Environmental Issues
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The importance of expressive and communicative forms of punishment can best be described as helping people to become more morally autonomous through the actions of being punished or penalized. Resulting in the correction of the individual's moral character through denunciation, condemnation or addressing the offender individually with a view of motivating reform.
J.Feinberg writes about reform in terms of Expressivism, in which an offender is condemned or denounced until the moral character of that individual is corrected. Another aspect of Expressivism relates to the penalty, in which retribution for a minor crime is given in such a way that it does not prohibit the offender from repeating their offense. Feinberg further explains, "The distinction between punishments and mere penalties, is the essentially reprobative function of the former" (1970, p. 83). This statement draws a distinction between the two based on the harshness of punishment, and the motive to reform the individual's moral character though more extreme measures. Penalties have no definable goal, except to make the person that committed the offense feel a burden for their crime.
The communicative form of punishment is meant to address the offender without motivating reform...