Word: deter
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...four classic purposes of imprisonment have been: 1) to deter others from committing crime, 2) to protect society from the criminal, 3) to rehabilitate the criminal, and 4) to give him his "just deserts." Today the first three are not persuasive. The prospect of jail does not seem to be a very forbidding deterrent. Society is obviously not safer but more dangerous these days, even though America's prisons and jails burst with a population of 500,000 inmates. Nearly all rehabilitation programs are well-meaning exercises in futility. That leaves reason No. 4, just deserts-punishment, social retribution...
...reformer's morality has always taught that the main objective of punishment is ulterior: to deter or rehabilitate. In this design, punishment should not do the one thing it says it will do-punish. It is not to make the criminal suffer, to make him feel the force of society's anger for his deed. It is surely not communal revenge...
...punishment should be punishment before it is anything else. If it does deter other potential criminals or rehabilitate the convicted, then that should be greeted as a pleasant surprise. The first business, without being bloodthirsty about it, is to keep society's contract with itself and punish a crime as it promised it would. Author C.S. Lewis has pointed out the totalitarian possibilities in treating criminals as sick people who need to be cured: "If crime and disease are to be regarded as the same thing, it follows that any state of mind which our masters choose to call...
...home town of Parma, scouting locations for his new movie, La Luna, starring Jill Clayburgh. Seeing perhaps with the eyes of his imagination, the director stumbled over a No Parking sign and broke both his elbows. Not one to let so minor an inconvenience as arm-length casts deter him, Bertolucci was back on the set in two weeks, using a long wooden holder for his view finder. "When I started to direct this film," he said, "I already had a heavy responsibility as director and co-author of the screenplay, and had a part in the production...
...weaker currencies, such as Britain's pound and Italy's lira, initially move up and down within a broader margin than the stronger currencies; and 2) a kind of "mini-IMF" of pooled reserves from which the members could automatically draw funds to support their currencies and deter speculation...