Why retribution is immoral

The concept of retribution is based on an archaic sense of ethics which is not only irrational, but goes so far as to compound the very suffering that it is intended to prevent. This entry was posted on June 11, at pm and is filed under Ethics , Utilitarianism.

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Granted, that comes with its own problem corruption , but for the sake of argument, let us ignore that. This would be in addition to a jail sentence. There must be some reason evolution has left us with the instinct to seek revenge.

My belief is, that reason is a good one. It seems to me that the emotional reaction to crime is the primary reason we bother to punish people for committing it.

Your first proposition sounds like a good idea. That would actually have a positive effect on society. Regarding your second point: That reason probably is a good one, but only with respect to evolution; that is, revenge probably gives some sort of evolutionary advantage. The feelings are petty because the victim gains nothing by killing the murderer. The only benefit that the victim gets out of the death penalty is that it might make him feel better.

There are no concrete advantages. But how does this relate to the moral status of punishment and retribution? My thesis in this essay is that the desire for retribution only does unnecessary harm. In my ethical system buddhism killing is wrong. In some buddhist schools there is an exception though…. Some schools of thought say it may be done, but under strict conditions: it must be done out of compassion for the killer, who would otherwise suffer bad karmic consequences , and only if there are no other ways to prevent the crime.

He has taken this burden on his shoulders to help the killer on his way to enlightment. A death penalty for a convicted murderer does not meet even a single one of these conditions.

It is completely unnecessary and done with the wrong motives. Therefore it will only lead to negative consequences for those involved. Most people do not feel better after a revenge — And even if it does them make feel better, must the legal system do this? I think the world would look better with less revenge, not with more.

This is still further evidence that retribution is a bad idea. The right thing to do is to kill the killer, and suffer the consequences yourself? It seems like that is one of the most altruistic things you can do. The interesting and to me convincing aspects of the karmic thinking are: — causes will lead to effects.

There are no causes without effects and vice versa. Good deeds will give an effect and bad deeds like wise — the killer cannot escape from his punishment. Therefore it is not necessary to take revenge, he will get his punishment anyway. In the case of someone who kills for a greater good prevention of even worse things I think both karmic paths are not completed.

Such a path consists of a subject someone who performs the deed , an object against who the action is done , an intention, an action and a effect. The main argument that retribution is immoral is that it is just a sanitised form of vengeance. Scenes of howling mobs attacking prison vans containing those accused of murder on their way to and from court, or chanting aggressively outside prisons when an offender is being executed, suggest that vengeance remains a major ingredient in the public popularity of capital punishment.

But just retribution, designed to re-establish justice, can easily be distinguished from vengeance and vindictiveness. The Victorian legal philosopher James Fitzjames Stephens thought vengeance was an acceptable justification for punishment.

Punishment, he thought, should be inflicted:. But the issue of the execution of innocent persons is also a problem for the retribution argument - if there is a serious risk of executing the innocent then one of the key principles of retribution - that people should get what they deserve and therefore only what they deserve - is violated by the current implementation of capital punishment in the USA, and any other country where errors have taken place.

It's argued that retribution is used in a unique way in the case of the death penalty. Crimes other than murder do not receive a punishment that mimics the crime - for example rapists are not punished by sexual assault, and people guilty of assault are not ceremonially beaten up.

Camus and Dostoevsky argued that the retribution in the case of the death penalty was not fair, because the anticipatory suffering of the criminal before execution would probably outweigh the anticipatory suffering of the victim of their crime.

Others argue that the retribution argument is flawed because the death penalty delivers a 'double punishment'; that of the execution and the preceding wait, and this is a mismatch to the crime.

Many offenders are kept 'waiting' on death row for a very long time; in the USA the average wait is 10 years. In Japan, the accused are only informed of their execution moments before it is scheduled. The result of this is that each day of their life is lived as if it was their last. Some lawyers argue that capital punishment is not really used as retribution for murder, or even consistently for a particular kind of murder.

They argue that, in the USA at least, only a small minority of murderers are actually executed, and that imposition of capital punishment on a "capriciously selected random handful" of offenders does not amount to a consistent programme of retribution. Since capital punishment is not operated retributively, it is inappropriate to use retribution to justify capital punishment.

This argument would have no value in a society that applied the death penalty consistently for particular types of murder. Some people who believe in the notion of retribution are against capital punishment because they feel the death penalty provides insufficient retribution.

They argue that life imprisonment without possibility of parole causes much more suffering to the offender than a painless death after a short period of imprisonment. Another example is the planner of a suicide bombing - execution might make that person a martyr, and therefore would be a lesser retribution than life imprisonment. The death penalty doesn't seem to deter people from committing serious violent crimes.

The thing that deters is the likelihood of being caught and punished. The general consensus among social scientists is that the deterrent effect of the death penalty is at best unproven. In a survey was conducted for the UN to determine the relation between the death penalty and homicide rates. This was then updated in It concluded:. Such proof is unlikely to be forthcoming. The evidence as a whole still gives no positive support to the deterrent hypothesis.

The key to real and true deterrence is to increase the likelihood of detection, arrest and conviction. NB: It's actually impossible to test the deterrent effect of a punishment in a rigorous way, as to do so would require knowing how many murders would have been committed in a particular state if the law had been different during the same time period.

Even if capital punishment did act as a deterrent, is it acceptable for someone to pay for the predicted future crimes of others? This isn't true - if people are randomly picked up off the street and punished as scapegoats the only consequence is likely to be that the public will be frightened to go out. To make a scapegoat scheme effective it would be necessary to go through the appearance of a legitimate legal process and to present evidence which convinced the public that the person being punished deserved their punishment.

While some societies have operated their legal systems on the basis of fictional evidence and confessions extracted by torture, the ethical objections to such a system are sufficient to render the argument in the second paragraph pointless. Statistics show that the death penalty leads to a brutalisation of society and an increase in murder rate. In the USA, more murders take place in states where capital punishment is allowed.

In , the murder rate in states where the death penalty has been abolished was 4. In states where the death penalty is used, the figure was 5. These calculations are based on figures from the FBI.

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It is, in short, deeply human. Punishment of some type may be useful for the future, by deterring wrongdoing and reforming offenders. Anger is also seen as the emotion that jolts us towards social justice.