Crime Prevention and Punishment

Question 1

What are the 4 aims of the criminal justice system to prevent crime?

Answer 1

1. Deterrence. 2. Public protection. 3. Retribution. 4. Rehabilitation

Question 2

What does Gaarland argue about the different approaches to the criminal justice system?

Answer 2

At the start of the 20th centuary focus was placed on rehabilitation but since the 1970s there has been more a focus on retribution. This can be seen through the fact that the numbers of prisoners have doubled between 1970-2014. He sees this as a shift from left realism to right realism and this has all lead to a culture of control.

Question 3

What crime prevention theory does Clarke argue for?

Answer 3

Situational crime prevention theory

Question 4

What is situational crime prevention theory?

Answer 4

Clarke says it’s concerned with preventing crime in a particular location rather than catching offenders. It makes crime a less attractive choice it’s an alternative to fixing society or harsher punishments. This is achieved by target hardening measures to make it difficult for offenders and harder to get caught.

Question 5

What does Cornish and Clarke say would help prevent crime?

Answer 5

Warning signs to remind people they are being watched.

Question 6

What are some examples of target hardening measures?

Answer 6

These are barriers to prevent crime like anti climb paint, CCTV, locks, smart water, alarms, target policing and alcohol free zones.

Question 7

What is a critism of situational crime prevention?

Answer 7

Chaikens displacement theory, it suggests that following situational theory crime would just be displaced to another area where the risks of being caught are lower.

Question 8

How does Felson and Clarke rebuite the critism faced by displacement theory?

Answer 8

They say that situational crime prevention does work because offenders move onto legitimate activities not more crime.

Question 9

What example did Felson use to show crime prevention theory?

Answer 9

The Port Authority Bus Terminal. He argued that the bus terminal was poorly designed and left opportunity for crime to be commited such as the toilets allowing for rough sleeps, drug dealers and had a highnumber of thefts. They reshaped the physical environment to stop crime such as introducing UV lights to prevent drug taking. This led to a large reduction in crime.

Question 10

What crime prevention theory did Wilson and Kelling come up with?

Answer 10

Environmental crime prevention.

Question 11

What is environmental crime prevention theory?

Answer 11

Wilson and Kellings idea that crime is commited in areas that have been neglected, pointing to the broken window thesis. This gives a view that anything goes. They argue that communities need to take a zero tolerance approach to low level vandalism they need to keel neighbourhoods in good physical appearance and low level anti social behaviour should be punished harshly.

Question 12

What is Felson and Clarkes routine activity theory?

Answer 12

They argue crime occurs when 1. There is a suitable target for an offender. 2. There is no guardian eg surveillance 3. There is a potential offender present to see if the first two exist.

Question 13

What is an example that shows zero tolerance policing is effective?

Answer 13

The clean car program. Cars were taken off service if they had graffiti on them and returned only once they were clean which has drastically reduced the amount of graffiti on the subway.

Question 14

Why can zero tolerance policing be critised?

Answer 14

It just effects the communities where police focus their efforts unfairly.

Question 15

What type of crime prevention would left realists argue for?

Answer 15

Social and community crime prevention

Question 16

What is social and community crime prevention?

Answer 16

Both offenders and victims that worry people most are in disadvantaged areas. Therefore we need to tackle these issues such as material deprivation and focus on community cohesion and democratic policing as people have such a lack of trust of police in these areas.

Question 17

What study supports the social and community crime prevention approach?

Answer 17

The Perry pre school project.

Question 18

What was the Perry Pre school project?

Answer 18

It was an experimental group where 3-4 year old from disadvantages backgrounds were offered two year intellectual enrichment programmes during which time they received home visits. They found vast differences between those who had been part of the study and those who had not. By the age of 30 they had fewer arrests for property crime, drugs and violence whilst more had graduated and were in employment. It was calculated for every dollar spent on the programme 17 dollars were saved on welfare, prison and other costs.

Question 19

In November 2020 how many people were in prison in the UK?

Answer 19

80,000

Question 20

How many life sentenced prisoners does the UK have compared to the rest of western Europe?

Answer 20

They have more then all of Western Europe combined.

Question 21

What fraction of prisoners reoffend within 2 years of release?

Answer 21

2/3

Question 22

What did Boorman and Hopkins find?

Answer 22

They looked at reoffending rates and found that 54% had one proven offence within one year and 68% had a proven offence after 2 years .

Question 23

What does Matthews argue about prisons?

Answer 23

Prisons are universities of crime and they are an expensive way of making bad people worse. There is very little chance for rehabilitation or reform in prison.

Question 24

What does Goffman argue about prison?

Answer 24

There are subcultures in prison that increase offending as people become labelled as criminals and they accept this as their master status.

Question 25

What do Crawford and Evans argue?

Answer 25

There is now a focus on protecting victims rather then punishing offenders.

Question 26

What does Braithwaite argue about restorative justice?

Answer 26

It is most effective when it involves reintegrative shaming.

Question 27

What does Foucault argue about the reasons why punishment has changed over time?

Answer 27

It’s due to the changing strictures of power in society. For example brutal public punishments were a demonstration of sovereign power but due to the decline of the power of the sovereign a new state power called disciplinary power emerged.

Question 28

What is disciplinary power?

Answer 28

Foucaults idea that the state power leads criminals to be controlled and punished by surveillance. This is reflected in the change in punishment.

Question 29

How did Foucalt illustrate the idea of disciplinary power?

Answer 29

He looks at the designs of prisons such as the panoticipian. This was a design where each prisoner in their cell was visible to the guards from a central watch tower but the prisoner cannot see the guards.

Question 30

How can Foucalts panopticon ideas can be seen today?

Answer 30

In COVID some students were required to put their cameras on to show that they were working. We increasingly give private information away when filling out forms and our phones track things about us such as out location which can be later used to detect if we could have commited a crime etc.

Question 31

What does Mathiesen argue about surveillance?

Answer 31

Instead of panoptican surveillance which comes from authority we have synoptic surveillance where everyone watched everyone else.

Question 32

What does Thompson argue about surveillance?

Answer 32

He agrees with synopticon surveillance and says that powerful groups of politicians are fearful of how they are presented in the media so this acts as a form of social control

Question 33

Waht did Haggerly and Ericson come up with?

Answer 33

Surveillant assemblages.

Question 34

What is the idea of survelliant assemblages?

Answer 34

Haggerly and Ericsons idea that due to the rise of media someone doesn’t need to be physically present to survey us. Data is used as a key form of surveillance even down to what you buy at Tesco witj your club card.

Question 35

What do Freely and Simon argue?

Answer 35

The CJS now focuses on groups rather then individuals that is not interested in preventing rehabilitation but is aimed at stopping crime in the first place and calculates the risk of a certain group being a victim or offender of a crime for example at airport security.

Question 36

What did Lyons come up with and how does this link to crime prevention?

Answer 36

Categorical suspicion. The sorting may lead to unfair treatment against groups.

Question 37

What type of sociologists are rusche and kircheimer?

Answer 37

Marxists

Question 38

What do rusche and kircheimerargue?

Answer 38

They see punishment as a system of social control and class domination in an unequal society. They see the change from barbaric public punishment to contempary punishment as prisons being used as cheap labour as a change in the economic interests of the ruling class