The Distributive Justice System In The United States

Justice is a concept that can be broken down into a series of smaller beliefs or ideas. In many societies, justice is a system in which the people of a community or group are treated according to their actions and behavior. In societies such as this, people typically have roles that are delegated or earn where the people who disobey or do not follow the laws or regulations are punish. The idea of what kind of justice a person is entitled to is called distributive justice. This type of justice attempts to determine how and why a person should receive certain benefits or things. Need-based justice explains that people should receive more if they are more in need. Merit-based justice is the belief that benefits and other things should be given …show more content…
This definitely helps one understand the state that the US is in right now. With high rates of imprisonment, it follows that crime rates are also high which means that there has to be a type of justice or punishment for the crimes that have been committed. This is where the two types of punishment are introduced that attempt to right the wrongs that have taken place. One type of punishment is one that looks back upon the committed crime and attempts to exact retributive justice. The other type of punishment is one that looks ahead towards the future and how it is affected in an effort to implement restorative justice (Hinman, 136). These two concepts will be explained in detail later on. In response to these crimes and criminals, the United States uses the death penalty system, where an individual is executed for his or her crimes. This method, however, is ineffective and should be abolished, replacing it with a more rehabilitating method to create a better …show more content…
Retributive justice is a system that looks back upon the crime that a person has committed and then punishes the person for that crime. This system uses what is done to determine what should be done to the individual who has committed this wrongdoing so that the punishment is proportionate to the crime. Restorative justice is punishment that looks forward into the future in order to better the future. This justice tries to better the individual so that when the offender leaves prison, he or she will not return and benefit society in some way (Hinman, 137). In the retributive spectrum, research and data on whether or not the death penalty deterring crimes from happening is inconclusive after all the years that the death penalty has been around (Hinman, 150). This means that there is no definitive proof that the death penalty is an effective method to deter criminals from committing crimes. The application of the death penalty is not helping better society because reasons such as its cost to maintain, false accusation, and its dehumanizing effect on us as a