Penalties are notorious or notorious. The former remain in force for life, unless the offender has been pardoned, and do not depend on the period for which the party has been sentenced to imprisonment; A person convicted of a felony, perjury or other notorious crimes may therefore not testify or hold office, although the period for which he or she may have been sentenced to imprisonment may have expired due to the passage of time. The penalties that are not notorious are those imposed on individuals for offences, such as attacks and assault, defamation, etc. A number of other important issues are relevant to the theorization of punishment, which can only be mentioned here. According to utilitarian philosophy, laws should be used to maximize the happiness of society. Since crime and punishment are incompatible with happiness, they should be kept to a minimum. Utilitarians understand that there is no such thing as a crime-free society, but they strive to impose only as much punishment as necessary to prevent future crimes. A key question is which crimes reach the level of « international crimes » and are therefore rightly prosecuted and punished by international rather than national institutions. An important answer to this question (May 2005) is that a State that does not guarantee the security of its citizens has no right to prevent international bodies from violating its sovereignty. However, such international intervention is justified only in cases where serious harm is inflicted on the international community or humanity as a whole.

In this context, crimes harm humanity as a whole if they are committed in groups or on group characteristics of the victims, or if they are committed by a State or other agent of the group. One of these narratives has been challenged, focusing on its depiction of harm-based crime (Renzo 2012) and its claim that group crimes harm humanity as a whole (A. Altman 2006). Thus, one response to this type of narrative is to dismiss the claim of international harm and instead claim that a state`s failure to protect the rights of its members is sufficient to justify international intervention (Altman and Wellman 2004), or that international criminal tribunals can be justified if they provide fair trials for trials and sentences in response to sufficiently heinous crimes. (Luban 2010). Some people think that punishment as a whole is not helpful and even harmful to the people it is used against. [63] [64] Critics argue that punishment is simply wrong, in the same conception that « two injustices do a good thing. » Critics argue that punishment is simply revenge. Professor Deirdre Golash, author of The Case against Punishment: Retribution, Crime Prevention, and the Law, says: One criticism of the claim that all social animals are evolutionarily wired to punishment comes from studies of animals, such as octopuses near Capri, Italy, that suddenly formed communal cultures by living lonely lives until then.

During a period of intensive fishing and tourism encroaching on their territory, they began to live in groups and learn from each other, especially hunting techniques. Smaller, younger octopuses could be near adult octopuses without being eaten by them, although, like other common octopuses, they were cannibalistic until they clustered. [ref. needed] The authors point out that this change in behavior occurred too quickly to be a genetic trait in octopuses, and that there were certainly no mammals or other social animals « naturally » punishing octopuses for cannibalism. The authors also note that octopuses have adopted observational learning without an evolutionary history of specialized adaptation for it. [26] [27] Imprisonment means at least the loss of liberty and autonomy, as well as many material comforts, personal security and access to heterosexual relationships. These deprivations, according to Gresham Sykes (who first identified them), « together inflicted `deep pain` that went all the way to the foundations of the prison. But these are only the minimal damage suffered by the least vulnerable inmates in the best-run prisons. Most prisons are poorly managed and conditions in some are worse than in the worst slums. In the District of Columbia Jail, for example, inmates have to wash their clothes and bedding in cell toilets because the washing machines are broken. Vermin and insects attack the building, where ventilation slots are clogged by decades of dust and dirt accumulation.

But even inmates in hygienic prisons still have to deal with the numbing boredom and emptiness of prison life – a vast desert of wasted days where few meaningful activities are possible. [65] A retributive answer to these questions is that crime means gaining an unfair advantage over law-abiding persons, and that punishment eliminates that unfair advantage. The criminal law benefits all citizens by protecting them from certain types of harm: however, this benefit depends on citizens` acceptance of the burden of restraint that accompanies compliance with the law. The criminal takes advantage of the restraint of others, but refuses to accept this burden himself: he has acquired an unfair advantage, which punishment removes by imposing an additional burden on him (see H. Morris, 1968; Murphy, 1973; Sadursky, 1985; Sher 1987, c. 5; Adler 1992, c. 5–8; Dagger 1993, 2008, 2011; Stichter, 2010; Duus-Otterström 2017; on criticism, see Burgh, 1982; Duff 1986, c. 8; fall 1987; Dolinko, 1991; Anderson, 1997; Boonin 2008: 119–143; Hoskins, 2011b).