2.2- discuss the aims of punishment Flashcards
Retribution - ‘just deserts’
Meaning retribution is based on the idea that criminals should get their ‘just desert’, offenders deserve to be punished and society is morally entitles to take its revenge.
Retribution - proportionality
The punishment should fit the crime, it should be equal: ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life’. This is why some people argue that murderers should suffer death penalty. This leads to a ‘tariff’ system or a fixed scale of mandatory penalties for different offences.
Retribution - expressing moral outrage
Its a way for society to express its moral condemnation or outrage of the offender. A justification for punishing crimes already committed, not preventing future ones.
Retribution - an example
Hate crimes carry an ‘uplift’ or higher tariff sentences, because it reflects society’s outrage of the offence. The maximum penalty for grievously bodily harm is 5 years bit if you can prove it was racially motivated it can be increased to 7 years.
Retribution - with theories
It is linked to right realist theories of criminality, such as rational choice theory. Like these retribution assumes offenders consciously choose to commit crimes and weigh up benefits and negatives and are fully responsible, therefore must suffer consequence. It also links with functionalists like Durkheim who believe retribution acts as a function for boundary maintenance, reminding everyone else what is right and wrong.
Criticisms of retribution
Can be argues defenders deserve forgiveness, mercy or another chance to make amends. If there is a fixed tariff, punishment has to be inflicted even where no good is going to come of it. How do we decide what is a proportionate penalty and what isn’t.
Rehabilitation
The idea that punishment can be used to reform or change offenders, so they no longer offend and go on to live a crime-free life. It uses various treatment programmes to change the offenders future behaviour by addressing the issues which led to their offending.
Rehabilitation - policies
Education and training programmes, anger management courses and drug treatment or testing orders. Community sentences often include requirements for offenders to engage in such programmes as part of their sentence.
Rehabilitation - support
Rehabilitation polices generally require offenders to actively want to change their lives, resources, professional support, probation officers and others to achieve change. This is crucial when excluded from mainstream society and need to be reintegrated into community.
Rehabilitation - with theories
It is linked to individualistic theories, as seeing rehabilitation as a significant aim of punishment. As well as cognitive theories, (cognitive behavioural therapies) to teach offender the correct thinking errors and biases. Also eyesnck’s personality theory: favours the use of aversion therapy. Also Skinner’s operant learning theory: the usage of token economies to promote acceptable behaviour. AND sociological theories like left realism, looking at causes like unemployment, educational opportunities and poverty.
Criticisms of rehabilitation
Right realists argue it has limited success, in that many re-offend after undergoing programmes. Marxists criticise it for shifting responsibility on individual offenders failings in life rather than how capitalism has led people to crime.
Deterrence
To deter someone from doing something is to put them off doing it, the fear of being caught and punished may deter people from committing crime.
Individual deterrence
Uses punishment to deter the individual offender from re-offending, may convince the offender that it is not worth repeating the experience. Based on the argument that ‘prison works’.
General deterrence
Aims at deterring society from breaking the law, if the public is to see an individual offender being punished, they will also see that they suffer the consequences and can envision this if they commit a similar crime: making an example of the individual to teach others a lesson.
General deterrence - examples
Executions, floggings or putting offenders in the stocks.
Deterrence - severity v certainty
Important to distinguish, however severe the punishment might be for a particular offence, if there is very little chance of being caught and convicted: unlikely to deter would be offenders. Having a mandatory minimum sentence (like 3 years imprisonment for committing thirds domestic burglary), only about 5% of reported burglaries result in conviction so is still unlikely to deter: the likeliness of being caught.
Deterrence - with theories
It links with right realism because it favours deterrence as crime prevention, it supports ideas like rational choice theory and situational crim prevention strategies (like target hardening) which would evidently explain why people deter from crime. It also links with social learning theory (general deterrence), if would-be offenders see a model of being punished they are less likely to imitate.
