Is the Continued Use of Imprisonment as a Form of Punishment Justified?

IMPRISONMENT 1
IS THE CONTINUED USE OF IMPRISONMENT AS A FORM OF PUNISHMENT JUSTIFIED?
Student’s Name
Course
Professor’s Name
University
Date

IMPRISONMENT 2
Introduction
Prisons are found in every part of the world. Policy makers and governments often
consider them as the best strategy to act as a deterrence to crime. However, Imprisonment
shouldn’t be taken for granted as the only way of punishing offenders. In most countries, the
application of this method as a form of punishment is very recent and thus, it might not be
common to most traditions as they have mainly depended on alternative ways of dealing with
offenders. That being said, imprisonment has a number of symbolic justifications that have
been proven to be productive in rehabilitating and reintegrating offenders particularly, those
charged with major crimes. As a result, the use of imprisonment is on the rise across the
world. There are now more than 9 million prisoners in the entire world and the numbers are
still growing. The main objective of this paper is to provide a rationale of the justification of
imprisonment as a form of punishment, especially whether it decreases incidences of
recidivism by the offenders. A number of hybrid theories have been put into consideration,
incorporating both deontological and consequentialist principles, and the modern legal
system.
Discussion
First it is important to characterise recent trends of incarceration and the degree to
which the sentences are concentrated among the major subgroups of the UK adult population.
Over the past two decades, the UK prison system has received huge numbers than ever
before. Before the mid-1980s, the rate of imprisonment was low and stable, estimated at
around 50 inmates per 100,000 persons. However, since then, the rate has dramatically
increased. Between 1989 and 2010, the rate of imprisonment quadrupled from the initial rate
of 50 to 200 per 100,000 persons. By 2010 the population of inmates stood at approximately
500,000 inmate’s .The state prisons holds all types of offenders ranging from violators of

IMPRISONMENT 3
probation to murderers. However, there are others jailed at local jails while waiting their
adjudication, while other are serving sentences of less than a year. Between 1989 and 2010,
the number of correction institutions increased from 40, 000 to 74,000.
Punishment is one of the primary goals of imprisonment and might additionally serve
as an instrumental function, primary for reducing crime rates. Moreover, the existing
framework used for sentencing has a lot of positive aspects that are based on the severity of a
sentencing. Punishment can be exercised in multiple ways and the severity of the same is
based on the vulnerability and the circumstances surrounding it. For instance, subjective
severity is often connected to social inequality. Such guidelines of imprisonment are
introduced in an effort to achieve consistency in the sentencing process, with much severe
punishment for most serious offences (Santana, et al., 2013). However, it is important to
move away from such divisive strategies that often rank the severity on sentencing and move
to one that gives more consideration to what is supposed to be accomplished in every
incident. It is important to note that the existing systems still do not communicate to the
prisoners of what may be the main objective and neither does it appear to accomplish
deterrence or rehabilitation (Mendona, 2010). Yet, the legitimacy of imprisonment rests on
the idea of fairness not only for the offender but also for the public. A justified punishment
should, therefore, put into consideration all the subjective experiences in sentencing as well
as the implementation of the process.
Justification of punishment
Pfaff (2011) supports imprisonment by indicating that “For any form of punishment to
be effective in deterring crime, it must appear real to any potential offender but at the same
time undesirable.”(p 137) According to Economic theory of crime, criminals are different and
each one of them makes offence for different reasons. This concept has been put into test by