PUNISHMENT. In Criminal Law. Some pain or penalty warranted by law, inflicted 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 lawful court.
The penalty for the transgression of the law. Whart.; People v. Court of Sessions, 8 N. Y. Crim. R. 355.
"The infliction of pain in vengeance of crime." Dr. Johnson.
The right of society to punish is derived, by Beccaria, Mably, and some others, from a supposed agreement which the persons who composed the primitive societies enter ed into, in order to keep order, and, indeed. the very existence of the state. According to others, it is the interest and duty of man to live in society; to defend his right, socie ty may exert this principle, in order to sup port itself ; and this it may do whenever the acts punishable would endanger the safety of the whole. And Bentham is of opinion that the foundation of this right is laid in public utility or necessity. Delin quents are public enemies, and they must be disarmed and prevented from doing evil, or society would be destroyed. But, if the social compact has never existed, says Living ston. its end must have been the preservation of the natural rights of the members; and therefore the effects 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 justice, if well con sidered, is that which assures to each mem ber of the state the free exercise of his rights. And if it should be found that util ity, the last source from which the right to punish is derived, is so intimately united to justice that it is Inseparable from it in the practice of law, it will follow that every sys tem founded on one of these principles must be supported by the other.
The proper end of human punishment is not the satisfaction of justice, but the pre vention of crime ; Paley.
The end of punishment, therefore, is neither to torment sensible beings nor undo a crime already committed, nor yet recall the past, nor reverse the crime. It is to
punish the criminal for doing some Injury to society ; to repair the wrong cone to society or to a private individual, and to amend his life for the future, and by his example to prevent others from committing like offences. The chief end of punishment is by punishing the crime and preventing the doing of it again; and that by means of fines, imprisonment, bard labor, moral and physical treatment, and new habits formed. The infliction of pain for its own sake is now condemned by all enlightened governments, statesmen, and philanthropists; 16 L. Mag. & Rev. 99.
The main objects of penal justice are laid down by Bentham : example, reformation, incapacitation, satisfaction for the person injured, economy to the public. He further says that all our forms of punishment should be put to these five tests and should he sub jected most especially to all except the last.
To attain their social end, punishments should be exemplary, or capable of intimi dating those who might be tempted to imi tate the guilty ;' reformatory, or such as should improve the condition of the con victs; personal, or such as are at least cal culated to wound the feelings or affect the rights of the relations of the guilty; divis ible, or capable of being graduated and pro portioned to the offence and the circum stances of each case; reparable, on account of the fallibility of human justice.
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 dep rivation of some political or civil right; deprivation of office, and being rendered in capable to hold office; compulsion to re move nuisances.