There’s a carnal hunger in the U.S., deep, pervasive, and violent — it’s the hunger for retributivist punishment that persists within the darkest depths of our society.
Retributivism, or the idea that punishment is justified so long as someone is seen as “deserving” of it and for no other reason, is most famously attributed to the writings of 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant. In his work, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” he describes how crime should be addressed in a manner that is proportional to the criminal’s “inner wickedness” and “can never be inflicted as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society.” Based on a greater theory of moral desert, the concept that people deserve to be treated in the same way that they have voluntarily treated others, Kant believes that punishment solely for punishment’s sake is a way of affirming moral responsibility; that is, it respects an individual’s moral agency in controlling how others will respond to them.
As James Rachels states in “Ethics in Practice: An Anthology,” this way of thinking comes across as a “natural and appealing” attitude toward crime as a whole. Retributivism functions just to “restore the balance” of wrongdoing that “upsets the scales of justice” and the very basis of our social contract with one another. Though both Kant and Rachels emphasize that such punishment need not have any further results, retributivism is supposed to help build a society in which wrongdoing limits itself through the fear of retaliation: “our retributive feelings, which cause us to be happy when villains are punished and outraged when they are not — are useful because they reinforce useful social practice[s].”
This moral framework is distinctively present in the structure of the U.S. criminal justice system. As the Supreme Court states in Graham v. Florida (2010), “retribution is a legitimate reason to punish,” and alongside rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation, is a valid “goal of penal sanctions.” Though it is not the only purpose, with the “War on Drugs” and “tough-on-crime” initiatives throughout the late 20th century (like Reagan’s 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act and Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill), it has become significantly overrepresented, dominating keystone crime policies throughout the decades. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws, for example, which are now incorporated in all 50 states to some capacity, require judges to assign minimum prison terms for specific crimes as perpetrators are seen as plainly “deserving” of such without any kind of individual evaluation. “In-truth sentencing,” which replaced indeterminate sentencing systems that were popular in the 1970s, also forces criminals to serve a certain amount of their sentence (usually a high amount, like 85 percent), putting a priority on carrying out punishment and thereby disregarding good behavior and the possibility of an early release. Rehabilitation isn’t the goal, moral desert is; these policies focus on stricter sentencing, the severe limitation or even abolition of parole, longer incarceration times, and a strong emphasis on extending and maintaining punishment.
According to a 2022 study done by the National Library of Medicine, these retributive policies sparked a tremendous increase in the correctional population that has “continued well into the twenty-first century,” manifesting itself in disturbingly high rates of mass incarceration. That is, despite decades of declining crime rates, studies still suggest that approximately 2.2 million people are behind bars on any given day in the U.S., only a marginal decrease from its all-time high in 2008 at just over 2.3 million people. The ACLU further reports that although the U.S. only has 5 percent of the world’s population, it holds 20 percent of the world’s prisoners, incarcerating the highest percentage of its population per capita (580 per 100,000 residents).
Source: Prison Policy
Thus, we’ve become a society that is comfortable with inflicting mass, long-term punishment. To a certain extent, these policies continue to be maintained today because they are viewed as righteous retribution. But, the question arises, what does retributivism actually do for us?
The reality is as simple as it is harsh: nothing.
According to multiple studies conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics throughout the decades, the recidivism rate for criminals in the U.S. has reached nearly 80 percent and is only increasing as time goes on. In fact, criminals seem to become more hardened after going to prison, changing for the worse instead of the better the longer they stay in. This is due to a variety of circumstances, namely the fact that they are exposed to even more crime within prisons, and due to a lack of rehabilitation or educational facilities, tend to return with few to zero job skills. Research conducted by Benjamin Justice and Tracey L. Meares published by the American Academy of Political Science and Justice states that “almost any prison sentence is in fact an economic death sentence — especially for poorly educated felons — that results in a completely different life trajectory,” leaving them with no other choice than to turn back to crime as a way to survive.
But, the damage of incarceration doesn’t end at the individual; it can and has the ability to destabilize entire communities, especially for the poor and people of color. It has been a long-known inequity that African Americans and Latinos are respectively 5.9 and 3.1 times more likely to get arrested, be convicted, and be incarcerated than white people. The reality is, the prison population is overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately from minority communities; oftentimes, when criminals emerge, it’s concentrated in specific areas, races, and social classes. Ekow N. Yankah highlights this in his paper “Punishing Them All: How Criminal Justice Should Account for Mass Incarceration,” arguing that retributivist justice entrenches already impoverished areas in a vicious cycle of social stigma, poverty, and crime, which scares away economic investment and employment opportunities, and most simply, deprives these places of people. As Yankah says, “to notice mass incarceration is to notice bruised families and hollowed-out communities.”
