Nietzsche on punishment, guilt

Every time I sit down to read Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals I am a little more glad that I decided to buy it. In the section I just finished, Nietzsche discusses some CJ related concepts in punishment and guilt, or "bad conscience".

At several points in both undergrad and grad school, the "goals" or "philosophies" of punishment have been discussed. In essence, these goals are the utilities of various forms of punishment. They are typically listed as being retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, rehabilitation, and more recently, restoration. Nietzsche's first point on these utilities is that they are really the ends of the punishment, regardless of the means, but that these ends should not be confused with the origin of various punishments. The reason for this, he argues, is that the fact that anything has a utility to an end is an indication that it has been "put to a new purpose by a force superior to itself". This is too much of a blanket statement for my liking, but I believe the general point is a valid one. That one should not confuse an object's present utility as the reason for it's origin. Punishment, over time, has mutated as it has been legally monopolized by the state.

The next point that Nietzsche touches on is that these utilities of punishment are not mutually exclusive, in that they arise in an "uncertain, supplementary, and accidental nature." To illustrate, he provides several examples. As he provided them, I wrote out which of these utilities were covered by each example. Here are only a few.

• Punishment as rendering the criminal harmless and incapable of further injury. This is fairly straight-forward, incapacitation.
  
• Punishment as a compenstation for the injury sustained by the injured party, in any form whatsoever. This example mostly concerns retribution, but may also apply to restoration. In that "compensation" may be the reforming of broken bonds.
  
• Punishment as a means of inspiring fear of those who determine and execute the punishment. I immediately thought of general deterrence, but there is a special exception here. General deterrence typically refers to a fear of the punishment which corresponds with the particular offense, not specifically the fear of those who deliver the punishment.
  
• Punishment as a kind of compensation for advantages which the wrongdoer has up to that time enjoyed. This seems to refer both retribution and specific deterrence, in that imprisonment is seen as the "cost" for violating the social contract, under which the prisoner had enjoyed above all, freedom.

The final point I wanted to touch on was what Neitzsche felt about the effectiveness of punishment, as that is still very relevant in CJ today. Perhaps somewhat ahead of his time in recognizing this, Nietzsche points out that punishments as they existed then (and today), do not appear to be effective deterrents of re-offending. The reason for this, he posits, is because punishments as they are carried out by the state do not induce genuine guilt, remorse, or "bad consicence" on the behalf of the punished. Rather, physical punishments harden and numb individuals, sharpening the more negative aspects of their personalities. Part of the reason for this takes on something of a modern critical criminology perspective. He argues that punishments do not induce genuine guilt because of hypocrisy on behalf of the punisher. The offender witnesses some of the offenses for which he is to be punished - stealing, bribery, murder - being carried out "legitimately" by actors of the state (the police, the military, politicians, etc.). Thus, as the offender is punished they do not see themselves being punished for an act which is worthy of such punishment intrinsically, but rather only by certain individuals in certain contexts.