5.3 Approaches of Punishment

5.3.1 Punitive ApproachPunishment as deserved suffering for its own sake — the debt-to-society theory in administration: fixed tariffs, severity as the message, the prison as default. Strength: the retributive instinct's honesty (proportionality, blame); weakness: the criminogenic prison (Unit 6), recidivism's return, and the brutalisation effect where punishment imitates the crime it condemns.5.3.2 Therapeutic ApproachCrime as symptom — the offender as patient (the positivist schools' administrative face): diagnosis (risk and need assessment), treatment (counselling, addiction care, education, vocational training), and release on "cure" rather than expiry. Strength: individualisation (the Lamichhane sentence's spirit — Unit 3); weaknesses: the indeterminate sentence's unfairness, treatment's coercion, the "nothing works" turbulence of the 1970s and the "what works" revival (the risk-need-responsivity model — names only).5.3.3 Preventive ApproachPunishment to stop future crime — the consequentialist administration: general prevention (the example's deterrence — certainty and celerity over severity) and individual prevention (incapacitation of the dangerous; the habitual offender's long tail; today's preventive justice debates — preventive detention's constitutional tightrope). The approaches mix in every real system — Nepal's Sentencing Act 2074 orders the court to weigh the offence's gravity and the offender's corrective needs: the three approaches in one statute.