PUNISHMENTS, Bikramdutt
The word 'Punishment' is used in different contexts. Generally the word is used to describe that which we think as painful. The psychological sense of this term is most commonly and appropriately applied to a situation in which a deprivation or unpleasant experience is deliberately imposed by one party upon another.
From sociological point of view, punishment is characteristically defined thus, that a person who is arrested and worked for an alleged crime then he is punished – by the state. But, the punishment indicates that which is meted out by the state to a criminal or by a parent to his children is not the same as the punishment that boxers give or receive. However, in this discussion we will consider punishment in a moral sense and as a social concept.
Our social justice claims that, when an individual commits a crime then the society can give him punishment, because of justice. When justice is established through punishment then in a sense crime is also checked. So we give punishment for minimizing crime. Now here arise important questions like how punishment becomes a social concept. We know that crime is that event which is considered as breaking the laws of society or the state. We cannot deny the fact that society is the name of a composite whole, and that if all the members in the society get the chance of preservation of their interests and rights, then there will be unity and equality in the society. The action which destroys this equality is treated as crime. Society punishes the crime-doer and through that punishment unity in society returns.
From the above discussion it can be understood that the concept of crime becomes meaningful only in a social context. Punishment then is a social concept. Deciding what to do about crime is not a minor technical problem to be dealt with by the criminologists or the police. It is a practical, social problem with momentous consequences. We should be responsible citizens and before we embrace a punishment system towards criminals, we must determine the circumstances under which the state can justifiably deprive someone of his life or liberty, and we must decide what would be the morally appropriate punishment. Thus, while certain forms of punishment, like capital punishment has been given up or rejected in some countries, life imprisonment has become a major form of punishment for criminal activities.
Conclusion: Here it should be remembered that ethics is to be called a normative science dealing with the behavior of a social man. As man lives in a society the behavior of an individual touches another. If we can imagine a man who lives outside the society, and whose action does not touch others, then the evaluation of that man's action will become meaningless. The idea of mortality appears because there is interaction within the society and in turn comes to be evaluated in the context of society. Punishment thus becomes a social action.
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