Punishment

Question 1

What are the 4 justifications for punishment?

Answer 1

Deterrence
Rehabilitation
Incapacitation
Retribution

Question 2

What is deterrence?

Answer 2

Punishment used to discourage others from crime

Question 3

What is rehabilitation?

Answer 3

Punishment which aims to reform and educate prisoners, preparing them for a different way of life

Question 4

What is incapacitation?

Answer 4

Punishment designed to physically prevent someone from reoffending

Question 5

What is retribution?

Answer 5

Punishment that makes the criminal suffer for what they’ve done

Question 6

Functionalism: what are the functions of punishment (Durkheim)?

Answer 6

Social Solidarity
Boundary maintenance

Question 7

Functionalism: what type of punishment is used in traditional societies?

Answer 7

Retributive - punishments are expressive and cruel, designed to show society’s anger at the criminal

Question 8

Functionalism: what type of punishment is used in modern societies?

Answer 8

Restitutive - punishments are instrumental, designed to repair the damage done by the crime

Question 9

Functionalism: how can we evaluate this view?

Answer 9

Traditional societies often had restitutive forms of punishment. For examples, blood feuds (murders between clans) were often settled with compensation, not execution

Question 10

Marxism: what is the function of punishment?

Answer 10

Maintain the existing social order (keep the bourgeoisie in charge) as part of a repressive state apparatus

Question 11

Marxism: what is a repressive state apparatus (Althusser)?

Answer 11

A tool which governments use to maintain control through physical force, e.g. the army, prison

Question 12

Marxism: how is imprisonment similar to capitalism’s way of producing goods?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Marxism: how can we evaluate this view?

Answer 13

Functionalists would argue this is too negative. For them, punishment has positive elements, such as creating social solidarity among the rest of society

Question 14

Foucault: what does he say about surveillance?

Answer 14

It has become more common and is now used to maintain control over people both inside and outside prison

Question 15

Foucault: what is sovereign power?

Answer 15

Sovereign power: until approximately 1800, monarchs held power in society and punishment was brutal against the body

Question 16

Foucault: what is disciplinary power?

Answer 16

Disciplinary power: after approximately 1800, it became easier to control people’s minds than their bodies through more efficient surveillance technologies

Question 17

Foucault: what is the panopticon?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Foucault: how can we evaluate this view?

Answer 18

It exaggerates the control that surveillance has over people. Prisoners and extreme mental health patients, for example, still resist despite being under surveillance

Question 19

Garland: what does he mean when he says we are in an era of mass incarceration?

Answer 19

The US, and to a lesser extent UK, are imprisoning more people than ever

Question 20

Garland: who makes up the majority of the prison population?

Answer 20

Young, poorly educated males. Black people and ethnic minorities are over-represented. This suggests these groups are being targeted for prison

Question 21

Garland: what is transcarceration?

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Garland: how can we evaluate this view?

Answer 22

SUPPORT: incarceration is not effective at rehabilitating prisoners. 2/3 of prisoners commit further crimes upon release, trapping people in the cycle of prison