It seems to me that there could be many good reasons for handing down a prison sentence to someone convicted of a criminal act. Reasons that come to mind include :
To protect the public
To educate and rehabilitate the guilty
To deter others
To make the rest of us feel better
and I am sure there are others.
Does the constitution have anything to say about this ?
Actually the concept of prisons as we know it is a fairly modern invention. 400 years ago in the western world criminals weren’t generally imprisoned to any lengthy sentences. Punishments were usually fines, public humiliation, corporal punishment, and of course execution. I don’t believe the western world started building structures specifically for housing criminals until the late 18th century though I admit that I may be mistaken. Of course existing structures such as the Bastille and the Tower of London were both used to house certain prisoners though they weren’t originally built for that purpose.
Sure, Marc, and I didn’t mean to imply that. My point is that the concept of imprisonment as punishment has certainly been around for a long time. There weren’t prisons 400 years ago, but there dungeons. The idea of imprisonment as the primary means of punishment is certainly newer.
Well, the reason I ask is that in another thread I questioned the reason for punishing a person whose stupidity resulted in the death of her children.
Most people were of the opinion that “she was bad and needed to be punished”. Emotionally, I probably agreed with everyone else but intellectually I wondered if there was a more logical reason.
And in that particular case, the only logical reason I could think of was “to make the rest of us feel better”. That seemed particularly barbaric to me.
Of course, there are many things that we do in modern society that we have done for several thousand years - barbaric or not. I am sure you are not arguing that we should do it because we have always done it.
If that is the reason through - I guess I’ll have to live with it.
I’d like to avoid discussing that particular case if we can. There are multiple threads in the pit for that. I am interested in the broader justifications for sentencing.
The above posters are correct. There is minimal evidence of imprisonment as punishment before the 18thC. Imprisonment was used as a means of confining until trial, or for detaining those who were dangerous but did not warrant death or other punishment (for instance the mad or stupid). Also in the ancient world it was used until an enemy paid a ransom, or to achieve monetary value out of the imprisoned by their work (punitive slavery).
Imprisonment as a punishment is a modern invention.
It is important to understand that there are massive differences in overall imprisonment rates between modern societies, and major cultural differences between societies’ definition of culpability. This is evidenced by discussions elsewhere on this board.
Keeping to mainly to UK vs. US alone, we imprison less about 0.1% of our population whereas the US imprsions approaching 1% of its poulation. (Other western countries usually imprison less than the UK). Thus, imprisonment varies considerably between broadly similar social structures- a matter of belief and expectation of the culture.
This, of course, is also evidenced (though less obviously) in differences between State laws within the US and differences in expectations of juries within differing states.
In the UK, killing of a child by a mother in the early months is often treated very leniently compared with the US. Mental Illness and mental retardation (learning disability) are more readily accepted as excuses for behaviour that results in avoidance of the criminal justice route. Retributive and defensive violence (shooting burglars etc.) is more heavily punished in the UK.
Additionally, in the UK and virtually the entire developed world, capital punishment has been abandoned.
My point is that punishment, imprisonment, choice of laws and methods of diverting people to or from the criminal justice system vary greatly between countries of similar social systems.