Punishment Research In America
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Punishment Research
The statistics in the United States have shown that most criminals will more than likely relapse into criminal behavior or become repeat offenders. The question most have is if punishment deters crime in the United States and if it keeps criminals from repeating crimes. To understand crime and punishment in the United States, one has to understand the definition of deviant behavior, retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and protection for all Americans in the United States.
The behavior known as criminal deviance is when the crime is recognized as a violation of the societal norms we have adopted in our everyday lives. The laws established in the United States are used for social control, which establishes how society should behave for the greater good of the entire population. The biblical era used punishment in a public place as a deterrent for others to abide by the laws and morals of human beings. Books of religion suggested that thieves be placed on crosses in the public for others to see and possibly for others to see what could happen if they decide to steal. The public displays created in the biblical era was to encourage people to have a law-abiding lifestyle, the act of stealing is much a problem in todays society than it was then. Society believes that if one commits a crime then the punishment should fit the crime as well, but to accommodate punishments for a crime the punishment can be more extreme than the crime itself. The society of today has shown its desire to make a criminal suffer more than the suffrage caused by the criminal to begin with (Macionis, 2011).
The fact of church and state separation is known does not deter the fact that most laws are based on the Ten Commandments in the United States and the retribution that appears to follow the biblical era is of an eye for an eye. The criminals who commit homicides and some states, along with their lawyers, attempt to instill the jurors with capital punishment. The laws being based on the Ten Commandments leads us back to one of the Ten Commandments, which states that “Thou shall not kill”. Americans want to think that capital punishment would deter any individual not to commit murder, but statistics have shown that capital punishment for murdering someone has little effect on an individual. Societies fear that without capital punishment criminals will relapse into more criminal behavior. The increasing numbers of inmates in American jail and prison systems, which are over populated, play a significant role to support this fact. The high number of crimes committed daily in the United States appears to show that punishments have no effect on people who commit the offenses to begin with.
The concept of deterrence is to make society fear the possible punishment given for criminal acts against another individual. The hope that set punishments will decrease the number of Americans who willfully commit crimes in the United States has no lasting effects on society. The individuals who commit murder know what the punishment is for doing so, but they still go and commit the murder with no regards to the punishment. The laws of the United States were set to deter one from committing criminal acts (Robinson, 2011) and although an individual has the choice in obeying or breaking the law, the fact is that one percent of Americans is jailed on a daily. The percentage of individuals jailed is low compared to the percentage of crimes, which are committed by individuals and never punished for. The annual percentage of capital punishment has risen dramatically in the United States since 1996 according to statistics (Robinson, 2011). It is believed by some that if rehabilitation was available to all criminals this would decrease the crime rate in the United States.
The rehabilitation process is when the criminal is aware of the crime heshe has committed and wants to become a better person for themselves and in the eyes of society. Rehabilitation is often offered for individuals who commit minor crimes such as driving while intoxicated, stealing, and disorderly conduct