Punishment: Encyclopedia II - Punishment - Scope of application

Punishment - Scope of application

Most often, criminals are punished judicially, by fines, corporal punishment or custodial sentences such as prison.

• • It should be noted that Behavioral Psychologist do not consider prison a sound punishment because most criminals are repeat

offenders, thus, their behavior has not changed. If the behavior does not change then any stimulus that was presented is not punishment just aversive.

• Children, pupils and other trainees are also punished by their educators or instructors (mainly parents, guardians, or teachers, tutors and coaches). The same used to apply to wives and unmarried daughters as they were not legally emancipated from 'paternal' (or succeeding marital) discipline.
• Slaves, domestic and other servants used to be punishable by their masters; in fact, even modern employees can still be subject to a contractual form of fine or demotion.
• Most hierarchical organizations, such as military and police forces, or even churches, still apply quite rigid internal discipline, even with a judicial system of their own (court martial, canonical courts).
• Punishment may also be applied on moral, especially religious, grounds, as in penance (which is voluntary) or imposed in a theocracy with a religious police (as in a strict Islamic state like Iran or under the Taliban) or (though not a true theocracy) by Inquisition.
• In a wider sense, often termed penalty, punishments can be incurred for infringing the rules of a game, as in sports, hazing (e.g. in paddle games) etcetera. These include:
  • Being sent off or sent to the "sin bin" - time in sin-bin varies from game to game (45 seconds in water polo, 2-10 minutes in ice hockey, 10 minutes in rugby, etc.)
  • The other team gets a shot at the goal.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Scope of application", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki