Editing Punishment (section)

==Criticism==
Some people think that punishment as a whole is unhelpful and even harmful to the people that it is used against.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=G.T|first=Gwinn|date=1949|title=The effects of punishment on acts motivated by fear|journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology|volume=39|issue=2|pages=260–69|doi=10.1037/h0062431|pmid=18125723}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Edgeworth, Edgeworth|first=Maria, Richard Lovell|title=Works of Maria Edgeworth: Practical education. 1825|publisher=S. H. Parker|year=1825|location=the University of California|pages=149}}</ref> Detractors argue that punishment is simply wrong, of the same design as "[[two wrongs make a right]]". Critics argue that punishment is simply [[revenge]]. Professor Deirdre Golash,  author of ''The Case against Punishment: Retribution, Crime Prevention, and the Law'', says:
{{blockquote|We ought not to impose such harm on anyone unless we have a very good reason for doing so… The deliberate doing of harm in the mistaken belief that it promotes some greater good is the essence of tragedy. We would do well to ask whether the goods we seek in harming offenders are worthwhile, and whether the means we choose will indeed secure them.<ref name="golash">{{Cite web | url=https://www.questia.com/read/117883311/the-case-against-punishment-retribution-crime-prevention | title=The Case against Punishment: Retribution, Crime Prevention, and the Law - 2004, Page III by Deirdre Golash. | access-date=2017-09-10 | archive-date=2019-05-18 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190518111947/https://www.questia.com/read/117883311/the-case-against-punishment-retribution-crime-prevention | url-status=dead }}</ref>}} Golash also writes  about [[imprisonment]]:

{{blockquote|Imprisonment means, at minimum, the loss of liberty and autonomy, as well as many material comforts, personal security, and access to heterosexual relations. These deprivations, according to Gresham Sykes (who first identified them) "together dealt 'a profound hurt' that went to 'the very foundations of the prisoner's being.

But these are only the minimum harms, suffered by the least vulnerable inmates in the best-run prisons. Most prisons are run badly, and in some, conditions are more squalid than in the worst of slums. In the District of Columbia jail, for example, inmates must wash their clothes and sheets in cell toilets because the laundry machines are broken. Vermin and insects infest the building, in which air vents are clogged with decades' accumulation of dust and grime. But even inmates in prisons where conditions are sanitary must still face the numbing boredom and emptiness of prison life—a vast desert of wasted days in which little in the way of meaningful activity is possible.<ref name="golash" />}}

=== Destructiveness to thinking and betterment ===
There are critics of punishment who argue that punishment aimed at intentional actions forces people to suppress their ability to act on intent. Advocates of this viewpoint argue that such suppression of intention causes the harmful behaviors to remain, making punishment counterproductive. These people suggest that the ability to make intentional choices should instead be treasured as a source of possibilities of betterment, citing that complex cognition would have been an evolutionarily useless waste of energy if it led to justifications of fixed actions and no change as simple inability to understand arguments would have been the most thrifty protection from being misled by them if arguments were for social manipulation, and reject condemnation of people who intentionally did bad things.<ref>''Mind, Brain and Education'', Kurt Fischer, Christina Hinton</ref> Punishment can be effective in stopping undesirable employee behaviors such as tardiness, absenteeism or substandard work performance. However, punishment does not necessarily cause an employee to demonstrate a desirable behavior.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/stories/1996/11/18/focus3.html|title=Punishment in the workplace creates undesirable side effects|last=Milbourn|first=Gene Jr.|date=November 1996|access-date=November 21, 2018}}</ref>