Should Punishment Be Retributive or Reformatory?
Up to quite modern times, the legal punishment of crime was purely retributive (avenging), and deterrent. That is, the criminal was punished, and his punishment was made severe in order to deter others from breaking the law. There was no thought of trying to reform the wrong-doer, but only of making him suffer for his sins, and of frightening every-one into obeying the law of the land. When imprisonment was the punishment, there was the added aim of keeping criminals from contaminating society, as morally infectious cases. Penal codes were severe, and legal penalties harsh and even savage.
What was the effect of such a punitive system on the criminal ? A young fellow committed an offence, was found out, convicted, and condemned to a term of imprisonment. He came under the harsh and often brutal prison discipline, and was at the mercy of bullying warders. His time was spent in hard labour ; breaking stones, or picking oakum. For a breach of prison rules, he was flogged, or put into solitary confinement on bread and water. Year after year of this treatment brutalized him. He became more like a sullen animal than a man. At last he served his term and was released. He came out of prison a hardened criminal. He found himself in a hostile world. No one would give a branded criminal a job. Desperate, he turned back to crime ; and his last state is worse than his first.
Since the humanitarian movement in the latter part of the 18th Century, and Howard’s great campaign for prison reform in England, things have slowly but steadily improved. Penal codes have been modified, savage penalties abolished, and the prison system transformed. This has been due to the growing conviction that legal punishment should be reformatory as well as merely punitive. It is now recognized that the object of the law must be not only to punish the law-breaker but also to reform him and turn him into a law-keeper. This has altered the whole system of legal punishment.
Take imprisonment, the commonest form of punishment. The punitive element in imprisonment is loss of personal liberty for a fixed period. Beyond that, imprisonment is now being used by the State as an opportunity for reforming the prisoner and turning him into a good citizen. So life in prison to-day is very different from what it was in the past. In prison now a man is well-fed and kept fit by regular exercise. Moreover, he is educated, and trained in some useful craft. Modern prisons are provided with schools, libraries, lectures, and workshops for technical training. When the prisoner is released, he is met at the prison gates by good people who try to get him honest employment. The result is that many a criminal is turned’ into an honest man and a good citizen of the State.