On an even broader scale, retributivism has a profound effect on our cultural society as a whole and how it affects our attitude toward mistakes made in our close relationships. This mindset of “punishing just to punish” or the lack of emphasis on redemption has manifested itself in media that pushes for things like “cancel” or “cut-off culture.” In this, people are enthralled by the idea of punishing someone for singular mistakes, refusing apologies and shunning any kind of capacity for growth; in a way, it feels necessary, satisfying, and restorative to the balance that the seemingly “irredeemable” individual has altered. Visible condemnation being rewarded with status rewards this cycle: we feel urged by our moral “instincts” to punish, joining the masses with little regard for the cancellation’s actual purpose or whether any real change occurs within the individual. This happens with our interpersonal relationships as well, as displayed in the rising rhetoric of “protecting one’s peace” by letting someone go over one “red flag” or “ick.” In doing this, we lose out on enduring, earnest connections because we no longer want to inconvenience ourselves with the burden of working through difficult problems.
In our daily lives, this hunger for punishment has blinded us to how genuine human connection works. People are inherently flawed: it’s in our nature to make mistakes, and only by working through these mistakes do we form meaningful, enduring relationships. The strength of our love is measured not only by how good we are to each other, but also by our suffering, hardship, and the tears that we share. By punishing just to punish, we lose the depth of complicated bonds with people, and rid ourselves and others of self-improvement. We “protect our peace” to the point where we stand completely alone.
At this stage, we’ve far surpassed simply administering retributivist justice — we hunger for it.
So, the question arises, why? Why should we embrace this system? What benefit do we truly get out of it, other than some fleeting sense of far-fetched retributive justice? Truly, the retributivist mindset’s most cardinal sin isn’t its role as a proponent of mass incarceration and suffering, it’s that it doesn’t care; since the punishment, in and of itself, is morally justified, there’s a cold indifference in the sheer apathy it has for its outcomes. Its purpose is simply justice.
But in the end, this isn’t righteousness, it’s cruelty. It’s taking the easiest way out without any thought as to the grander consequences.
What a retributivist system fails to recognize is that though punishment can be individually justified, it can amount to cumulative patterns of unjustified discrimination that target the most vulnerable people in our society. We can’t just look at crime on a one-on-one basis; we need to look at the broader picture and address the deeper, structural issues that push people into wrongdoing in the first place. Kant emphasizes this idea of autonomy — that people are fully in control of their choices — but really, how often is this true? This presupposes that we all start on this equal playing field, where circumstances do not dictate the choices we have; people’s decisions, especially to turn towards crime, are often a product of their environment. That’s not to say they are not accountable for their actions, but the greater narrative speaks toward the necessity for long-term solutions that emphasize significant reform, rather than some lazy, myopic conception of justice.
Ultimately, retributivism is built upon a lack of empathy, faith, and forgiveness in people. The idea that people can only be regulated or encouraged toward moral behavior through fear of adverse consequences has proven to be incredibly false; this is a primal mindset, rooted in cynicism about human nature. Instead, when we put time and energy into others, it amounts to great successes; this is seen in many other countries whose prison systems center around rehabilitation. Norway, in particular, had a very similar paradigm to the U.S. in the 1990s, with recidivism rates reaching up to 70 percent. Recognizing the need for change, they began to restructure their criminal justice system under the principles of re-integrating inmates back into society. The government poured funding into the prisons themselves (making them higher quality and comfortable spaces), education, normalization programs, which made life within correctional facilities resemble life on the outside. Further, they also moved from large, centralized jails to more local institutions that allow prisoners to not only be close to their homes, but participate within the communities through volunteer and service work. This worked wonders into the 21st century, their recidivism rates decreased by over ⅔, now sitting at 20 percent.
The most powerful impact that emerges from Norway is the dismantling of the harmful idea that criminals only take from the general public’s help, resources, or efforts; if given the opportunity they can give back just as much as we give to them, giving themselves to our societies in productive, beautiful ways.
It stands to reason that people are worth investing in; rehabilitation and redemption build more accepting, more open, more empathic communities. Even the smallest amount of faith in a person can be world-changing, and in building a culture that extends a hand to other people, we ultimately extend that grace to ourselves.
Feature Image Source: Berlin Coxe