CRIME AND DEVIANCE - Crime, Punishment and Control - Includes Punishment and Prisons Flashcards

Question

(FOUCAULT) What were the Types of Power he identified?

Answer 1

SOVEREIGN POWER = Before the 19th Century, the monarchy had absolute power (think 'off with her head') and it was brutal (EG: Public executions). This power is enforced through fear --> This was brutal and we have moved away from this; however, places whereby crimes have strong and sever punishments, like Thailand, crimes still do take place! DISCIPLINARY POWER = From the 19th Century, authorities take over punishment (think 'oi, you're nicked!') and it was more humane (as seen with arrest rights) - This power is enforced through surveillance (EG: Online registers, tracking, CCTV, performance management)!

Answer 2

CARCERAL CULTURE = This is a culture whereby other social institutions can use disciplinary power, such as schools, social care and health care providers, as they surveil and monitor society = EG: Schools that have detention systems; this links to how the family is surveilled by health visitors, GPs and pre-school teachers!

Answer 3

Feely and Simon!

Answer 4

This is whereby surveillance is based on profiles generated by the mass data we have (EG = You are not randomly stopped for searches at airports) --> Technology is fundamental to our ability to do this; and it is aimed at preventing offending --> A target for who is going to be punished and who is not; looking at 'risk' - They assess the risks and they way up the costs = A game of probability! This links to typification and targeting people!

Answer 5

It is so hard to get off the grid - We will be tracked everywhere we go; this is made worse because of globalisation!

Answer 6

- Does Foucault over emphasise the power of surveillance to change behaviour? = Does it actually change what you do? - CCTV doesn’t stop crime, it just leads to displacement - Links to Situational Crime Prevention! - Goffman (1982) = They showed that inmates in asylums are able to resist control = Some people still reject it (links to the reject or the labelling theory) - Surveillance is about preventing crime rather than rehabilitating offenders - Surveillance is open to labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy - who do you surveil? The people you suspect (EG: Links to stop and search or airport scanning etc.) = Links to typification and who they suspect will be guilty!! - Kilburn Experiment (Newburn and Heyman) = CCTV can protect civil liberties as well as erode them - 18 months CCTV in custody suite in Kilburn; used by defence lawyers as well as prosecution; protects inmates from police brutality = Protecting those who are invulnerable (Links to Ring doorbells)! - People now surveil authorities (EG = Film police doing stop and search) and each other (dash cams). Now surveillance works together with other technology (EG = CCTV with facial recognition) - This is expensive and is there too much data to process?

Answer 7

PRE-18th CENTURY = Prison was used to hold people BEFORE they were punished - Holding people before punishment (Being on remand; being in prison before you have been taken to court + if you are likely to be seen as guilty) = You would be put in prison if you were awaiting trial; the time you already serve is then deducted off your sentence (This does happen today, but only for cases where it is likely that the person is guilty / may attempt to flee the country)! ENLIGHTENMENT = Prison is seen as a punishment itself (use reformation - hard labour / religious instruction) - The view has changed from prison being the place where punishments take place, to an actual punishment; including the loss of liberty! MODERN ERA = Prison is punishment but no inhumane treatment, prisoners are treated well-rehabilitation is the focus = Government-run institutions and ethics board that are supposed to be forward-thinking and rehabilitative places --> However, is this true due to Recidivism rates? How effective are prisons? = Mental health issues, poor literacy skills, assaults ,re-offending rates etc all suggest not --> If prisons worked, would people be going back? NEW LABOUR = 'Populist punitiveness’ --> Prisons are popular with the electorate, as they feel safer and feel like crime is being tackled - However, this is expensive and not good in the long term) --> Overcrowding and cost of prisons (they are expensive and there is a lack of effective rehabilitative schemes)!

Answer 8

147 per 100,000 incarceration rate --> This is the highest rate in Western Europe! 95% of the Prison Population are male; 5% are female! There are 7 Female Prisons in England and Wales! England = 112 Prisons Wales = 6 Prisons AGE = Nearly 4/5 of prisoners are between the ages of 21-49! ETHNICITY = More than 1 in 1- prisoners are a foreign national (around 11%) = Moral panics in the media make us believe that prisons are full of BAME individuals! 2016 Statistics = Around 2/5 of prison admissions were re-offenders! Nearly 1/2 (44%) of adult offenders released from custody go on to re-offend! More than 1/3 of male prisoners said drugs were easily obtainable in prison! Almost 2/3 of adult prisoners said they used drugs within the month before entering prison = Links to Left-Realism; see addiction as a root cause that we need to tackle and solve! Mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety, are overly represented by both men and women, apart from personality disorders for women in prison compared to the those not!

