Punishment - Crime Flashcards
What is reduction?
Using punishment to prevent and thus reduce future crimes
What is deterrence?
Punishing individuals deters them from reoffending and serves as a deterrent to others in society
e.g. a fine
What is rehabilitation?
Punishment can be used to reform and change offender behaviour and attitudes
e.g. community service
What is incapacitation?
Punishment is used to remove the offender’s ability to offend again
e.g. prison
What retribution?
Means ‘paying back’ society. It justifies punishing crimes that have been committed rather than preventing future crimes e.g. public trials
What is the Functionalist view on punishment?
The function of punishment is to be restitutive: to maintain the social solidarity of society and reinforce shared values
- punishment restores society’s equilibrium
What is the Marxist view on punishment?
Believe the function of punishment is to maintain the existing social order, which is corrupt and unfair: - repressive state apparatus = punishments are used to protect ruling class property and values
What do Melossi and Pavarini suggest?
- Capitalism puts a price on the worker’s time, prisoners ‘do time’ to ‘pay’ for their crimes
- Prison and the capitalist factory have similar structures, with both enforcing strict disciplinary styles, subordination and a loss of liberty and power
What does Foucault suggest about prisons?
Argues that prisons began to subject individuals to disciplinary power to induce conformity through ‘self-surveillance’
- believes disciplinary power (control) has now infiltrated all parts of society
What figures on prisons does Carrabine provide?
Since the 1980s politicians have gained power by calling for stronger and tougher prisons sentences; prison populations have grown by 70% between 1993-2005
Why are prisons bad at rehabilitation?
2/3 prisoners reoffend
What percentage of the prison population are male, young, poor and over representative of ethnic minorities?
95%
What does Garland suggest?
Argue that the USA and the UK are moving into an era of mass incarceration, where there is systematic imprisonment of whole groups of the population
What does Downes suggest?
Argues 40% of the American unemployed are in prison which makes Capitalism look more successful. Thus imprisonment has an ideological function
What does Cohen argue about the growth of community controls?
That it has cast a net of control over more people:
- the community controls frequently fast track young people into the CJS e.g. ASBOs increase a youths chance of entering a custodial sentence