Purpose of punishment Flashcards
There is support in the UK for retribution to be the main purpose of punishment. What is a high profile case showing why.
There is support in the UK for retribution to be the main purpose of punishment. For example, the whole life sentence
imposed on Wayne Couzens in 2021 for the murder of Sarah Everard, was
met with widespread public support due to the view that ‘life should mean
life’.
What contemporary evidence is there that rehabilitation approaches are more successful than retribution?
it is clear that a rehabilitative approach often garners higher
success rates in terms of reoffending. For example, within English and
Welsh prisons, the charity ‘Clink’ aims to educate and rehabilitate
prisoners by offering training and qualifications in catering and
horticulture as well as offering support with securing accommodation upon
release. Prisoners who work with Clink are 49.6% less likely to reoffend
upon release proving that access to rehabilitative programmes reduces
reoffending.
A focus on retribution as the main purpose of punishment doesn’t always
have to mean lengthy prison sentences. What international comparator proves this?
Non-custodial sentences such as
fines may seem a lenient punishment but some countries have income based fines which help to punish offenders proportionately. For example,
Finland calculates speeding fines based on the offender’s income. In 2015,
a Finnish businessman was fined 54,000 Euros for driving at 64mph in a
50mph zone. In comparison, in Scotland, the same offence would be likely
to result in a fixed penalty notice of £100 and between three and six
penalty points. The Finnish system allows a focus on making the offender
suffer financially which ties in well to the theory of retribution. It is also
fairer to those on low incomes by ensuring rich offenders still suffer
financially for the offence they have committed.
What international example closely adopts retribution?
The US embraces the retributivist approach to punishment with their
investment in prisons and correctional facilities resulting in 2.3 million
incarcerated prisoners in 2020. The average length of state prison sentence
in the US is 2.6 years compared to 18 months in England and Wales. These
longer prison sentences fulfil the purpose of retribution but also the
purpose of deterrence.
While some US states are moving towards rehabilitation why would we argue that it still focuses heavily on retribution?
Whilst some states in the US like North
Dakota are beginning to embrace a more rehabilitative approach to
punishment, one in seven US prisoners are serving a life sentence and
nearly 3,000 prisoners are on death row awaiting execution. The mere
existence of the death penalty in 28 US states and the fact that nearly
60,000 US prisoners are in solitary confinement proves their lack of focus
on rehabilitating prisoners and clearly illustrates that they believe the
purpose of punishment is retribution.
Does Scotland adopt the US’ approach or a Norwegian approach with its criminal justice system?
Norway. In contrast, in recent years, the
Scottish Prison Service have embraced a more progressive and
rehabilitative approach to tackling reoffending stating that their focus is
on ‘the care, rehabilitation and re-integration of those committed into
custody’. This has been influenced by the Norwegian approach to
punishment which rejects life sentences and solitary confinement in favour
of programmes that rehabilitate offenders. As Hoidal, the governor of
maximum-security Halden prison, stated ‘If we treat inmates like animals
in prison, then we will release animals on to your street’. Norwegian
prisons, with a ratio of 1:1 prisoners to staff, offer support to prisoners
including education programmes, employment training, counselling
programmes and even access to music studios or silent retreats. The fact
that the reoffending rate after 5 years is 20% in Norway compared to 76%
in the US indicates the extent to which rehabilitation is a more successful
approach than focusing on retribution.
Why does Texas disprove the purpose of punishment being deterrence?
this view can be disproved by the fact
that Texas, which is the US state with the highest number of prisoners on
death row, is also the state with the second highest murder rate. If severe
punishment such as the death penalty worked as a deterrent, then one
would expect Texas to have one of the lowest murder rates in the US.
What arguments are there that incapacitation as a purpose is not effective?
With the high prevalence of violence in prisons in England, Wales
and the US, the fact that nearly half of prisoners in English prisons find it
easy to get drugs in prison and the lack of purposeful activity in prisons, it
is clear that the retributivist approach to punishment doesn’t work. This is
clearly proven by the high recidivism rates in England, Wales and the US.
Instead, there is compelling evidence that a focus on rehabilitation is the
most successful approach to tackling crime and therefore should be the
main purpose of punishment
What evidence is there that rehabilitative approaches in Scotland have been successful/
Scottish reoffending
rates have hit a 19-year low thanks to the use of rehabilitation schemes,
which shows just how successful this approach can be.
Why is clear that incapacitation is not working?
In Scotland, the
prison population stands at more than 8000, up from 7400 the previous
years, and the reality is that incapacitation only seems to work for a short
time. We are locking more people up and using alternatives, like Home
Detention Curfew, less frequently. Whereas 19 prisons in the Netherlands
have closed because they did not have enough prisoners to fill them. This
has been put down to relaxed drug laws, a focus on rehabilitation over
punishment, and an electronic ankle monitoring system that allows people
to re-enter the workforce.
What evidence is there that the UK still adopt retribution as a purpose of punishment?
the UK Police, Crime Sentences and Courts Bill (2021) has
proposed, amongst other things, allowing judges to give whole life orders,
life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for the premeditated
murder of a child, life sentences for drivers who kill behind the wheel, and
increasing the maximum sentence from three months to ten years for
criminal damage to a memorial. This is more in keeping with the
retributive ideas of Von Hirsch’s ‘just desserts’ theory where punishment
is determined by past behaviour and proportionate to the crimes
committed, unlike rehabilitation which is more concerned with tackling
future crimes and reducing recidivism
Does the UK public support tougher sentences?
Yes -the general public would appear to
support this approach with a 2019 YouGov poll showing a significant
majority of the UK public, 70%, felt punishments were not harsh enough
Why could we argue that the UK is similar to the US in its ‘tough on crime’ approach?
the UK prison population, like in the US, has doubled and today
remains fairly high at a count of around 83,000 or 138 per 100,000.
Meanwhile, although the US prison population count has dropped slightly
in recent years, much as the UK’s has, the count still remains high at over
2 million or 639 per 100,000. These incarceration figures and patterns
suggest that rehabilitation has not been the main influence in penal
responses to crime in either country
What are four of the main purposes of punishment?
- Protection/Incapacitation
- Punishment
- Rehabilitation
- Deterrence
