Class, the Courts and Punishment

Question 1

What fraction of the Prison population are unskilled or unemployed?

Answer 1

2/3’s

Question 2

The Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction survey found that what percentage never had a job, what percentage were on benefits 12 months prior to incarceration and what percentage had no qualifications?

Answer 2

13% had never had a job, 64% were on benefits 12months prior to incarceration and 47% had no qualifications.

Question 3

What is the idea that the middle class are the ‘invisible offenders’?

Answer 3

That the Police focus on burglary and robbery (street crime) rather that that of embezzlement and tax evasion.

Question 4

Differential treatment? How might the middle class be treated differently when committing the same offence?

Answer 4

Bad attitude (of lower classes), demeanour (of middle class) and latchkey kids.

Question 5

Political and Economic formations (1) What is Neo-liberalism?

Answer 5

Key Phrases: free market capitalism, individual liberties, acceptance of material inequalities over individual freedoms.

Question 6

Political and Economic formations (2) What is Conservative Corporatism?

Answer 6

Key Phrases: key groups (such as unions and businesses) integrate with nation state and negotiate mutually beneficial policies.

Question 7

Political and Economic formations (3) What is a Social Democracy?

Answer 7

Key Phrases: Use of welfare systems to promote egalitarian government, reducing social inequalities by having highly distributive regimes.

Question 8

In US incarceration, prison is a common life even for what birth cohort?

Answer 8

Black, non-college males

Question 9

How might higher class perpetrators receive a harsher sentence?

Answer 9

Weberian explanation: honour based: their status warrant more punitive punishment.