1. WHAT IS CORRECTIONS? Flashcards
CORRECTIONS
functions carried out by government and private agencies having to do with the punishment, treatment, supervision, and management of individuals who have been accused or convicted of criminal offenses.
Corrections is also the name-
we give to the field of academic study of the theories, missions, policies, systems, programs, and personnel that implement those functions as well as the behaviors and experiences of offenders.
PENOLOGY
Study of the processes and institutions involved in the punishment and prevention of crime.
Most people in the United States likely
know someone who is or has been in prison or jail.
Impact of the war on drugs:
37% of the arrests that result in a jail or prison term are for drug offenses.
THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF CORRECTIONS
sociological thinkers:
Human nature is essentially good and a blank slate at birth, which is molded by cultures and environmentalists to produce criminality.
THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF CORRECTIONS
Biological/Neurological thinkers:
There is an innate human drive to survive and reproduce, which results in evolution selecting for antisocial traits like low empathy and aggressiveness that can lead to criminality; they often believe that prosocial behavior must be learned.
PUNISHMENT
The act of imposing some unwanted burden on convicted persons in response to their crimes.
HAMMURABI
The earliest known written code of punishment. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
What did the Hammurabi laws do?
These laws codified the natural inclination of individuals harmed by others to seek revenge, but they also recognized that personal revenge must be restrained if society is not to be fractured by a cycle of tit-for-tat blood feuds.
CONTROLLED VENGEANCE
Means that the state takes away the responsibility for punishing wrongdoers from the individuals who were wronged and assumes it for itself.
ENLIGHTENMENT
Period in history when a major shift in the way people viewed the world and their place in it occurred, moving from a supernaturalistic worldview to a naturalistic and rational worldview.
Enlightenment ideas led to
The Classical School
CLASSICAL SCHOOL
School of penology/criminology that was a nonempirical mode of inquiry similar to the philosophy practiced by the classical Greek philosophers.
Beccaria believed in
just and reasonable punishment intended to preserve public safety and order, not to avenge a victim.
Beccaria elaborated on 3 elements of punishment:
Certainty, Swiftness, and Severity
PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY
The supposition that human action should be judged moral or immoral by its effects on the happiness of the community.
POSITIVISTS
Those who believe that human actions have causes and that these causes are to be found in the thoughts and experiences that typically precede those actions. Prioritizes science.
Emile Durkheim observed that
over the course of social evolution, humankind has moved from retributive justice to restitutive justice.
RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
A philosophy of punishment driven by a passion for revenge.
RESTITUTIVE JUSTICE
A philosophy of punishment driven by simple deterrence and a need to repair the wrongs done.
Philosophies of punishment must do 2 things:
A philosophy of punishment involves defining the concept of punishment and the values, attitudes, and beliefs contained in that definition.
Justify the imposition of a painful burden on someone.
There are 5 major objectives/justification for the practice of punishing criminals:
Retribution, Deterrence, Rehabilitation, Incapacitation, and Reintegration.
HEDONISM
A doctrine maintaining that all life goals are desirable only as means to the end of achieving pleasure or avoiding pain.
RATIONALITY
The state of having good sense and sound judgment based on the evidence before us. (Should not be confused with morality, because its goal is self-interest.)
HEDONISTIC CALCULUS
A method by which individuals are assumed to logically weigh the anticipated benefits of a given course of action against its possible costs.
HUMAN AGENCY
The capacity of humans to make choices and their responsibility to make moral ones regardless of internal or external constraints on their ability to do so.
RETRIBUTION
A philosophy of punishment demanding that criminals’ punishments match the degree of harm the criminals have inflicted on their victims- what they justly deserve.
A “just desserts” model taps into
the human desire for punishment without serving any secondary purpose like rehabilitation or deterrence.
DETERRENCE
A philosophy of punishment aimed at the prevention of crime by the threat of punishment. May be either specific or general
SPECIFIC DETERRENCE
The supposed effect of punishment on the future behavior of persons who experience the punishment.
For specific deterrence to work
iit is necessary that a previously punished person make a conscious connection between an intended criminal act and the punishment suffered as a result of similar acts committed in the past.
RECIDIVISM
When an ex-offender commits further crimes. (DOES NOT apply to crimes committed while incarcerated.)
The longer ex-inmates are free
the more likely they will reoffend.
CONTRAST EFFECT
The effect of punishment on future behavior depending on how much the punishment and the usual life experience of the person being punished differ or contrast.
Deterrence works least for
the people who need it the most.
GENERAL DETERRENCE
The presumed preventative effect of the threat of punishment on the general population. It is aimed at potential offenders.
INCAPACITATION
A philosophy of punishment that refers to the inability of criminals to victimize people outside prison walls while they are locked up.
The incapacitation justification probably originated with who?
Enrico Ferri, his concept of social defense.
Ferri believed that moral insensibility and
lack of foresight, underscored by low intelligence, were criminals’ most marked characteristics.
SOCIAL DEFENSE
The primary influence on punishment should be the offender’s strength of resistance to criminal impulses.
SELECTIVE INCAPACITATION
A punishment strategy that reserves prison largely for a distinct group of offenders composed primarily of violent repeat offenders. “Law of diminishing returns.”
REHABILITATION
A philosophy of punishment aimed at “curing” criminals of their antisocial behavior.
The rehabilitative goal is based on
a medical model that used to view criminal behavior as a moral sickness requiring treatment.
The goal of rehabilitation is
to change offenders’ attitudes so they come to accept their behavior was wrong, not to deter them by the threat of further punishment.
REINTEGRATION
A philosophy of punishment that aims to use the time criminals are under correctional supervision to prepare them to reenter the free community as well equipped to do so as possible.
CRIME CONTROL MODEL
A model of law that emphasizes community protection from criminals and stresses that civil liberties can have real meaning only in a safe, well-ordered society.
In the Crime Control Model, in order to achieve a well-ordered society,
it is necessary to suppress criminal activity swiftly, efficiently, and with finality, and this demand a well-oiled criminal justice system.
The Crime Control Model consists of two elements:
An administrative fact-finding process leading to the exoneration of the suspect.
The entry of a plea of guilty.
DUE PROCESS MODEL
A model of law that stresses the accused’s rights more than the rights of the community.
The Due Process Model is more concerned with
the integrity of the legal process than with its efficiency and with legal guilt rather than whether the accused is factually guilty.
