punishment(was: Student Loans & Bankruptcies (was Re: creative financing)

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Apr 24 10:06:19 PDT 2001


At 07:29 PM 4/22/01 -0500, Carrol wrote:
>Actully I've never given a thought to this question. And I presume any
>social order takes whatever steps are necessary, under given conditions,
>to protect itself. It is punishment, which is just a polite name for
>revenge, that I object to. I agree with Orwell that under some
>circumstances you can achieve good results by killing people, but if one
>must kill, it ought not to be for such an obscene reason as punishment.

Carroll, you seem to forget the deterrent effect of punishment. In fact, we use negative sanctions (i.e. punishments by another name), such as frowning, avoidance, withdrawal of affection, spanking, slapping, etc. in every day interaction to deter certain forms of behavior. Th eonly difference between this and the criminal justice system is that the latter uses a much more formalized froms of sanctions than those used in everyday life.

We may debate whether a particular sanction deters a particuluar form of behaviour (an issue most frequently raised in connection with capital punishment or formal vs informal sanctions) - but it would be utterly naive to deny the pivotal role punishment plays in maintaining social norms and rules.

wojtek



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