3.4 punishment Flashcards
What is meant by deterrence?
- punishing the individual discourages them from future offending
- making an example of them may also serve as a deterrent to the public at large
What is meant by rehabilitation?
- the idea that punishment can be used to reform/change offenders so they no longer offend
What is meant by incapacitation?
- the use of punishment to remove the offender’s capacity to offend again
How can punishment act as a form of retribution?
- the idea that offenders deserve to be punished, and that society is entitled to take its revenge on the offender for having breached its moral code
According to Durkheim, what is the function of punishment?
- to uphold social solidarity and reinforce shared values, it expresses society’s emotions of moral outrage at the offence
What is meant by retributive justice?
- punishment is severe and cruel, and its motivation is purely expressive
- this produces a strong collective conscience, which when offended responds with vengeful passion to repress the wrongdoer
What is meant by restuitive justice?
- aims to restore things to how they were before the offence
- its motivation is instrumental, to restore society’s equilibrium
- crime damages the interdependence, so it’s necessary to repair the damage
What do marxists say the function of punishment is?
- to maintain the existing social order
- it’s a means of defending ruling-class property
What is the form of punishment under capitalism?
- imprisonment becomes the dominant form of punishment
- it reflects the economic base of society
How do Melossi and Pavarini argue that imprisonment refects capitalist relations of production?
- capitalism puts a price on the worker’s time; so too prisoners ‘do time’ to ‘pay’ for their crimes
- the prison and the capitalist factory both have a similar strict disciplinary style, involving subordination and loss of liberty
How has the role of prison changed since the Enlightenment?
- it was only after the Enlightenment that imprisonment began to be seen as a form of punishment in itself
What evidence is there to suggest that imprisonment may not be an effective method of rehabilitation?
- 2/3 prisoners commit further crimes on release
- many critics therefore regard prisons as simply an expensive way of making bad people worse
Why have prison populations increased in England and Wales?
- New Labour govts after 1997 took the view that prison should be used not just for serious offenders, but also as a deterrent for persistent petty offenders
How does the rate of incarceration in America compare to that in Europe?
- it is over three times the European rate of imprisonment, despite the fact that rates of victimisation in the USA are about the same as those in Europe
According to Garland, what is the impact of these high rates of incarceration in the US?
- ‘it becomes the systematic imprisonment of whole groups of the population’
What is meant by transcarceration?
- the idea that individuals become locked into a cycle of control, shifting between different carceral agencies during their lives e.g. living in care
What are some examples of community-based controls that are used as alternatives to prison?
- curfews
- community service orders
- treatment orders
- electronic tagging
According to Cohen, how has community-based controls cast the net of control over more people?
- the increased range of sanctions available simply enables control to penetrate ever deeper into society
- community controls may divert young people into the CJS
