As many of you may know by now, I don’t believe in retribution. I believe dangerous people should be detained, so they can do no harm. And I am not entirely opposed to the idea of accountability, under certain circumstances. But not retribution.
Anyways, this is not Great Debates. So I am not debating that. But that does offer a segue to my next question.
Are there any cultures, past or present (but especially present), that don’t believe in retribution?
I really do wonder. Because it seems criminal sanctions are almost always the norm. You steal something in the USA, they lock you in jail. You steal something in India, they lock you in jail. You steal something in China, they lock you in jail. You steal something in Saudi Arabia, they cut off your arm. Okay, that last one is a little different. But it still applies, because arguably there is almost always some sanction applied to theft (even if punishments differ).
But back to my original question: Any cultures, past or present? I really do want to know.
I’m not sure I understand the question and I’m not sure you do either.
On one hand you are ok with the concept of detaining people, but on the other you appear to think that doing so is always nothing but retribution.
Are there cultures with no concept of retribution for wrongdoing? No. Are there cultures where the focus is or tries to be more on rehabilitation and protection (social and individual) than on “making them pay”? Yes.
I once heard a guy say “I realized I was rehabilitated on the day that, finding myself lost, I saw a cop and thought ‘oh, I’ll ask him’ and then ‘ohmygod, I just thought of a cop as someone who can help me rather than someone to run away from!’” I don’t know what his particular crimes were, but that guy lives in a place where the ideal is to rehabilitate and sometimes it even works.
I haven’t read them all the way and the second one is a book, but I think these documents on the “rehabilitation theory of punishment” (those were my search terms) may interest you.
It’s not a simple binary, though; retribution vs. rehabilitation. Punishment for crime can serve a number of purposes - retribution, prevention (i.e. prevent the offender from reoffending), deterrence (i.e. deter others from offending), rehabilitiation, or simply to signify societal disapproval of the offence. And no doubt we can think of other purposes that punishment might serve.
And, reality being as complex as it is, any real-world punishment probably serves, or aims to serve, several of these purposes. Or different citizens or interest groups may support it for different reasons, which may include retribution. You might support imprisonment because you believe in its deterrent effect; I might support it because I see it as retributive. In that case, is the imprisonment a form of retribution, or a form of deterrence?
So I think the only way the OP’s question makes sense may be to reframe it as “is their any society where nobody, or virtually nobody, regards retribution as a proper object of penal policy?”
Even in countries where imprisonment is widely seen as a deterrent and for rehabilitation, there will always be a segment of society that believes in “a tooth for a tooth”. There will also be criminals that resist all efforts to rehabilitate them.
I think Buddhism preaches non-retribution. But I wonder how well-integrated this value really is in majority-Buddhist societies. How thoroughly to the people actually practice non-retribution.
Hey, Christian values also preach “turning the other cheek”. How will-established is that value in any modern majority-Christian societies?
That’s not retribution, that’s prevention and attempts to rehabilitate.
Christian:
*Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.*
I don’t think it’s possible to talk about purely retribution or purely not.
At a very basic biological level, we are programmed to react to a system of rewards and penalties. You can train things that don’t even have brains to stay away from the painful signal and go toward the food signal. You have to apply negative reinforcement to behaviors you want to eliminate, whether we’re talking kids or adults, flatworms or dogs. It is simply not possible to train a lifeform from our planet by appealing purely to logic or “their better nature” or some such.
So we can point to some punishments like the death penalty and say that this is purely retribution*, but anything less - mutilation, whippings, incarceration, fines, probation - are all various levels of negative reinforcement that can support a dual intention of revenge and of rehabilitation at the same time.
Though even there, deterrence is at least a stated goal.
Are there any cultures, past or present (but especially present), that don’t believe in retribution?
Legal textbook culture takes a dim view of retribution, though it is typically mentioned in most lists of theories of punishment. Or at least it used to: I can’t seem to find evidence of this online. I see that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, “The concept of punishment—its definition—and its practical application and justification during the past half-century have shown a marked drift away from efforts to reform and rehabilitate offenders in favor of retribution and incarceration. Punishment in its very conception is now acknowledged to be an inherently retributive practice, whatever may be the further role of retribution as a (or the) justification or goal of punishment.” Huh. Can’t say I disagree.
From the same article, pure consequentialists (aka utilitarians) do not base punishment on retribution. They look to deterrence, rehabilitation and incapacitation as motives for punishment.