Deterrence - criticisms
There is very little evidence that short, sharp shocks or boot camps reduced youth offending. The fact about half of all prisoners re-offend within a year suggests prison is not an effective deterrent. How do we decide how severe a punishment needs to be to deter? Deterrence assumes would-be offenders know what the punishments are but they may be ignorant. Assumes offenders act rationally, weighing up the risks but often it is acts irrationally driven by emotions. People who break laws that they believe are unjust are unlikely to be deterred.
Public protection - incapacitation
Used to protect the public from further offending by incapacitating offenders, the removal of the offenders physical capability to offend.
Public protection - policies
Execution, cutting off the hands of thieves, chemical castration of sex offenders, banishment (early 19th century convicts were often transported to Australia), foreign travel bans and curfews and electronic tagging.
Public protection - imprisonment
The main means of incapacitation in todays societies is imprisonment, important part of the claim that ‘prison works’.
Public protection - the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997
Incapacitation has influenced sentencing laws, this one introduced mandatory minimum jail sentences for repeat offenders: automatic life sentences for a second serious sexual or violent offence, 7 years minimum for a third class A drug trafficking offence, 3 years minimum for a third domestic burglary conviction.
Public protection - the Criminal Justice Act 2003
Introduced idea of ‘imprisonment for public protection’, this allowed courts to give an indeterminate sentence (one with no fixed release date) to a ‘dangerous’ offender who is convicted of certain serious violent or sexual offences. (However in 2012, indeterminate sentences were abolished for new cases).
Public protection - ‘3 strikes and you’re out’ laws
Introduced in the 1990s, these give offenders long prison sentences for a third offence, however minor, if either of their 2 earlier offences was a serious crime. For example, in 1995 Jerry Williams was given 25 years to life without parole for stealing a slice of pizza (reduced to 6 years on appeal).
Public protection - theories
It is linked to biological theories, Lombroso argued that criminals are biologically different from the rest of the population and it is not possible to change or rehabilitate them. Favoured sending habitual criminals into exile, like detaining them on islands or having chemical or surgical castration. It is also linked with right realists, in which see incapacitation as a way of protecting the public from crime, a small number of persistent offenders are responsible for the majority of crime, incapacitating with long prison sentences would reduce crime rate.
Public protection - criticisms
Incapacitation leads to longer sentences and long-term ‘warehousing’ of offenders with little hope of release, an ever-rising prison population and associated costs. It is a strategy of containment or risk management, it does nothing to deal with causes of crime, or trying to change offenders into law abiding citizens. The ‘ three strikes’ principle re-punishes individuals for their previous crimes. It is unjust because it imprisons them for crimes that the law assumes they may commit in the future.
Reparation
Involves making amends for a wrong they have done, whether to an individual victim, society as a whole or both. The harm done can be both material and social.
Reparation - examples
Financial compensation to the victim, like paying for the cost of repairing damage done to someone’s property. Courts have the power to impose compensation orders on offenders. Another being unpaid work, to make reparation to society through community payback, for example removing graffiti from public buildings, this is imposed by the court as part of a community order.
Reparation - restorative justice
Making amends for the social damage involves the offender recognising the wrongfulness of their actions, this can be done through restorative justice schemes, which bring offender and victim together often with a mediator. This allows the victim to explain the impact the crim has had, offender can appreciate harm they’ve caused, express remorse and seek forgiveness. Bringing closure to the victim and reintegrating the offender into society.
Reparation - theories
It is linked with labelling theory, as it favours restorative justice as a way of integrating offenders into mainstream society by enabling them to show genuine remorse, preventing them from secondary deviance. It is also linked with functionalists like Durkheim that argue ‘restitutive justice’ is reparation to place things how they were before the crime was committed its essential for the smooth functioning of complex modern societies.
Reparation - criticisms
May not work for all types of offence, compensation for damage to property or minor offence may be fairly straightforward but can reparation be made for sexual or violent crime. A rape victim may not want to face or forgive the rapist. Some regard reparation as too soft a form of punishment that lets offenders off lightly.
