Legal Dictionary of Pakistan
Quick lookup for English, Urdu, and Latin legal terms used in Pakistani jurisprudence.
Punishment
n. A sanction - such as a fine, penalty, confinement, or loss of property, right, or privilege - assessed against a person who has violated the law. - punish, ub. See SENTENCE. "Punishment in all its forms is a loss of rights or advantages consequent on a breach of law. When it loses this quality it degenerates into an arbitrary act of violence that can produce nothing but bad social effects." Glanville Williams, Criminal Law 575 (2d ed. 1961). "In the treatment of offenders there is a clear and unmistakable line of division between the function of the judge and that of the penologist. I should modify that: the law is clear only if it is first made clear in what sense the word 'treatment' is being used. For in this context the word can be used in two senses, one wide and the other narrow. Let me take the wide meaning first. The object of a sentence is to impose punishment. For 'punishment', a word which to many connotes nothing but retribution, the softer word 'treatment' is now frequently substituted; this is the wider meaning. The substitution is made, I suppose, partly as a concession to the school which holds that crime is caused by mental sickness, but more justifiably as a reminder that there are other methods of dealing with criminal tendencies besides making the consequences of crime unpleasant." Patrick Devlin, The Judge 32-33 (1979).
capital punishment
See DEATH PENALTY (1).
collective punishment
A penalty inflicted on a group of persons without regard to individual responsibility for the conduct giving rise to the penalty. ( Collective punishment was outlawed in 1949 by the Geneva Convention.
corporal punishment
Physical punishment; punishment that is inflicted upon the body (including imprisonment).
cruel and unusual punishment
Punishment that is torturous, degrading, inhuman, grossly disproportionate to the crime in question, or otherwise shocking to the moral sense of the community. ( Cruel and unusual punishment is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
cumulative punishment
See PUNISHMENT.
deterrent punishment
Punishment the purpose of which is to deter others from committing crimes by making an example of the offender so that like-minded people are warned of the consequences of crime.
excessive punishment
Punishment that is not justified by the gravity of the offense or the defendant's criminal record. See excessive fine (1) under FINE (5).
former punishment
Military law. The rule that nonjudicial punishment for a minor offense may bar trial by court-martial for the same offense.
infamous punishment
See PUNISHMENT
mandatory punishment
See mandatory sentence under SENTENCE.
mitigation of punishment
Criminal law. A reduction in punishment due to mitigating circumstances that reduce the criminal's level of culpability, such as the existence of no prior convictions. See mitigating circumstances under CIRCUMSTANCE.
nonjudicial punishment
Military law. A procedure in which a person subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice receives official punishment for a minor offense. ( In the Navy and Coast Guard, nonjudicial punishment is termed captain's mast; in the Marine Corps, it is termed office hours; and in the Army and Air Force, it is referred to as Article 15. Nonjudicial punishment is not a court-martial.
nonjudicial punishment.
See PUNISHMENT.
preventive punishment
Punishment the purpose of which is to prevent a repetition of wrongdoing by disabling the offender.
reformative punishment
Punishment the purpose of which is to change the character of the offender.
retributive punishment
Punishment the purpose of which is to satisfy the community's retaliatory sense of indignation that is provoked by injustice. The fact that it is natural to hate a criminal does not prove that retributive punishment is justified." Glanville Williams, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law 60 1957).
scarlet-letter punishment
See shame sanction under SANCTION.