Answer 9

TRUE! However - Sometimes there is a quiet release of prisoners when prisons are becoming overcrowded; those usually in prison for lower-level crimes often get released! To combat this there was an idea to create 'floating prisons' - Prisons floating on a barge in the Isle of Wight! - This is a very dystopian view!

Answer 10

Assaults on prison staff in the UK more than doubled (2x) between 2012-2016! Of all assaults on staff in 2016, around 800 (789) were serious (requiring hospitalisation or extra care etc)!

Answer 11

Recidivism (reoffending) can be reduced with supporting offenders as they reintegrate to the community. Problems they face are: - Lack of skills/training - Mental health issues - Substance misuse - Prejudice/discrimination towards ex-offenders - Lack of employment - Back to the same area again Only ¼ had a job to go to on release from prison! = Timpsons (the shoe and key cutters) help give prisoners on release! ⅕ employers said they excluded or were likely to exclude ex-offenders from the recruitment process!

Answer 12

Educate and train prisoners to increase their skills and qualifications so they can get jobs after they get released! For 30 years, PET has helped people in prison transform their lives through learning. Working across England and Wales, we: 1. Fund courses in levels and subjects that are otherwise unavailable 2. Support people to choose courses, build connections and progress with their learning 3. Champion the life-changing power of education to prisons and policy makers Out of 100 people leaving prison, around 82 of those who were part of PET went on to love crime-free lives

Answer 13

Category B; holds around 1500 as of September 2023 = Easy access to drugs, cramped places and narrow corridors, violence, high rates of re-offending, smuggling of phones (sometimes brought in by officers = Corruption) etc

Answer 14

A max-security prison; holds 250 inmates = Incarcerates 60 out of every 100,000; calm police officers; clean and spacious conditions; freedom and liberty (can open and close doors when they choose); education strategies etc = Shared kitchen and chilling space! = Calm, and rehabilitative yet correctional! = Have an interpersonal relationship between staff and inmates = Contact officers in Norway are trained for 2 years; it takes just weeks in the US to train correctional officers! Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world!

Answer 15

They point to the positive functions prison might perform in society! - Prison could act as a deterrent – thus reinforcing social regulation - They work to maintain balance in society – making up for the failings of other institutions such as the family and the education system - Restoring order through incapacitating those who break the law.

Answer 16

One might criticise the effectiveness of prison – There is a 60% re-offending rate it isn’t really effective in restoring equilibrium in the first place – what prison does most of the time is re-socialise people into criminal norms, in the extreme people become institutionalised and unable to reintegrate into society once released.

Answer 17

- We ignore the failings of the system that lead to the conditions of inequality and poverty which lead to crime - The imprisonment of selected members of the lower classes neutralises opposition to the system = EG: Russia (putting away opposition groups; as seen with Stalin’s’ ‘purges’)! - The imprisonment of many members of the underclass also sweeps out of sight - The ‘worst jetsam of Capitalist society’ such that we cannot see it - All of the police, court and media focus on working class street crime means that our attention is diverted away from the immorality and greed of the elite classes Supporting evidence for the Marxist view comes from the fact that there are higher rates of imprisonment in more unequal countries.

Answer 18

Critics of the ‘overuse of prison’ argue that we should employ alternatives – by using curfews, community service and treatment orders – because these have a lower re-offending rate – mainly because they do not remove an offender from society.

Answer 19

LEFT REALISTS = They criticise Marxists for absolving criminals from blame – people in jail mostly deserve to be there and their victims are most likely to be working class themselves. Since the 1980s there has been a significant increase in the use of imprisonment in the United Kingdom – numbers have roughly doubled since 1990 with the total prison population now standing at about 84,000 and we have one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the western world - Often due to Right Realist policies! RIGHT REALISTS = They emphasise rational choice theory as the cause of crime and zero tolerance as the solution to crime. The state claims that tougher penalties are one of the major causes of declining crime rates.

Answer 20

It is also worth noting that the characteristics of the prison population are very different to the characteristics of the population as a whole. People who are over-represented include ethnic minority groups, men, the underclass and the young (those who are relatively deprived, marginalised and in subcultures - Links to Left Realism!)

Answer 21

We seen the representations and depictions of ethnic-minorities in the way that White people see them --> An ethnocentric and oblivious view! Similar to the Male Gaze for Women!