Fines and imprisonments and corporal punishments operate more forcibly on the human mind than all the fears of damnation. Punishment is deliberately inflicted pain or deprivation on an offender because of an offense he has committed; it is deliberately imposed, not just the natural consequence of a person’s action (like a hang-over), and the unpleasantness is essential to it, not an accidental accompaniment to some other treatment (like the pain of a dentist’s drill). It is imposed by an agent authorized by the system of rules against which an offense has been committed; a lynching is not a standard case of punishment. My interest in punishment is mainly connected with questions of justification. It is, prima facie (based on the first impression), wrong to deliberately inflict suffering or deprivation on another person, yet punishment consists in doing precisely this. What conditions would justify it? Or, more generally, what kind of considerations would count toward a justification? 

We must reconcile the apparently conflicting principles that wrongdoers should be punished and that it is wrong to make another man suffer. For instance, if a person had already committed a crime, that would clearly be relevant to the questions of whether he ought to be punished (although it might not be conclusive). What if he were only expected to commit a crime in the future? Or, again, is it relevant to the question of whether this man should be punished to say that punishing him would deter others? And assuming that criminals ought to be punished, how should we set about deciding appropriate penalties? Punishment can be justified only if it has beneficent consequences that outweigh the intrinsic evil of inflicting suffering on human beings. However, it is better that the wicked should be punished than that they should prosper more than the virtuous and, perhaps, at the hands of their expense. Sin is always punished in this World, whatever may come in the next. There is always some penalty in health, in comfort, or in peace of mind to be paid for every wrong. 

One can take for granted the principle that wrongdoers should be punished and ask whether a particular cause of punishment was justified. For instance, “The War on Drugs,” is an American term commonly applied to a campaign of prohibition of drugs, with the purpose to reducing the illegal drug trade. It was started by President Richard Nixon 18 June 1971. Since then, “The War on Drugs,” has cost Americans $51,000,000.00 a year. And in the year 2014, 1.6 million people were arrested for drug offenses in the United States of America, 700,993 of those were for marijuana law violations, 1,297,384 (83 percent) of those arrest were for possession only, and 46.4 percent of people are in prison for drug related charges. Punishment has the advantage of impressing both on the criminal and on everyone else that a breach of law and morals is so serious that society must do something to prevent it.  Happy is it for those few who are detected in their sins, and brought to exemplary punishment for them in this World.  

However, this raises the philosophical question of how one justifies a set of rules or an institution like a penal system to incarceration of people who deal drugs, but allows corporations to deal drugs and even local governments want in on the action. Mind you, it is still against federal law to sale and distribute drugs like marijuana. Nevertheless, according to David Downs of the East Bay Express in “Oakland, California USA, the city of Oakland wants to require any new Oakland marijuana company to make the city a partner—and direct revenue from the cannabis industry to elected officials’ special projects. Oakland would require new marijuana-shop owners to give the city 25 percent ownership stake in a business, plus one seat on a company’s board.” So, in what sense can punishment be said to restore the balance or annul the wrong, when it taken for granted that criminals deserve to be punished? How can we have 1.6 million people arrested for drug crimes annually, making up nearly 50 percent of prison populations, but allow corporations and cities to be involved in the cultivation and distribution of drugs that are deemed illegal by the federal government?  

Nor is it clear that virtue must be rewarded or that universal justice requires the kind of human rectification that this sort of retubutivism envisages. Of course, in a universe in which the wicked prospered, there might be no incentive to virtue. Again, evil motives and a bad character are necessary conditions for wickedness, but not of legal guilt and criminal liability. The state’s function is to punish breaches of those rules which in the public interest ought to be upheld; it is a matter of indifference in law (but not in morals) that some men who observe the rules do so from the unworthy motive of fear and others break them from the laudable motives of principle. Conversely, it is at least doubtful whether the criminal law should provide penalties for offenses against morality except where the public interest is at doubtful whether the criminal law should provide penalties for offenses against morality except where the public interest is at stake—exempli gratis (for the sake of example), whether it should extend to cases of lying other than, say, false pretenses and perjury. 

Punishment is necessary to annul the wrong done by the criminal. By this something more than restitution or compensation, neither of which is strictly punishment. It is, rather, that the criminal has upset the balance of the moral order, which can be restored only be their being made to suffer. In what sense can punishment be said to restore the balance or annul the wrong, unless it is taken for granted that criminals deserve to be punished? All punishment is a mischief…If it ought at all to be admitted, it ought only to be admitted in as far as it promises to exclude some greater evil. By reforming the criminal, by deterring them or others from similar offenses in the future, or by directly preventing further offenses by imprisonment, deportation, or execution, the good that comes out of punishment may outweigh the intrinsic evil of suffering deliberately inflicted. Without such effects, or if the suffering inflicted exceeded the suffering avoided, the institution would be unjustified. 

If people generally could be persuaded that an innocent man was guilty, some would justify punishing him since as a warning to other he would be just as useful as a genuine offender. Again, offenders might be deterred by threatening to punish their wives and children, particularly, if as is so often the case with political terrorists and resistance fighters, it were difficult to catch the offenders themselves. Or again, if punishment could be justified as a way of reforming criminals, it would seem better to punish them before, rather than after, they have committed their crimes. Nonetheless, do not lose sight of the two conditions which are necessary to the very idea of punishment—namely, that an offense should have been committed and that punishment shall be of the offender himself, who alone can be said to deserve it. Even justice makes victims. Punishment is punishment only when it is deserved; punishment for any other reason is a crying injustice. Proof must be built up stone by stone. The end crowns the work. It is not enough that Justice should be morally certain; she must be immorally certain—legally that is.  

I hate the man in whom kindness produces no responsive affection, and injustice no swell, no glow of resentment. Some think that it is a good idea to punish innocent people provided that such punishment causes less suffering than might otherwise be caused by the would-be criminals it deters because in the end, the deception would break down, that it could not be used systematically, or that the long-term consequences would be bad for society. However, these answers are unsatisfactory because they depend on assumptions of purely contingent consequences. Our revulsion against punishing innocent men seems to go deeper than that. In any cause, these answers will not meet the case for punishing hostages, which can certainly be done systematically and requires no deception or secrecy. The truth is always incredible, because the blind eyes of humanity can see only half-truths except by great effort. Child predators like, Kevin Maurice Johnson, the Mayor of Sacrament, California USA will eventually be punished for his crimes. Kings are accountable for injustice permitted as well as done.