The reasons for punishment are deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation and prevention. Criminal law balances these. English Law and Scots Law do not award punitive damages in civil actions, and it is hard to see why a Claimant should receive money which is more than his/her financial loss, in order to punish the Respondent. Should not that money go to the State?
Should punishment be allocated “rationally”? Perhaps, but I think human reactions to a wrongful act should be part of what is rationally assessed.
I do not have rational control of my feelings of anger. I can attempt to soothe my own feelings, or suppress and deny them.
If I dwell on an incident with the intention of making myself more angry about it, this seems to me to damage my own emotional responses.
Why should the money automatically go to the state?
To partially answer my own question: possibly, to compensate for court costs. However, if that were the rationale, then this cost should be levied for every trial.
Why should the money automatically go to the state?
It should probably not go to the claimant because this would encourage spurious lawsuits for the sole purpose of trying to gather lots of money. Assuming a non-corrupt government, it should go to the state (or other level of government) so that it could benefit everybody, e.g. via tax breaks, or more investment in science, medicine, education, etc.
In practice governments are corrupt, so the answer is a bit more complicated. If the money does go to the government, how do we make sure the government isn’t tempted to cause the punishment to become unfairly severe in order to gather more income?
The reasons for punishment are deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation and prevention. Criminal law balances these. English Law and Scots Law do not award punitive damages in civil actions, and it is hard to see why a Claimant should receive money which is more than his/her financial loss, in order to punish the Respondent. Should not that money go to the State?
Should punishment be allocated “rationally”? Perhaps, but I think human reactions to a wrongful act should be part of what is rationally assessed.
I do not have rational control of my feelings of anger. I can attempt to soothe my own feelings, or suppress and deny them.
If I dwell on an incident with the intention of making myself more angry about it, this seems to me to damage my own emotional responses.
Why should the money automatically go to the state?
To partially answer my own question: possibly, to compensate for court costs. However, if that were the rationale, then this cost should be levied for every trial.
It should probably not go to the claimant because this would encourage spurious lawsuits for the sole purpose of trying to gather lots of money. Assuming a non-corrupt government, it should go to the state (or other level of government) so that it could benefit everybody, e.g. via tax breaks, or more investment in science, medicine, education, etc.
In practice governments are corrupt, so the answer is a bit more complicated. If the money does go to the government, how do we make sure the government isn’t tempted to cause the punishment to become unfairly severe in order to gather more income?