PUNISHMENT. In Crirainal Law.
Some pain or penalty warranted by law, in flicted on a person for the commission of a crime or misdemeanor, or for the omission of the performance of an act required by law, by the judgment and command of some law ful court.
The right of society to punish is derived, by Beccaria, Mahly, and some others, from a supposed agreement which the persons who compoeed the primitive societies entered into, in order to keep order, and, indeed, the very existenoe of the state. According to others, it is the interest end duty of men to live in society: to defend this right, sooiety may exert this principle, in order to support itself; and this it may do whenever the aots punishable would endanger the s,afety of the whole. And Bentham is of opinion that the foundation of this riglrt is laid in public utility or necessity. Delin quents are publio enemies, and they must he dis armed and prevented from doing evil, or society would bo destroyed. But, if the social compaot hae aver existed, says Livingston, its end must have been the preservation of the natural rights of the members; end therefore the eifecte of this fiction are the same with those of the theory which takes abstract justice as the foundation of the right to punish; for this juetice, if well considered, is that which assures to each member of the state the free exercise of hie rights. And if it should be found that utility, the laet ecurce from which the right to punish is derived, ie ec intimately united to justice that it is inseparable from it in the practice of law, it will follow that every system founded on one of these principles must be supported by the others.
2. To attain their social end, punishments shnuld be exemplary, or capable of intimi dating those who might be tempted to imitate the guilty ; reformatory, or such as should improve the condition of the convicts; per. sonal, or such as are at least calculated to wound the feelings or affect the rights of the relations of the guilty; divisible, or capable of being graduated and proportioned to the offence and the circumstances of each case; reparable, on account of the fallibility of hu man justice.
3. Punishments are either corporal or not corporal. The former are—death, which is usually denominated capital punishment; imprisonment, which is either with or with out labor, see PENITENTIARY; whipping, in some states; and banishment.
The punishments which are not corporal are—fines ; forfeitures ; suspension or deprive, tion of some political or civil right; deprive, tion of office, and being rendered incapable to hold office; compulsion to remove nuisances.
4. The object of punishment is to reform the offender, to deter him and others from committing like offences, and to protect so ciety. See 4 Sharswood, Blackst. Comm. 7; Rutherforth, Inst. b. 1, c. 18.
The constitution of the United States, Amendments, art. 8, forbids the, infliction of cruel and unusual punishments. See IN FAMOUS PUNISHMENTS ; PARDON.