Ethics of Punishment Paper

Ethics of Punishment

Ethics of Punishment

Punishment can be described as aversive stimuli administered as a response to unwanted behavior or the penalty for an offense. As leaders and developers of subordinates, it is important to instill discipline. In the Army, leading others, developing subordinate leaders, and achieving desired behaviors are important to cohesion and productive senior-subordinate relationships. It is important to understand how ethics are integral to administering punishment as ethics are the system of moral values and principles of conduct.

Concerns with Punishment

For any senior-subordinate relationship to be productive and balanced within the Army, it is necessary to maintain a balance of military authority, leading by example, counseling, and discipline. Leaders must first identify the problem behavior to the subordinate before taking corrective actions when utilizing military discipline as a form of punishment. According to Army leadership requirement models, a leader must use his or ethics when enforcing punishment on subordinate Soldiers so as the punishment fits the crime, training value is part of the punishment, and punishment is used sparingly (ADRP, 2012).

Punishment in the form of corrective action in the Army is utilized to enforce discipline, maintain standards, and correct deficiencies within the ranks. When Soldiers do not uphold standards, display insubordinate behavior, or fail to perform, leaders have general military authority to impose punishment to correct unwanted behavior; many Army leaders generally use a form of exercise combinations as punishment. If a Soldier is given a task such as performing pre-combat checks on equipment and either fails to properly perform the checks or lies about performing the checks, punishment can be administered by either taking his or her time, money, or freedom (ADRP, 2012).

Punishment for unwanted behavior must be timely and consistent in nature and response in order to avoid a model of victim punishment as described by Malott and Shane (2014) as the sick social cycle. If the Soldier who perpetrates the unwanted behavior is not consistently punished in a timely manner, the leader could become the victim of future episodes of similar behavior. The Army leadership requirement model states leaders must use punishment to instill discipline and achieve results with subordinates (ADRP, 2012).

When Extinction is Beneficial

Extinction is the most effective method for eliminating unwanted behavior. Extinction differs from punishment according to arguments of some researchers because punishment does not remove the problem behavior, but rather only hides the behavior. Theorists argue the most effective way to cause extinction of unwanted behavior is to make the target behavior difficult if not impossible to perform; redirection and replacement behavior are two possible means for causing the extinction of unwanted behavior (Sutton & Barto, 1998).

If a Soldier fails to perform appointed duties or lies about performing the duties such as pre-combat checks on equipment, a leader has numerous tools for redirecting Soldier behavior such as corrective training, negative counseling, adverse action, or confinement to quarters. Soldiers can also incur additional duties as administrative punishment or be required to have a battle buddy present at all times in an effort to cause replacement behavior in the extinction model (ADRP, 2012).

Possible Side Effects