Justification of punishment is debatable. Rachels provides four consequentialist justifications in The Elements of Moral Philosophy, one of which is endorsed by Mill. Kant, on the other hand, has a completely different view of what justifies punishment, called retributivism. Of the options presented, Kant’s retributivism is the most logical. Before discussing retributivism, I will first discuss and analyze the other views, then explain retributivism, why the Kantian restrictions are necessary for the considerations of justice, and why it is the most logical of the views.
In The Elements of Moral Philosophy, Rachels provides four justifications of punishment. The first one is that punishment makes victims and their families more comfortable. It also allows the victim to not live in fear because their attacker is being punished. In practice, the wants of the victims are considered when punishing their attacker. The second justification involves prisons reducing overall unhappiness by being protection to society. By removing criminals from the streets and placing them in prisons, or otherwise getting rid of them, the amount of crime is reduced. Third is that the threat of punishment deters some would-be criminals. Crime or misconduct causes unhappiness to victims, so by deterring crime, there is less unhappiness. Fourth, in a well-designed system, rehabilitation is an option. In such a system, a criminal can be rehabilitated while being punished to become a more productive member of society, benefiting both society and the criminal himself.
While these points of justification of punishment may seem valid, in reality, they are flawed. First, just because a victim is made happy does not make punishing the criminal justifiable. The suffering of the criminal due to the punishment could much outweigh the happiness gained by the victim. Second, taking criminals off the streets cannot necessarily be linked to a reduction in crime. There will continue to be new...