Article 1: Punishment vs Rehabilitation in the Criminal Justice System

Source Citation:

Larrabee, A.K. "Punishment vs Rehabilitation in the Criminal Justice System."
Associated Content. N.p., 28 Nov. 2006. Web. 4 Apr. 2010.

I was looking up different viewpoints on the subject of punishment vs. rehabilitation, and I think this article did a pretty good job of looking at the issue from both sides. It did well in showing the drawbacks of punishment in general, but the death penalty was only mentioned a few times. This made me think a bit more about my question; am I looking to find a better alternative to capital punishment, or just an alternative to punishment overall? I'm not quite sure if my question is going to be easy to find information on, but I think there's enough information out there for me to argue that rehabilitation is better than the death penalty, some of which can be drawn from this article here.

The article started by talking about expectations of the criminal justice system and the effectiveness of punishment, rehabilitation, and other methods of responding to crimes. There is then another heading titled "Deterrence," which talks about how deterrence is one of the primary goals of the criminal justice system. The official dictionary.com definition of deterrence, aside from the obvious "the act of deterring" stuff, is "the inhibition of criminal behavior by fear especially of punishment." Now, what is the definition of inhibition? Again, aside from the "act of inhibiting or state of being inhibited" stuff, it is "something that restrains, blocks, or suppresses." This seems strange to me mainly because I had always thought deterrence was discouraging something, not "especially" through punishment. Though, depending on what the punishment is, it might be true so long as it's not the death penalty. The article then continues to talk about how "boot camps" or "shock camps" would be less costly than incarceration. However, the article ended with saying punishment followed up with rehabilitation can be a good way to deter crime.

Throughout the entire article, the death penalty wasn't mentioned much. This is because the article focused on how punishment and rehabilitation are the way to go - not capital punishment, but just incarceration or something that doesn't take the criminal's life away. In short, capital punishment is not the answer; the answer is punishment coupled with rehabilitation.