Study of Penology from Ancient to Modern Era: A Critical Evaluation
Author : Dr. Kabita Chakraborty
Abstract :
Punishment is inevitable for controlling society or in other words to reduce crime. Punishment is historically the primary tool to keep the nation under control. There are some traditional theories relating to punishment of the offender e.g., retributive theory, deterrent theory and preventive theory, reformative theory, utilitarian theory. Though initially the purpose was either to give severe punishment so that there might be creating a frightful environment as a result of which no one would be dared to do any crime, or to keep the criminals away from the society to put them into the jail. But with the growth of science and technology the rate of crime was increasing rapidly. It was felt that the punishment is not the only way to reduce crime rather to make the society free from crimes, treatment of the criminal or offender is needed to make them capable citizen of the country. In short, the main objective of all these theories is to keep the society free from crimes. In this article the researcher is also trying to evaluate the different forms of punishment chronologically, some of which were very heinous, have already been abolished. The researcher concluded this article with the judicial trends as regards the punishment.
Keywords :
Punishment, crime, control, society, retributive, preventive, heinous, judicial trends.
