Prison is said to serve four purposes: punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation and maintaining public safety.
"Never for the purpose of punishment, only for the purpose of safety, either for the youth in the program, or the safety of others".
The department sensibly calls for more cost-effective prison policies, but that would require reconsideration of the basic purpose of punishment.
Juan Méndez, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, pressed the United Nations Human Rights Council last week to help reduce the use of solitary confinement, having argued in a report on torture last year that prolonged isolation is cruel and inhumane, and "when used for the purpose of punishment, cannot be justified for any reason".
Locke continues by asserting that "law is to no purpose without punishment" (Locke 1663 64, 113).
In the first place, Hume asks, what is the point or purpose of punishment in a future state?
The central meaning and purpose of punishment, on such accounts, is to communicate to offenders the censure or condemnation that they deserve for their crimes.
The purpose of punishment is to reform (literally re-form) the soul or character of the inmate so that he may be released into society without fear that he will harm others.
It is better than a pure consequentialism, because it constrains punitive interventions with individual liberty to the bare minimum consistent with achieving the purpose of punishment and it is consistent with the rights of offenders.
The primary purpose of punishment thus can reasonably be to restore that disturbed balance by depriving convicted offenders of their unfairly gained advantage excess freedom of action by imposing upon them measures, punishments, whose precise purpose is to restrict their freedom of action, whether by fines or imprisonment, proportionately to the degree to which they indulged their self-preference.
