Changes In Crime And Punishment - Attitudes To Crime And Punishment

Question 1

What was the purpose of medieval punishment?

Answer 1

Deterrence - make them scared of punishment
Retribution - an eye for an eye
Keeping order

Question 2

How was humiliation used?

Answer 2

The Tudor and Stuart period saw little change in punishment
Increased crime rate meant more public punishments
Vagabonds where whipped and flogged through the streets and heretics were burned at the stake
Those put in the stocks an pillory for drunkenness and sweating were ridiculed and pelted with rotten food

Question 3

What was a gibbet?

Answer 3

A warning post where the corpses of executed criminals were left as a warning to others

Question 4

When was public execution a common form of punishment?

Answer 4

The sixteenth and seventeenth century
Crimes threatening the order of society, such as treason, rioting, arson, murder or counterfeiting, heresy
Hanging was most common

Question 5

What were lesions used for in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

Answer 5

Places of detention for holding offenders before other punishments would be carried out. These were often secure rooms or dungeons in castles or fortresses

Question 6

What was the shift in attitudes in the eighteenth century?

Answer 6

Shift away from brutal punishments to the idea that punishment should fit the seriousness of the crime and criminals should have help to build better lives

Question 7

What was the idea of banishment?

Answer 7

Transportation

Question 8

What happened in 1717?

Answer 8

An Act laid down a formal system of transportation with sentences of 7 years, 14 years, or life
Convicts would be transported to penal colonies to work

Question 9

Why was transportation introduced?

Answer 9

Hanging was the only punishment for theft so judges would let offenders off
Building and maintaining prisons was expensive
Workers were needed on the plantations and farms of Britain’s empire
Criminals would be reformed by hard work as part of the pardon system
Dangerous and undesirable people removed from the country

Question 10

What happened when transportation ended?

Answer 10

Caused problems
Old and rotting ships, hulks, were used
Taken ashore to work
Hulks continued to be used for convicts awaiting transportation

Question 11

Why were prisons used more in the nineteenth century?

Answer 11

The gradual abandonment of transportation
Reduction in capital crimes
1868 end to public execution reflected attitude to punishment
Most criminals could be reformed with right punishment

Question 12

What did John Howard believe?

Answer 12

Prison could be use to reform, not just for deterrence and retribution.
Prisoners should be kept in solitary confinement to prevent bad influence.
Sir George O Paul devised a prison with an exercise yard, good ventilation, a chapel, workrooms

Question 13

What happened as a result of the 1823 Gaols Act?

Answer 13

Improved security and sanitation
Tried to bring order
Silent and separate system

Question 14

What happened as a result of the separate and silent systems?

Answer 14

Reoffending rate did not decline
Suicide and insanity rates high
Government decided to return to deterrence
The 1865 Penal Servitude Act ruled that all prisoners should experience hard labour, hard fare and hard board

Question 15

What were the contrasting views of punishment in the twentieth century?

Answer 15

Retribution
Rehabilitation

Question 16

What were Reform Schools?

Answer 16

1850s offenders aged 10-15 separated from home environment
1970s replaced with community homes

Question 17

What happened in 1902?

Answer 17

An experimental school to try to reform repeating offenders aged 15-21 was set up at a Borstal in Ken, focusing on routine, discipline and respecting authority
Borstals spread across UK 1908, abolished 1982

Question 18

What were Detention Centres/ Young Offenders Institutions?

Answer 18

Young offenders could also be given a custodial sentence at Juvenile prisons depending on age and offence

Question 19

When were ASBOs first used?

Answer 19

1999
Tagging and curfew orders 2003

Question 20

What was the system of dealing with young offenders?

Answer 20

Removing liberty
Designed to encourage self respect and self discipline as well as developing skills for employment

Question 21

What were arguments in favour of abolition of capital punishment?

Answer 21

Innocent person could be hanged
Not deterrent as most murders happen impulsively
Even the worst person may be reformed
The crime rate did not increase in countries who abolished capital punishment
Can make martyrs of criminals and terrorists

Question 22

What were arguments against abolition of capital punishment?

Answer 22

Hanging is the ultimate deterrent
A dead murder cannot kill agin
Prisons expensive
Satisfies victims family and public

Question 23

Who was Timothy Evans?

Answer 23

Hanged in 1950 for murders he did not commit after changing statement several times and confessing to accidentally murdering wife and daughter
Pardoned in 1966 after evidence found John Christie guilty

Question 24

Who was Derek Bentley?

Answer 24

Hanged in 1953 for a murder carried out by his juvenile accomplice
Bank robbery in 1952, ‘let him have it’
200MPs signed petition to prevent execution

Question 25

Who was Ruth Ellis?

Answer 25

Hanged in 1955 for the murder of her lover as a crime of passion

Question 26

What was the Homicide Act 1957?

Answer 26

Abolished hanging for all murders except for the murder of a police officer, murder by shooting or murder while resisting arrest

Question 27

What was the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act 1969?

Answer 27

Made all hanging illegal and finally ended capital punishment

Question 28

When did the last hanging in the UK take place?

Answer 28

13 August 1964

Question 29

What were modern attitudes to punishment?

Answer 29

Rehabilitation
Restitution

Question 30

What 3 schemes have been introduced in the last 60 years?

Answer 30

Parole
Community orders
Probation centres

Question 31

How did attitudes change?

Answer 31

Medieval - deter, public
16th and 17th C - harsh, public, retribution, Bloody Code
Industrial - harsh, deter, change in attitude to Bloody Code, private, transportation, silent and separate
Modern - abolition of death penalty, rehabilitation and community orders, prisons less harsh

Question 32

When did corporal punishment end?

Answer 32

1948

Question 33

What factors affected attitudes?

Answer 33

Ideas and attitudes including religion
Social change
Government
Media
Wealth and poverty
Fear of crime
Actions of individuals

Question 34

Bloody Code

Answer 34

1688-1815 Crimes punishable by death increased from 50 to 225
Stealing horses
Pickpocketing more than 1 shilling
Shoplifting more than 5 shillings
Sending threatening letters
Riots over food prices
Deter
Fear of crime
Urbanisation

Question 35

Pious Perjury

Answer 35

Found not guilty or reduce the value of the amount stolen to avoid the crime being capital

Question 36

Waltham Blacks

Answer 36

Poached with black faces
Harshest piece of legislation
Innocent should be able to argue case

Question 37

What ended the Bloody Code?

Answer 37

Increased petty crimes
No longer effective
Pious perjury
Enlightenment teachings
Alternatives

Question 38

In 1861 what were the 5 capital crimes?

Answer 38

Murder
Treason
Espionage
Arson in royal dockyards
Piracy with violence

Question 39

Miscarriage of justice?

Answer 39

Where an individual is tried, convicted and punished for a crime they did not commit

Question 40

What happened in 1999?

Answer 40

Capital punishment for piracy and treason abolished

Question 41

Changes in 20th Century

Answer 41

1902 - end of hard labour
1907 - Probation Service
1921 - uniform and shaving of head ended
1923 - end of silent system
1936 - first open prison
1948 - flogging ended

Question 42

In the 1970s what percentage of young offenders were reoffending?

Answer 42

60