Penal System: Lesson 28 Flashcards
What were the uses of imprisonment in Medieval England?
- Detaining those awaiting trial
- Forcing debtors to pay debt to be released
- As a punishment
What were the forms of punishment from 1400-1850?
- Forms of the death penalty
- Corporal Punishment
- Growth of secular institutions to confine poor & homeless
- Workhouses & Transportation
Who was transported to Australian prisons in the 18th century?
- 1/3 - 1/2 were first time offenders
- 8-10 were thieves
- Average age 26
- Lower class
- Some political offenders
What were the prison hulks/ ships like?
- Modified seagoing vessel
- Held up to 300 inmates
- Cramped
- Created to ease overcrowding in gaols
What is retributive justice- Theory of Justice ?
- Sees punishment as only mechanism through which equality can be achieved
- Proportionate punishment readdresses imbalance of equality
- Desert: wrongdoers deserve to be punished
How would deserts work?
- Ignore likelihood of reoffending
- Abolish indeterminacy of sentence
- Sentencing discretion reduced
- Imprisonment limited to serious offences
- Penalties less severe than imprisonment for non-serious offences
What are the key elements of reductivism in sentencing?
- Deterrence: individual & general
- Reform: addressing factor that increases likelihood of offending & preventing it
- Incapacitation: permanent or temporary
What did Donald Clemmer introduce in 1940?
The prison community: Prizonization
- Assimilation process which happens when inmates accept customs & general culture of penitentiary
- Inmate code
What is the inmate code?
- Prisoners centred on loyalty
- Prisoners stratified based on adherence to code
1) Elite class: intelligent & sophisticated
2) Hoosier: stupid person
3) Sex offenders
What are the problems with the inmate code?
- Developed in America
- Based on max security prisons
- Based on men
- Clemmers their is 80 years old & Messemgers is 60
What is Goffman’s deprivation theory?
- Barriers to social interaction with outside world
- Isolation built into physical environment e.g locked doors, barbed wire & water
- Civil death
- Institutionalisation
- Individual adaptation
What is Irwin & Cressey’s importation model?
1962 ‘thieves, convicts & the inmate culture’
- Prisoners import characteristics from outside
- Inmate code isn’t distinctive to prison
- Inmate culture is outcome of 3 subcultures imported
What does contemporary prison culture look like?
- Decline in inmate solidarity
- Inmate code isn’t distinctive to negotiable
- Adherence to code varies with prison security level
- Rise in solidarity amongst ethnic & regional peer groups
Why has contemporary prison culture changes?
- Drug use
- Improvement in physical environment
- Changes in attitude & power of prison staff
- Changes in facilities available
- Changes in penal administration
Key facts on prisoners
- 85,000 prisoners, most are socially & emotionally disadvantaged
- Declining prison officers
- Increase levels of self harm and violence
