The Morality of Punishment for Actions

According to Hobbes (2010), the justification for punishment is based on the following theories of philosophy: incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, restoration and/or deterrence.

Oleson and Mackinnon (2015) believe that retribution punishes someone for committing a crime because doing so is morally upright. Retributivism believes that it is the society's moral duty to punish a criminal.

Incapacitation involves enforcing various means of physical restraints to reduce the ability or capacity of an offender to commit a crime. According to Hobbes (2010), the imprisonment condition may be so unbearable that the offender would be discouraged to misbehave or commit a crime, but this does not guarantee improvement in behavior.

Deterrence, on the other hand, is based on the idea that man freely chooses his actions in such a way that his pleasure would be maximized and his pain minimized. Committing criminal acts to solve one's problems becomes less likely as one realizes the certain, swift and harsh punishment for committing such acts. According to Oleson & Mackinnon (2015), any kind of sanction has a likely deterrent effect on an individual as long as one recognizes its certainty, severity and swiftness.

According to Hobbes (2010), the utmost aim or purpose of rehabilitation is to bring back an offender to society by means of education, treatment and training. The importance of rehabilitation is shown by the modern-day jargon of "reformatories," "therapeutic community," and "correctional facilities" that are now being used to describe prisons, jails, and incapacitation institutions. It concentrates on the specific characteristics of an offender that require intervention and treatment.

Restoration involves the process of putting back the offenders, the victims, the community, and the government, if possible, to their original condition. The offender accepts that he is fully responsible for his wrongdoing and he pays victim an indemnity. According to Hobbes (2010), the victim and offender develop together a program that would help the former to recover and at the same time discourage the offender from committing the same offense again.