PUNISHMENT. The verb to punish (whence the noun substan tive punishment) is formed from the French pttnir, derived from the Latin punire, anciently poenire, which is connected with poena and the Greek sob's. Poine signified a pecuniary satisfaction for an offence, similar to the trehrgeld of the German codes : pocna had doubtless originally a similar sense ; but in the Latin classical writers its meaning is equivalent to that of our word punishment.
Punishment may be inflicted on men by a supernatural being or by men ; and it may be inflicted on them either in the present life, or in the existence which commences after death. Punishment may likewise be inflicted by men on the more intelligent and useful species of animals, such as horses and dogs. In the following remarks, we confine ourselves to punishment inflicted by man on man.
The original idea of punishment was, pain inflicted on or endured by a person as a satisfaction or atonement by him for some offence which he had committed. (Grimm, ' Deutsche Rechtsalterthiirner.1 According to this conception of punishment, it appeared to be just that a person should suffer time some amount of pain which he had inflicted on others by his offence; and hence the origin of the retaliatory principle of punishment, or the lc.r talionis: This principle is of great antiquity, and is probably the earliest idea which all nations have formed con cerning the nature of punishment. It occurs among the early Greeks, and was attributed by them to their mythical prince and judge of Hades, Ithadamanthys. They embodied it in the following proverbial verse :— cr Kf waeo, .rd le sift, 811(1) le lOtla 71rotro.
(Aristot., 'F.th.Nic.,' v. 8.) The tutio was also recognised in the Twelve Tables of Rome (' Inst.,' iv. 4, § 7), and upon it was founded the well-known provision of the Mosaic law, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth :" a maxim which is condemned by the Christian morality. (Matth., v. 38-40 ; and Michaelis, ' Commentaries on the Laws of Moses,' vol. iii, art. 210-2.) The infliction of pain for the purpose of exacting a satisfaction for an offence committed is vengeance, and punishment inflicted for this purpose is ri»d ;care.
By degrees it was perceived that the infliction of pain fora vindictive purpose is not consistent with justice and utility, or with the spirit of the Christian ethics ; and that the proper end of punishment is not to avenge past, but to prevent future offences. (Blackstone's Commen
taries,' vol. iv.) This end can only be attained by inflicting pain on persons who have committed the offences ; and as this effect is also produced by vindictive punishment, vindictive punishment incidentally tends to deter from the commission of offences. Hence Lord Bacon „justly calls revenge a sort of wild justice.
But inasmuch as the proper end of punishment is to deter from the commission of offences, punishment inflicted on the vindictive principle often fails to produce the desired purpose, and moreover often involves the infliction of an unnecessary amount of pain. Again, the degree of the punishment will often be placed too high, if regard is had merely to the suffering produced by the offence in the individual case, or to the moral turpitude implied by it, and not to the facility or difficulty of prevention, or the mischievousness of the class of offences. All punishment is an evil, though a necessary one. The pain produced by the offence is one evil; the pain produced by the punishment is an additional evil; though the latter is necessary, in order to prevent the recurrence of the offence. Consequently a penal system ought to aim at economising pain, by diffusing the largest amount of salutary terror, and thereby deterring as much as possible from crimes, at the smallest expense of punishments actually inflicted ; or (as the idea is concisely expressed by Cicero), " ut metes ad omnes, pcena ad paucos, (` Pro Cluentio,' c. 40.) It follows from what has been said, that it is essential to a punish ment to be painful. Accordingly, all the known punishments have involved the infliction of pain by different means, as death, mutilation of the body, flogging or beating, privation of bodily liberty by confine ment of various sorts, banishment, forced labour, privation of civil rights, pecuniary fine. The punishment of death is called capital punishment : other punishments are sometimes known by the name of secondary punishments. Moreover, the pain ought to be sufficiently great to deter persons from committing the offence, and not greater than is necessary for this purpose.