Chapter 1-5 Flashcards
Corrections hope is…
-Trying to push people to the normative range of the bell curve
Pendulum analogy
-Either it is reform or (harsh) punishment
~The pendulum never stops the movement between the two sides, which is why the pendulum never stops
Balloon Analogy
-Corrections
-Courts
-Cops
~When people squeeze one side, the other side takes the pressure
*When we increase cops, then the court system can get backed up, which sends more people to jail, causing backups in the jails
EBP
-Evidence
-Based
-Practice
~Education: 90% have no GED and SSN
~
Three Major Subsystems
-The police
-The courts
-The corrections
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 convicted of criminal offenses
The Correctional Enterprise Exists
-To “correct,” “amend,” or “put right” the attitudes and behaviors of its “Clientele”
Difficult Task
-Because many offender have a psychological, emotional, or financial investment in their current lifestyles and have no intention of being “corrected”
“Punishment Process”
-Because the correctional enterprise is primarily about punishment
~Which, as Hawthorne reminds us, is an unfortunate but necessary part of life
Penology
-The study of the processes and institutions involved in the punishment and prevention of crime
African-American men in their Twenties
-Almost one-third are under some form of correctional control, and one-sixth have been to prison
Expenditures for corrections in 2011
-All 50 states was approximately $52 billon
~88% were going to prisons
~12% were for probation and parole
Two-thirds of Arrestees
-Are prosecuted
~ Sometimes, due to the lack of evidence
Four out of 69 Arrests
-Result in an actual trial
~94% of all felony prosecutions in the nation’s 75 most populous countries resulted in a plea bargain in which a lighter sentence is imposed in exchange for a guilty plea
Innate Human nature that evolved driven by the overwhelming concerns of all living things
-To survive and reproduce
Some people see human nature as selfish
-Not “bad,” just self-centered
-Maintain that certain traits evolved in response to survival and reproductive challenges faced by our species that bias out learning in certain directions
Criminologist Gwynn Nettler
-“If we grow up ‘naturally’, without cultivation, like weeds, we grow up like weeds-rank.”
~We learn to be bad or good
*The assumptions about human nature we hold influences our ideas about how we should treat the accused or convicted once they enter the correctional system
Punishment
-The act of imposing some unwanted burden such as fine, probation, imprisonment, or death on convicted persons in response to their crimes
The written code of Punishment was the ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi
-Created about 1780 BC
~These laws codified the natural inclination of individuals harmed by another 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
Blood Feud
-Revenge killings
-Perpetuate the injustice that “righteous” revenge was supposed to diminish
Controlled vengeance
-The state takes away the responsibility for punishing wrongdoers from the individuals who were wronged and assumes it for itself
Cruel Tortures
-On criminals to literally “beat the devil out of them” were justified by the need to save sinners’ souls
Enlightenment
-Period in history in which a major shift in the way people viewed the world and their place in it occurred, moving from a supernaturalistic to naturalistic and rational worldview
Classical Schools
-The Classical School of penology/criminology was a nonempirical mode of inquiry similar to the philosophy practiced by the classical Greek philosophers
~One based on logic and reason
Professor of Law Cesare Bonseana
-Published what was to become the manifesto for the reform of judicial and penal systems throughout Europe
Beccaria argued that
-Punishments should be proportionate to the harm done, should be identical for identical crimes, and should be applied without reference to the social status of either offender or victim
Beccaria made no effort to plumb the depth of criminal character or motivation
-Arguing that crime is simply the result of “the despotic spirit which is in every man
Three elements of Punishment as Follows
-Certainty
~”The certainty of punishment even if it be moderate, will always make a stronger impression that the fear of another which is more terrible but combined with the hope of impunity”
-Swiftness
~”The more promptly and the more closely punishment follows upon the commission of a crime, the more just and useful will it be”
-Severity
~”For a punishment to attain its end, the evil which it inflicts has only to exceed the advantage derivable from the crime; in this excess of evil, one should include the… loss of good which the crime might have produced. All beyond this is superfluous and for that reason tyrannical”
Principle of Utility
-Positing that human action should be judged moral or immoral by its effects on the happiness of the community and that the proper function of the legislature is to make laws aimed to maximizing the pleasure and minimizing the pains of the population
Understanding human motivation
-“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.”
Enlightenment concept of human nature
-Which was seen as hedonistic, rational, and endowed with free will
Positivists
-Those who believe that human actions have causes and that these causes are to be found un the thoughts and experiences that typically precede those actions
“Born Criminals”
-Early positivism went to extremes to espouse a hard form of determinism that implied the assertion were…
Raffaele Garofalo
-Believed that because human action is often evoked by circumstances beyond human control, the only thing to be considered as sentencing was the offender’s “peculiarities,” or risk factors for crime
~Temperament, extreme poverty, intelligence, certain situations
Extreme Criminals
-Whom we might call psychopaths
Impulsive Criminals
-
Endemic Criminals
-Those who commit what we today might call victimless crimes
Cooperative Behavior
-Is important for all social species and is built on mutual trust, which is why violating that trust evokes moral outrage and results in punitive sanctions
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
Four Major objectives or justifications for the practice of punishing criminals then later on added on to be five
-Retribution
-Deterrence
-Rehabilitation
-Incapacitation
-Reintegration
Hedonism
-A doctrine maintaining that all goals in life are means to the end of achieving pleasure and/or avoiding pain
Rationality
-The state of having good sense and sound judgement based on the evidence before us
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 criminal punishments match the degree of harm they have inflicted on their victims, that is, what they justly deserve
Deterrence
-A philosophy of punishment aimed at the prevention of crime by the threat of punishment
Specific Deterrence
-The supposed effect of punishment on the future behavior of persons who experience the punishment
Recidivism
-Occurs when an ex-offender commits further crimes
Contrast Effect
-The effect of punishment on future behavior depends on how much the punishment and the usual life experience of the person being punished differ or contrast
General Deterrence
-The presumed preventive effect on the general population
Potential Offenders
-“People are not sent to prison primarily for their own good, or even in the hope that they will be cured of crime… It is used as a warning and deterrent to other”
Our national calculations
-Are both subjective and bounded
Incapacitation
-A philosophy of punishment that refers to the inability of criminals to victimize people outside prison walls while they are locked up
“Natural Experiment”
-When the Italian government released one-third of Italy’s prison inmates with 3 years or less left to serve on their sentences on 2006
Social Benefits of Imprisonment
-Outweigh the costs by 17 to 1
~Typically, an offender commits 15 crimes in a year rather than 187, which reduces the benefit/cost ratio to 1.38 to 1 rather than 17 to 1
Selective Incapacitation
-Refers to a punishment strategy that largely reserves prison for a distinct group of offenders composed primarily of violent repeat offenders
Cohort
-Is a group composed of subjects having something in common, such as being born within a given time frame and/or in a particular place
“The Law of Diminishing Returns”
-As we increase incarcerations more and more, we quickly skim off the 5 to 10% of serious offenders and begin to incarcerate offenders who would best be dealt with within the community
~In monetary (and other social cost) terms, we develop a situation economists call
Rehabilitation
-A philosophy of punishment aimed at “curing” criminals of their antisocial behavior
Reintegration
-A philosophy of punishment that aims to use correctional supervision to prepare them to reenter the free community as well equipped to do so as possible