Prevention and Punishment Flashcards
Foucault - Surveillance
Foucault discusses the dominance of ‘sovereign power’ in which the monarchy was responsible for punishments. Sentences would usually involve bodily harm that would be conducted to send a message publicly to citizens.
However, today’s society uses ‘disciplinary power’, in which the CJS tries to rehabilitate prisoners through punishment of the mind, e.g. prison sentences.
Foucault illustrates this through his theory of ‘panopticon’ where inmates within a prison are led to believe they are constantly under the threat of surveillance in order to promote self-regulation of their own behaviour. Therefore surveillance becomes a tool of social control and is now used to monitor our behaviour.
Felson - Situational Crime Prevention
Felson describes how situational crime prevention can ‘design crime out’ of a particular area.
An example of this could be the use of sloping seats in public spaces to prevent homeless sleeping on them.
Chaiken et al. - Evaluation of Situational Crime Prevention
However, Chaiken et al. argue that situational crime prevention doesn’t always reduce crime, instead it moves it somewhere else. This is known as displacement.
Wilson and Kelling - Environmental Crime Prevention
Right realists, Wilson and Kelling created the ‘broken windows theory’. It centres around the principles of ‘zero-tolerance’ when it comes to any form of disobedience.
It begins by cracking down on basic standards such as the appearance of an area, if windows are broken in a property, then they need to be fixed immediately in order to maintain the expected standards. By leaving the windows broken, it sends out a message that no-one cares about the community and so crime will increase in these areas.
Schweinhart - Social and Community Crime Prevention
Schweinhart conducted a longitudinal study on the ‘Perry Preschool Project’ in Michigan. This showed how early intervention can lead to a reduction in crime later in life.
The project targeted a small sample of 3-4 year-old black children who participated in an intellectual enrichment programme. They were compared to a control group who were not part of the programme. 40 years later, the group who engaged with the programme were more successful in life than the control group in a number of metrics, being more likely to graduate from high school, be in stable employment, and not be in prison.
Durkheim - Functionalist Perspective on Punishment
Durkheim believed that punishment is ‘expressive’ as it heals the wounds of the public while also promoting the value consensus. In his view, traditional societies used ‘retributive justice’. This was simple, effective and often brutal.
However, in modern societies have moved to using ‘restitutive justice’. Punishment must now restore a sense of equilibrium to society by ensuring that the community is healed from the damage of the offence that was committed.
Garland - Role of Prisons
The role of prisons has changed over time. Garland discusses how prisons are being used as the main form of punishment in the USA and UK. Garland believes that prisons are now used by politicians to prove to the electorate that they are tough on crime, and as a result they will gain electoral popularity and win elections.
Hans von Hentig - Positivist Victimology
Positivist victimologists discuss the idea of victim proneness. Hans von Hentig argues that there are 13 characteristics which make someone more likely to be a victim of crime. Some of these characteristics include:
- Young
- Immigrant status
- Depressed
- Minority status
- Lonesome
Wolfgang - Victim Precipiation
Positivists also discuss victim precipitation. Wolfgang looked at murders in the USA. He found that 26% of 588 homicides in Philadelphia involved victim precipitation. This means that the victim triggered the events leading to the murder.
Mawby and Walklate - ‘Structural Powerlessness’
Critical victimologists argue that the proletariat are victims of both the exploitation by the bourgeoisie and the state. Mawby and Walklate argue that victimisation is a form of ‘structural powerlessness’.
The state has power to define who they decide is a victim and as a result the state labels some people as victims, but not others, e.g. before 1991 it was legal to rape your wife, therefore a wife was not a victim.
Tombs and Whyte - Health and Safety
Tombs and Whyte argue employers tend to manipulate ‘safety crimes’ where injured workers are often blamed for their actions instead of the company taking responsibility for their negligence of health and safety procedure. This is referred to as the ‘hierarchy of victimisation’.
