§ 31 Retributive Punishment
We have considered criminal justice in three of its aspects—namely as deterrent, disabling, and reformative—and we have now to deal with it under its fourth and last aspect as retributive. Retributive punishment, in the only sense in which it is admissible in any rational system of administering justice, is that which serves for the satisfaction of that emotion of retributive indignation which in all healthy communities is stirred up by injustice. It gratifies the instinct of revenge or retaliation, which exists not merely in the individual wronged, but also by way of sympathetic extension in the society at large. Although the system of private revenge has been suppressed, the emotions and instincts that lay at the root of it are still extant in human nature, and it is a distinct though subordinate function of criminal justice to afford them their legitimate satisfaction. For although in their lawless and unregulated exercise and expression they are full of evil, there is in them none the less an element of good. The emotion of retributive indignation, both in its self-regarding and its sympathetic forms, is even yet the mainspring of the criminal law. It is to the fact that the punishment of the wrongdoer is at the same time the vengeance of the wronged, that the administration of justice owes a great part of its strength and effectiveness. Did we punish criminals merely from an intellectual appreciation of the expediency of so doing, and not because their crimes arouse in us the emotion of anger and the instinct of retribution, the criminal law would be but a feeble instrument. Indignation against injustice is, moreover, one of the chief constituents of the moral sense of the community, and positive morality is no less dependent on it than is the law itself. It is good, therefore, that such instincts and emotions should be encouraged and strengthened by their satisfaction; and in civilised societies this satisfaction is possible in any adequate degree only through the criminal justice of the state. There can be little question that at the present day the sentiment of retributive indignation is deficient rather than excessive, and requires stimulation rather than restraint. Unquestionable as have been the benefits of that growth of altruistic sentiment which characterises modern society, it cannot be denied that in some respects it has taken a perverted course and has interfered unduly with the sterner virtues. A morbid sentimentality has made of the criminal an object of sympathetic interest rather than of healthy indignation, and Cain occupies in our regards a place that is better deserved by Abel. We have too much forgotten that the mental attitude which best becomes us, when fitting justice is done upon the evildoer, is not pity, but solemn exultation.89
The foregoing explanation of retributive punishment as essentially an instrument of vindictive satisfaction is by no means that which receives universal acceptance. It is a very widely held opinion that retribution is in itself, apart altogether from any deterrent or reformative influences exercised by it, a right and reasonable thing, and the just reward of iniquity. According to this view, it is right and proper, without regard to ulterior consequences, that evil should be returned for evil, and that as a man deals with others so should he himself be dealt with. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is deemed a plain and self-sufficient rule of natural justice. Punishment as so regarded is no longer a mere instrument for the attainment of the public welfare, but has become an end in itself. The purpose of vindictive satisfaction has been eliminated without any substitute having been provided. Those who accept this view commonly advance retribution to the first place among the various aspects of punishment, the others being relegated to subordinate positions.
This conception of retributive justice still retains a prominent place in popular thought. It flourishes also in the writings of theologians and of those imbued with theological modes of thought, and even among the philosophers it does not lack advocates. Kant, for example, expresses the opinion that punishment cannot rightly be inflicted for the sake of any benefit to be derived from it either by the criminal himself or by society, and that the sole and sufficient reason and justification of it lies in the fact that evil has been done by him who suffers it.90 Consistently with this view, he derives the measure of punishment, not from any elaborate considerations as to the amount needed for the repression of crime, but from the simple principle of the lex talionis: “Thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”91 No such principle, indeed, is capable of literal interpretation; but subject to metaphorical and symbolical applications it is in Kant’s view the guiding rule of the ideal scheme of criminal justice.
It is scarcely needful to observe that from the utilitarian point of view hitherto taken up by us such a conception of retributive punishment is totally inadmissible. Punishment is in itself an evil, and can be justified only as the means of attaining a greater good. Retribution is in itself not a remedy for the mischief of the offence, but an aggravation of it. The opposite opinion may be regarded as a product of the incomplete transmutation of the conception of revenge into that of punishment. It results from a failure to appreciate the rational basis of the instinct of retribution—a failure to refer the emotion of retributive indignation to the true source of its rational justification—so that retaliation is deemed an end in itself, and is regarded as the essential element in the conception of penal justice.
A more definite form of the idea of purely retributive punishment is that of expiation. In this view, crime is done away with, cancelled, blotted out, or expiated, by the suffering of its appointed penalty. To suffer punishment is to pay a debt due to the law that has been violated. Guilt plus punishment is equal to innocence. “The wrong,” it has been said,92 “whereby he has transgressed the law of right, has incurred a debt. Justice requires that the debt be paid, that the wrong be expiated.... This is the first object of punishment—to make satisfaction to outraged law.” This conception, like the preceding, marks a stage in the transformation of revenge into criminal justice. Until this transformation is complete, the remedy of punishment is more or less assimilated to that of redress. Revenge is the right of the injured person. The penalty of wrongdoing is a debt which the offender owes to his victim, and when the punishment has been endured the debt is paid, the liability is extinguished, innocence is substituted for guilt, and the vinculum juris forged by crime is dissolved. The object of true redress is to restore the position demanded by the rule of right, to substitute justice for injustice, to compel the wrongdoer to restore to the injured person that which is his own. A like purpose is assigned to punishment, so long as it is imperfectly differentiated from that retributive vengeance which is in some sort a reparation for wrongdoing. The fact that in the expiatory theory satisfaction is conceived as due rather to the outraged majesty of the law, than to the victim of the offence, merely marks a further stage in the refinement and purification of the primitive conception.