AC 2.2 Flashcards
What are the aims of punishment?
Retribution - Punishing offenders for their crime
Rehabilitation - Trying to change an offenders behaviour to be in line with the law
Deterrence - Deter future offenders
Public Protection - Protect the public from offenders
Reparation - Giving back to those effected e.g community service
What are the ideas of Retribution?
Involves inflicting punishment of an offender as vengeance for their criminal acts.
Retribution is based on the idea of ‘just deserts’ in that criminals should what they deserve to be punished and that society is morally entitled to take its revenge. The offender should be made to suffer for their crimes.
Retribution is also proportionate - this means the punishment given should be equal or proportionate to the harm done in their crime, also known as ‘an eye for an eye’. This is also why some believe that murderers should receive the death penalty.
Retribution is a way society expresses moral outrage of the actions of the offender, this is why a crime being a hate crime adds extra years to the sentence.
What theory is linked to retribution?
Linked to right realism theories of criminality such as rational choice theory. Believes criminals are fully responsible for their crimes and consciously choose to commit crimes and should therefore suffer the outrage of society as punishment
What are some criticisms of retribution?
*Could be argued offenders deserver forgiveness or a chance to make ammends rather than just punishment
*If there is a fixed tariff of penalties, punishment has to be inflicted even where no good is going to come of it.
- People disagree of what crimes are more serious than others meaning there is no accurate proportion to punish offenders or give ‘just deserts’.
What are the ideas of Rehabilitation?
The idea that punishment can be used to reform or change offenders for the better so they no-longer commit crimes. Rehabilitation uses various treatment programmes to change the offenders behaviour such as:
Education and training programmes
Anger Managment Programmes.
Drug treatment order (rehab)
Rehabilitation requires both offenders to active want to change their behaviour as well as the help of professionals such as therapists.
What theory is linked to Rehabilitation?
Links to Skinner operant conditioning theory through prison token economy to reward acceptable behaviour and therefore change their attitudes.
Links to Cognitive theories such as CBT to teach offenders to correct the thinking errors and biases that lead to aggressive behaviour.
What are some criticisms of rehabilitation?
Right Realists argue that despite rehabilitation techniques, there is still a very high recidivism rate in society suggesting they are ineffective.
Marxists criticise rehab programmes for shifting the responsibility of offending onto the individual entirely with 0 blame on the capitalist society that leads them to crime.
What are the ideas of Deterrence?
Deterrence means the punishment of one person deters other people from doing it in fear they will meet the same fate. There are two types individual or General.
Individual - refers to deter an individual from reoffending. For example going to prison once will individually deter them from wanting to commit another crime and risk going back.
General - deterring society in general from breaking the law, if the public see a individual offender being punished for an offence, it will deter them from wanting to commit that crime themselves. In the past this was done through public executions however now is done through the media.
There is also the aspect of severity versus certainty in that a serious punishment for a crime may not be a deterrent if the chance of being caught is very low e.g only 5% of reported burglary’s result in a conviction.
What theory is linked to Deterrence?
Right Realism favours deterrence as a means of crime prevention:
Rational choice theory sees individuals as rational actors who consciously choose to offend based on a cost-benefit analysis, therefore severe punishment should deter offending.
Links to Social Learning Theory - if would-be offenders see a model being punished for offending they will be less likely to want to imitate that offender.
What are some criticisms of Deterrence?
1) Assumes that future would-be offenders know what the punishments are while this is often not the case
2) Assumes all offenders act calculated and rationally when in reality most act irrationally and impulsively
What are the ideas of Public Protection?
Punishment is used to protect the public from further offences by incapacitating any offenders over history types of incapacitating include: execution, chemical castration and curfews.
The main means of incapacitation is imprisonment in modern day - it results in public protection as it directly takes offenders out of society preventing them from harming the public.
The role of imprisonment on public protection has also influenced sentencing laws such as the crime sentences act 1997 introducing minimum jail sentences for repeat offenders e.g automatic life sentence for someone’s second serious violent / sexual offence.
In 2003 the Criminal justice act introduced indeterminate sentence, with no fixed release date for dangerous offenders however this was abolished in 2012.
What theory is linked to Public Protection?
- Links to biological theories
Lombroso argued that criminals are biologically different from the rest of the population and it is not possible to change to rehabilitate them. He favoured sending habitual criminals to exile (e.g far away island) - Links to right realism
Right realists see incapacitation as an appropriate way of protecting the public from crime. This is because a small number of persistent offenders are responsible for the majority of the crime so incapacitating them with long prison sentences would reduce the crime rate.
What are some criticisms of Public Protection?
Leads to longer prison sentences and therefore additional funding and prison overcrowding.
Incapacitation does not address the problem of why the individuals are committing crime meaning the behaviour is unlikely to change.
What are the ideas of Reparation Involve
Involves offender making amends for a wrong they have done, whether to a specific individual or society as a whole. Can include:
* Financial Compensation e.g paying for damages
* Unpaid Work aka community work such as removing graffiti or picking up litter.
It also involves Restorative justice, a way of the offender making ammends for the damage done by meeting with the victim, with a mediator present and allowing the victim to explain the impact of the crime allowing the offender to express their remorse, in turn giving back to the victim.
What theory is linked to Reparation?
Functionalists such as Durkhiem argue Restorative Justice is essential to restore things back to how they were prior to the crime.
