What should be the major purpose of punishment - reform, revenge, security or closure?

'Punishment' here is too narrow a term. We should be looking at government policy on crime and 'justice'. The purpose of govt. policy should be to protect society from crime, as effectively and cheaply as possible. This means rehabilitation where possible, probation where possible (because it's much cheaper than incarceration) and even the old idea of 'tempering justice with mercy'.

In the last 30 years we've had politicians complaining constantly that crime is on the rise because we don't punish criminals enough. This is a convenient idea to campaign on, but in fact crime has been trending down all this time. We have doubled sentences and doubled them again. We have imposed mandatory sentences for many crimes, taking power out of the hands of judges and experts and putting it in the hands of police and prosecutors (for example, in plea bargaining).

As a result of all this, we have the biggest prison population in the world, >1% of our population. We spend so much on prisons here in California that we can't fund education, and some politicians have seriously suggested closing down a few of our state college campuses, because we can't afford them anyway, and converting them into prisons, which we CAN afford.

Basically this is an example of the old political adage: For every complicated, seemingly intractable problem there is a simple solution that can be explained in a 10 second sound bite, is easy to get voters to approve of, but which doesn't work.

If we could make our streets safer by simply locking up more people, we here in the US would have the safest streets in the world! 8^D

Reforming criminals is key to breaking the system of crime in our society. The rates of remittance to prison are staggering due to the lack of reform in our prison system. With reform, are able to change the mindset on crime and restore dignity to criminals.

Security is also very important, though, and cannot be neglected. Our society can't function without security because there are some criminals that can't be reformed. Punishment should keep those criminals off the streets so they don't commit crimes in the future.

Lastly, I'd hope our society is not so uncivilized as to think that punishment should be for revenge. As Ghandi said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the whole world blind and toothless"

If someone is inherently bad or evil, then there is no such thing as reforming them.

Punishment is the only reason to put people in prison or sentence them for any type of crime.

Punishment.

Revenge

Consequences.