Issues In Crime Punishment Flashcards
Retribution
the argument that the main focus of punishment should be to make the criminal suffer for what they have done as a payment to society.
Incapacitation
imprison, physically harm or kill a person in order to stop them reoffending.
Rehabilitation
aims to reinforce, education or prepare crimials for a different way life.
Deterrence
Attempts to discourage others from crime.
Functionalism: Durkheim
he argues that the function of punishment is to uphold social solidarity and reinforce shared values.
punishment is primarily expressive, expressing societies outrage at the offence.
they believe in two functions of punishment:
social solidary (togetherness)
Boundary maintenance (crime produces a reaction form society)
this varies in a traditonal/modern society
Traditional Society - Retributive (justice needs to be served), everyone is a collective conscience. severe and cruel punishments. motivation is an expression e.g. beheading.
Modern Society - Restitutive (solve the problem, do something that helps). solidarity is based on interdependence. crime damages this interdependence, so its necessary to restore it. instrumental purpose, but still expresses collective elements.
Functionalism AO3:
in reality, traditional societies often had restitutive rather that retributive justice. e.g. blood feuds are often settled by payment rather than execution.
Marxism: capitalism & Punishment
Marxists are interested in how punishment serves the RC.
the function of punishment is to maintain existing social order, as a part of the repressive state apparatus (control through force -Althusser) which means defending RC property against WC.
Melossi & Pavirini - imprisonment is reflecting capitalist relations of production. capitalism puts a price on workers time, so people do time for their crime.
prison is basically a capitalist society, they are both strict.
Marxism AO3:
Functionalists argue this is too negative, rather punishment serves the interest of society as a whole, allowing everyone to gain a sense of togetherness.
as a result, punishment reaffirms traditional norms and values.
Foucault: surveillance
examines how surveillance has become the concept of power.
sovereign power - (power came form monarch up to the 1800s). punishment was physical bodily harm. it was brutal and emotional spectacle.
disciplinary power (modern, after the 1800s) power was now not just over bodies, but mind and soul, through surveillance. one view is that physical harm disappeared in the western society, as they became more civilised. Foucault claims that this change happened because surveillance has become more affective.
The Panopticon (keeps social order) demonstrates this - prisoners do not know if they are being watched, so they have to behave at all times. this is called self surveillance. control happens inside the prisoner.
Foucault AO3:
he wrongly assumes that the expressive aspects of punishment has disappeared from modern society.
exaggerates control, ignoring resistance in some prisons and mental health hospitals.
Trends in Punishment
in liberal democracies they do not have the death penalty, imprisonment is more severe more of punishment.
nevertheless, since the 80s, there has been a move towards populist (decided by the people) punitiveness (how much we punish people)
e.g. New Labour argued prison should be used not just for serious offenders, but also as a deterrent for persistent petty offenders.
as a result of this, prison population has grown by 70%.
according to Garland, the USA & to a lesser extent the UK is moving into a era of mass incarceration (imprisonment).
The UK imprisons a higher proportion of people than any other in Western Europe. e.g. in England and Whales 139 out of every 100,000 people are in prison, compared to 99 in France and 64 in Italy.
Garland argues we are punishing more people, it ceases to be the incarceration of offenders, and becomes the imprisonment of the whole population.
David Downes argues the US prison system soaks up 30% to 40% of the unemployed, making capitalism look more successful (hides all the problem people).
there is also a trend towards transcarceration, where individuals are locked into a cycle of control, shifting between different agencies during their lives. e.g. someone brought up in care…
some sociologists see this as a product of blurring the boundaries between criminal justice and welfare justice.
Trends in Punishment AO3:
incarceration has not proven effective in rehabilitation - about 2/3 of prisoners commit further crimes on release.
Link Garland to hall et al’s study on moral panic - masked the problems with capitalism.
Link blurring the boundaries with the new right, how they fear the underclass poses a threat to social stability, hence transcarseration.
