Penology & Punishment Flashcards
What are the main aspects of the utilitarian perspective?
- Based on Jeremy Bentham’s idea “greatest good for the greatest number”
- Entirely forward looking
- Punishment must increase social utility (a necessary)
- Punishment is justified only to the extent that it reduces or prevents crime
- If punishment does not reduce crime/ will achieve no good (e.g. the insane) it is not justified
- Punishment must result in greater good
How does the utilitarian justify punishment?
Punishment will result in greater good
What is the utilitarian methods of punishment?
- Deterrence (specific & general)
- Rehabilitation - treatment
- Incapacitation - removing the possibility of offending
What is specific deterrence?
Aim of deterring those who have already offended from reoffending
What is general deterrence?
Aim of imposing punishment so as to deter other potential offenders
What are some critiques of the utilitarian approach?
- Justice may not be served - very high levels of punishment for minor crimes if it benefited the community as a whole
- Little regard to the ability of individuals to make decisions and choices
- Incapacitation only effective if the offender can be identified and locked up
- Specific deterrence does not to seem to work
What is the retributivism approach to punishment?
- Punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act
- People who have committed a crime should be punished
- People who have not committed a crime should not be punished
- The focus is on the past and acts (backward looking)
- The harm of the punishment should match the harm of the offence - it should be proportionate
How does the retributive approach justify punishment?
The Justification for punishment is because the offender is held to deserve it/has done something wrong there ‘just desserts’ (no purpose beyond that)
What are some critiques of the retributivism approach?
- Determining the quantum - what punishment is appropriate?
- Proportionality - may not take into account other issues such as culpability, motivation and harm
- Problem with unintended harm - when an offender is punished the innocent are also punished
- Hypocritical - assumes total free will of the offender & does not recognise inequality
What sort of and how much punishment?
Utilitarian answer “that which is effective”
Retributive answer “that which is proportional”
What is the ‘just desserts’ approach to punishment?
- The assertion that punishment be linked to the nature of the crime that had been committed (it should be proportionate)
- Offenders are free willed and can be held morally to account for their actions
- Sanctions should be ordered in a schedule order to correspond with seriousness of crimes concerned, schedule referred to as ‘tariff’
- Aims to make punishment certain, consistent and fair
What is ordinal proportionality?
Concerns the need to rank offences hierarchically according to their seriousness
What is cardinal proportionality?
A question of the overall scale of punishment
What is the just desserts justification for punishment?
Necessary for the state to express censure
What are some critiques of just dessert theory?
- Proportionality - is it always appropriate for proportionality to be the primary aim of sentencing, are there not exceptional cases where matters of public protection outweigh individual rights?
- Ordinal Proportionality - some offences are difficult to
- Cardinal Proportionality - can help with the graduation of punishments within the most severe and least severe points but can do nothing to tell us what those anchoring points should be - Easily subverted by repressive and punitive political intentions
- Pays insufficient regard to the social conditions that produce criminality
