Punishment Flashcards
What are the 4 justifications for punishment?
Deterrence
Rehabilitation
Incapacitation
Retribution
What is deterrence?
Punishment used to discourage others from crime
What is rehabilitation?
Punishment which aims to reform and educate prisoners, preparing them for a different way of life
What is incapacitation?
Punishment designed to physically prevent someone from reoffending
What is retribution?
Punishment that makes the criminal suffer for what they’ve done
Functionalism: what are the functions of punishment (Durkheim)?
Social Solidarity
Boundary maintenance
Functionalism: what type of punishment is used in traditional societies?
Retributive - punishments are expressive and cruel, designed to show society’s anger at the criminal
Functionalism: what type of punishment is used in modern societies?
Restitutive - punishments are instrumental, designed to repair the damage done by the crime
Functionalism: how can we evaluate this view?
Traditional societies often had restitutive forms of punishment. For examples, blood feuds (murders between clans) were often settled with compensation, not execution
Marxism: what is the function of punishment?
Maintain the existing social order (keep the bourgeoisie in charge) as part of a repressive state apparatus
Marxism: what is a repressive state apparatus (Althusser)?
A tool which governments use to maintain control through physical force, e.g. the army, prison
Marxism: how is imprisonment similar to capitalism’s way of producing goods?
Melossi & Pavarini - in the same way that capitalism puts a price on worker’s time, prisoners ‘do the time’ to ‘pay’ for their crime. Both have strict discipline and involve a loss of liberty
Marxism: how can we evaluate this view?
Functionalists would argue this is too negative. For them, punishment has positive elements, such as creating social solidarity among the rest of society
Foucault: what does he say about surveillance?
It has become more common and is now used to maintain control over people both inside and outside prison
Foucault: what is sovereign power?
Sovereign power: until approximately 1800, monarchs held power in society and punishment was brutal against the body
Foucault: what is disciplinary power?
Disciplinary power: after approximately 1800, it became easier to control people’s minds than their bodies through more efficient surveillance technologies
Foucault: what is the panopticon?
A prison designed so that a few guards can watch all prisoners at once. Prisoners engage in self-surveillance because they could be being watched at any time
Foucault: how can we evaluate this view?
It exaggerates the control that surveillance has over people. Prisoners and extreme mental health patients, for example, still resist despite being under surveillance
Garland: what does he mean when he says we are in an era of mass incarceration?
The US, and to a lesser extent UK, are imprisoning more people than ever
Garland: who makes up the majority of the prison population?
Young, poorly educated males. Black people and ethnic minorities are over-represented. This suggests these groups are being targeted for prison
Garland: what is transcarceration?
Individuals become locked in a cycle of control, shifting between different agencies throughout their lives. E.g. growing up in care, being sent to prison, then entering a mental hospital
Garland: how can we evaluate this view?
SUPPORT: incarceration is not effective at rehabilitating prisoners. 2/3 of prisoners commit further crimes upon release, trapping people in the cycle of prison
