The Philosophical Foundations of Just Punishment and its Peculiarities

Punishment” is a social institution and one of the main subjects in the realm of penal policy. Considering the institutional nature of punishment and the necessity of the institutions’ being just, the just social institutions are those institutions which impose their constitutive rules equally on the subjects. But giving opportunities to the underprivileged subjects can lead to the realization of a balanced order. So, the just social institutions can be described as having two criteria: equality and adjustment, which make the main bases of describing the just social institutions. Discrimination in punishment causes the harassment and the unjust restrictions to citizens and shakes the pillars of the legitimacy of the penal justice system. Therefore, avoiding the discriminative punishment has become one of the most important social concerns in the realm of penal policy and social assent, which can provide the strongest justification in the philosophy of punishment. Using a descriptive-analytical method, this paper intends to explain the philosophical roots of the justification of punishment and to draw some peculiarities of just punishment system. One of the findings of this paper is that if a just penal process is based on equality and adjustment, it can lead to the restoration of the social order impaired by delinquency. This process is guaranteed by principles such as the negation of indeterminism, the necessity of the rule of law, and the principle of the penal necessity. Considering the dependence of these peculiarities on the theory of social justice, which gives legitimacy to punishment, we will examine the philosophical foundations of just punishment.