Creative Punishments May Be Good for Minor Infractions |
A creative punishment is one in which the transgressor experiences the harm they created.
A typical punishment is something like a suspension or jail time.
For minor infractions, creative punishments are preferred to equivalent typical punishments.
It is a standard assumption that if you do something wrong, you should be punished for your action. Young children are put in time-out for breaking the rules. Grade school students go to detention or get suspended from school for talking back to the teacher or getting in a fight. We expect that people who break the law will receive a fine or jail time.
Broadly, there are two main justifications for punishing wrongdoers: deterrence (a significant penalty makes breaking the rules or the law less attractive) and public safety (taking law-breakers out of society protects those who follow the law).
For minor infractions (like being mean to a coworker/classmate, spray painting graffiti, or tipping over a trash can at a fast-food restaurant), public safety doesn’t apply. So, the main value of punishment is to prevent someone from engaging in a bad behavior and preventing someone who has done it once from doing it again.
Yet, people who do something bad once often do it again. So, punishments may be a deterrent, but they aren’t a perfect one by any stretch. And that is why there has been a rise in creative punishments for........