriminately. With few exceptions, the individual upon whom punishment is inflicted must have committed an offense, and the punishment must be attached to that offense.
Utilitarian concerns play a major role in his theory: the practice of punishment must promote the reduction of crime, or else it is not justifiable. But retributive concerns also play a major role: the range of acceptable practices that can be engaged in by those concerned with reducing crime is to be constrained by a retributive principle allowing only the punishment of an offender for an offense. Many people will agree with Hart that it may be necessary to punish an innocent person in extreme cases, and it is thought to be an advantage of his theory that it captures the sense that, in these cases, an important principle is being overridden.
This overriding process, however, cannot work in the opposite direction. Because of this, it is unjustifiable to punish a person who seems to deserve punishment unless some utilitarian aim is being furthered. Imagine the most despicable character you can think of, a mass-murderer perhaps. The justifiability of punishing a person guilty of such crimes is beholden to the social consequences of the punishment.
That a depraved character would suffer for his wrongdoing is not enough. So, for Hart, considerations of desert cannot override utilitarian considerations in this way. Some theorists find this consequence of his theory unacceptable.
In an effort to answer this question, we must consider whether the offender who has committed the lesser crime has grounds for complaint if the more serious offender is not punished. By stipulation, the lesser offender committed the crime and cannot thereby claim a violation of justice on those grounds. Is the justification of his punishment contingent upon the punishment of others?
Arguably not: The punishment of the lesser offender is justified regardless of whoever else is punished. He may bemoan his bad luck and wish that his punishment were not likely to further any utilitarian aims so that he may avoid it, but he cannot rightly accuse society of a violation of justice for failing to punish others when he does in fact deserve the punishment that is being inflicted upon him.
Perhaps we ought to reexamine that intuition and consider that it may be rooted in an urge to revenge, not a concern for justice. The belief that, in most cases, the amount of punishment should vary directly with the seriousness of the offense is widely accepted.
However, utilitarians and retributivists have different ways of arriving at this general conclusion. Crime and punishment both tend to cause unhappiness. Recall that utilitarianism is solely concerned with the balance of happiness over unhappiness produced by an action. When attempting to determine the amount of punishment that ought to be permitted for a given offense, it is necessary to weigh the unhappiness that would be caused by the offense against the unhappiness caused by various punishments.
The greater the unhappiness caused by a given offense, the greater the amount of punishment that may be inflicted for that offense in order to reduce its occurrence before the unhappiness caused by the punishment outweighs the unhappiness caused by the offense Ten, So, utilitarians would often be committed to abiding by the rule that the amount of punishment should vary directly with the seriousness of the offense.
However, it seems that there are cases in which they would be committed to violating this rule. Critics argue that utilitarians would sometimes be committed to inflicting a severe punishment for a relatively minor offense. Ten asks us to imagine a society in which there are many petty thefts and thieves are very difficult to catch. Since there are many thefts, the total amount of unhappiness caused by them is great. Imagine that one thief is caught and the authorities are deciding how severely to punish him.
If these authorities were utilitarians, they would be committed to giving him a very severe sentence, 10 years perhaps, if this were the only way to deter a significant number of petty thieves. There is also robust evidence of an increased incidence of aggression among children who are regularly spanked. A meta-analysis of 27 studies across time periods, countries, and ages found a persistent association: children who are spanked regularly are more likely to be aggressive, both as a child and as an adult.
Many parents spank their children to put an immediate stop to bad behavior e. Indeed, much of the aggressive behavior attributed to children who were spanked differentially tends to correspond to interactions where violence is used to exert power over another person— bullying , partner abuse , and so on. Studies dating back to the early s suggest a relationship between corporal punishment and decreased cognitive ability in early childhood.
Recent research has added support to these findings. Other studies have shown corresponding effects on school achievement. Bodovski and Youn find that the use of physical discipline in kindergarten is associated with lower fifth grade math achievement. Margolin et al. Emerging evidence suggests that non-cognitive skills may also be affected.
Their results suggested that—starting in grade 1—children who were in a punitive environment performed significantly worse than their peers in non-punitive school environments. Reeves John C. If hitting children is associated with slower skill development or other behavioral problems, there may be implications for life chances and social mobility, especially since the prevalence or intensity of punishment varies across socio-economic groups.
But we should be very careful about drawing any causal conclusions here, even when there are robust associations. It is very likely that there will be other factors associated with both spanking and child outcomes. If certain omitted variables are correlated with both, we may confound the two effects, that is, inappropriately attribute an effect to spanking. For example, parents who spank their children may be weaker parents overall, and spanking is simply one way in which this difference in parenting quality manifests itself.
So: are parents who spank their children different on other dimensions of parenting? There are two designated items for corporal punishment.
One self-reported item indicates how many times, if any, the mother hit her child during the previous week. The other item indicates whether the mother hit her child during the home observation. Figure 2 shows the distribution of responses, where N,N refers to a mother who did not hit her child in the previous week or during the observation.
Nearly two-thirds of mothers reported spanking their children at least once in the two-week period. Scoring the HOME scale is straightforward. Remember, getting sent to your room isn't effective if a computer, TV, or games are there.
Also, a timeout is time away from any type of reinforcement. So your child shouldn't get any attention from you while in a timeout — including talking, eye contact, etc. Be sure to consider the length of time that will work best for your child. Experts say 1 minute for each year of age is a good rule of thumb; others recommend using the timeout until the child is calmed down to teach self-regulation. Make sure that if a timeout happens because your child didn't follow directions, you follow through with the direction after the timeout.
It's important to tell kids what the right thing to do is, not just to say what the wrong thing is. For example, instead of saying "Don't jump on the couch," try "Please sit on the furniture and put your feet on the floor. Be sure to give clear, direct commands. Instead of "Could you please put your shoes on?
Again, consistency is crucial, as is follow-through. Make good on any promises of discipline or else you risk undermining your authority. Kids have to believe that you mean what you say. This is not to say you can't give second chances or allow a certain margin of error, but for the most part, you should act on what you say.
Be careful not to make unrealistic threats of punishment "Slam that door and you'll never watch TV again! If you threaten to turn the car around and go home if the squabbling in the backseat doesn't stop, make sure you do exactly that. The credibility you'll gain with your kids is much more valuable than a lost beach day. Huge punishments may take away your power as a parent.
If you ground your son or daughter for a month, your child may not feel motivated to change behaviors because everything has already been taken away. It may help to set some goals that kids can meet to earn back privileges that were taken away for misbehavior.
Kids in this age group — just as with all ages — can be disciplined with natural consequences. As they mature and request more independence and responsibility, teaching them to deal with the consequences of their behavior is an effective and appropriate method of discipline.
For example, if your fifth grader's homework isn't done before bedtime, should you make him or her stay up to do it or even lend a hand yourself? Probably not — you'll miss an opportunity to teach a key life lesson. If homework is incomplete, your child will go to school the next day without it and suffer the resulting bad grade. It's natural for parents to want to rescue kids from mistakes, but in the long run they do kids a favor by letting them fail sometimes.
Kids see what behaving improperly can mean and probably won't make those mistakes again. However, if your child does not seem to be learning from natural consequences, set up some of your own to help change the behavior. Removing privileges such as electronics can be an effective consequence for this age group. By now you've laid the groundwork. Your child knows what's expected and that you mean what you say about the penalties for bad behavior.
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