Punishment

Question 0

Explain retribution

Answer 0

• Retribution means ‘paying back’
• Based on the idea that offenders deserve to be punished, and that society is entitled to take its revenge on the offender for having breached its moral conduct

Question 1

What are the 2 justifications of punishment?

Answer 1

1) Retribution

2) Reduction

Question 2

What type of view is retribution?

Answer 2

It is an expressive view - it expresses society’s outrage

Question 3

What are three crime reduction strategies?

Answer 3

1) Deterrence
2) Rehabilitation
3) Incapacitation

Question 4

Explain how punishment acts as a deterrence and therefore reduces crime

Answer 4

• Punishment discourages individuals from offending again

- ‘Making and example’ of the offender may act as a deterrent to the whole of society

Question 5

Explain how punishment rehabilitates offenders and therefore reduces crime

Answer 5

• Punishment can reform or change offenders by prisons adopting policies including education and training for prisoners so they are able to ‘earn an honest living’ on release

Question 6

Explain how punishment can incapacitate offenders and therefore prevent further offending

Answer 6

• The use of punishment can remove the offender’s capacity to offend again, e.g. imprisonment, execution, cutting off of hands, chemical castration

Question 7

What does Durkheim say that the function of punishment is?

Answer 7

The function of punishment is to uphold social solidarity and reinforce shared values

Question 8

‘Punishment is primarily expressive’. What does this mean?

Answer 8

Punishment expresses society’s outrage at the offence

Question 9

How does Durkheim say that punishment reinforces social solidarity?

Answer 9

Through rituals of order, such as public trial and punishment, society’s shared values are reaffirmed and its members come to feel a sense of moral unity

Question 10

What did Durkheim say are the 2 types of justice?

Answer 10

1) Retributive

2) Restitutive

Question 11

What is retributive justice?

Answer 11

• In traditional society, solidarity between individuals is based on their similarity to one another
• This produces a song collective conscience, which, when offended, responds with vengeful passion to repress the wrongdoer
• Punishment is cruel and severe

Question 12

What is restitutive justice?

Answer 12

• Solidarity in modern society is based on interdependence between individuals
• Crime damages this interdependence, so it is necessary to repair these damages, e.g. through compensation
• It aims to restore things to the way they were before the offence

Question 13

What do the Marxists believe that the function of punishment is?

Answer 13

To maintain the existing social order

Question 14

According to the Marxists, what is punishment a means of?

Answer 14

Defending upper-class property against the lower classes

Question 15

According to the Marxists, what does punishment reflect?

Answer 15

The economic base of society

Question 16

According to Rusch and Kircheimer, what does each type of society have?

Answer 16

It’s own corresponding penal system

Question 17

What is the penal system under capitalism?

Answer 17

Imprisonment, because the capitalist economy is based on the exploitation of wage labour

Question 18

What do Melossi and Pavarini contribute to the Marxists view of punishment?

Answer 18

They see imprisonment as reflecting capitalist relations of production

Question 19

How does imprisonment reflect capitalist society?

Answer 19

1) Capitalism puts a price on the worker’s time; so too prisoners ‘do time’ to ‘pay’ for their crime
2) The prison and the capitalist factory both have a similar strict disciplinary style, involving subordination and loss of liberty