Feinburg (1994, cited in: Easton, 2012: 4) states that punishment is “a symbolic way of taking revenge on the criminal, of expressing a kind of vindictive resentment”. When punishing an offender there are two key principles that determine the type of punishment. These are the retributivist response and the reductivist response. The first principle, Retributivism, focuses on punishing crime using "denunciation", where one reports the crime that has been committed so that society knows they have done something wrong, and also uses "just desert" where “an eye for an eye” fairness is the main idea. The second principle, reductivism, holds that deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation are the best strategy to use to punish. Its aim is to reduce crime and use punishment to achieve a goal. This essay will take a closer look and outline the purpose of just desert and deterrence as punishment in society. While these punishments are widely used in most crimes, this essay will specifically look at prolific offenders. Emile Durkheim's theory of collective consciousness is that everyone in society has common beliefs and feelings, and to think or act otherwise would be a moral outrage against this. So crime is inevitable, there will always be people who think differently from others in a supportive and organic society. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the purpose of punishment in society was to seek revenge and retribution for crimes, however, in the 18th century classicist criminological thinking emerged in response to the cruel punishments that were meted out. The two key leaders of this were Beccaria and Bentham, both utilitarians, so they believed that the reductionist approach to punishment would be the most effective. Beccaria argued that the purpose of punishment was to cause society to associate a strong link between crime and punishment so that they would know the consequences of their actions (Easten, S. and Piper, C,. 2012). punishment as quickly as possible and believed that the certainty of punishment in society would be the most effective way of deterrence (Newburn, T. 2007). The other key leader, Bentham, argued that the aim of punishment should be to show people that the cost of crime outweighs the gains from it. He was an advocate of the use of prisons and thought that punishment should be proportionate to the crime and have predictable and certain consequences to deter people from future crime.One