Punishment is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group, as a response for breaking some norm or rule. The term punishment is used both within and outside of the criminal justice context. For example, punishment outside of criminal law can include child discipline measures or conscious or subconscious impositions of unpleasant measures in a relationship. A variety of philosophical theories have been developed to justify punishment. Important views argue that punishment deters wrongdoing, rehabilitates offenders, incapacitates the dangerous, or gives justice to those who deserve it. Moral justifications of punishment are found even in ancient civilisations, with Aristotle writing extensively of the ethical implications of imposing pain onto an individual or group. Punishment can differ in its degree of severity, and may include sanctions such as reprimands, removing privileges, deprivation of liberty, fines, incarcerations, ostracism and social shunning, the infliction of pain, amputation and the death penalty. Corporal punishment refers to punishments in which physical pain is intended to be inflicted upon the transgressor. Punishments may be judged as fair or unfair in terms of their degree of reciprocity and proportionality to the offense. Punishment can be an integral part of socialization, and punishing unwanted behavior is often part of a system of pedagogy or behavioral modification which also includes rewards.
Definitions
There are a large number of different understandings of what punishment is. These depend as to whether we approach punishment as a criminal justice or everday practice. It also depends on what discipline we use to understand punishment.
In philosophy Various philosophers have presented definitions of punishment. Conditions commonly considered necessary properly to describe an action as punishment are that
it is imposed by an authority (single or multiple), it involves some loss to the supposed offender, it is in response to an offense and the human (or other animal) to whom the loss is imposed should be deemed at least somewhat responsible for the offence. The key concern by legal philosophers is the justification of the imposition of punishment and whether the forms that it takes can weight against the intended benefits. Moreover, philosophical definitions of punishment continue to evolve, often challenging some of the aforementioned key components. For example, legal philosopher, Theo Gavrielides, developed a new theory of punishment that is not imposed by an authority, but is self-inflicted. He argued that when this form of punishment is self-inflicted in a voluntary and honest practice (such as restorative justice) it can have profound effects that can lead to transformation and rehabilitation.
In psychology
Introduced by B.F. Skinner, punishment has a more restrictive and technical definition in psychology. Along with reinforcement, it belongs under the operant conditioning category. Operant conditioning refers to learning with either punishment that discourages the measured behavior, or a reward that encourages the behavior. In psychology, punishment is the reduction of a behavior via application of an unpleasant stimulus ("positive punishment") or removal of a pleasant stimulus ("negative punishment"). Extra chores or spanking are examples of positive punishment, while grounding a teenager or removing screen time privileges are examples of negative punishment. The definition requires that punishment is only determined after the fact by the reduction in behavior; if the offending behavior of the subject does not decrease, it is not considered punishment. In operant conditioning terms, punishment does not need to involve any type of pain, fear, or physical actions; even a brief spoken expression of disapproval, or calmly telling a student that they answered a question incorrectly, is a type of punishment, if the result is a decrease in the behavior (e.g., a decrease in giving that wrong answer to that question). There is some conflation of punishment and aversives, though an aversion that does not decrease behavior is not considered punishment in psychology. Additionally, "aversive stimulus" is a label behaviorists generally apply to negative reinforcers (as in avoidance learning), rather than the punishers.
In socio-biology Punishment is sometimes called retaliatory or moralistic aggression; it has been observed in all species of social animals, leading evolutionary biologists to conclude that it is an evolutionarily stable strategy, selected because it favors cooperative behavior. However, other evolutionary biologists have argued against punishment to favour cooperation. Dreber et al. demonstrate that while the availability of costly punishment can enhance cooperative behavior, it does not improve the group's average payoff. Additionally, there is a significant negative relationship between the overall payoff and the employment of costly punishment. Individuals who achieve the highest total payoffs generally avoid using costly punishment. This indicates that employing costly punishment in cooperative games may be disadvantageous and suggests that it may have evolved for purposes other than promoting cooperation. Achieving a certain proportion of trust in the population can lead to self-governance without the need for punishment.
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