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Criminology > Week #8 > Flashcards

Week #8 Flashcards

1
Q

History of Punishment?

A

o Prisons are a modern invention
• Prison became a primary punishment in its own right between 1740 and 1850 (around the times of Jeremy Bentham and the Enlightenment)
o Places of confinement existed prior to the enlightenment, but were not deemed punishment in and of themselves
• Used to temporarily hold people while awaiting trial or punishment (lashing, galley slavery, etc.)

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2
Q

What is a panopticon

A

o Created by English philosopher/ social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785
o The design allows an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the incarcerated being able to tell whether they are bing watched
• Foucault calls this the “unequal gaze”

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3
Q

What are the 4 rationales for punishment?

A

o Deterrence
o Incapacitation
o Rehabilitation
o Retribution

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4
Q

What is detterence?

A

o The inhibition of criminal behaviour by fear, especially fear of punishment

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5
Q

What is deterrence theory?

A

• First posited by 18th century Classical School philosophers Beccaria and Bentham
o Assumes free will
o Behaviour is rational reward-oriented
o All behaviour choices arise from a ‘hedonic calculus’
• Increase benefits, reduce costs
o Undesirable behaviours can be inhibited by increasing perceived costs to a point just above perceived benefit

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6
Q

What are the elements of deterrence?

A

Certainty (know you will be punished), Celerity (how quickly you’ll be punished),, Severity (least important, how sever the punishment is effects deterrence), hot stove touch is all three

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7
Q

What are the 2 kinds of deterrence?

A

o General deterrence
• Meant to deter the population as a whole
o Specific deterrence
• A person broke to law and was punished to not commit crime again

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8
Q

What are the three methods of studying deterrence?

A
  1. Interrupted time series studies
    • Examines the effects of introducing a new law, tactic or sentencing regime
  2. Ecological observational/ correlational studies
    • Examines natural variation in crime across time or jurisdictions
  3. Perceptual surveys with “what if?” scenarios
    • Ask people scenarios
    • Get at perceived as opposed to objective costs/benefits
    • Generally conducted in classroom settings
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9
Q

What is a classic detterence study?

A

o Policing: Kansas City Police Experiment too k15 comparable areas
• Doubled police patrol in 5 areas
• Cut patrols in half in 5 areas
• Did nothing in 5 areas
• Result: no difference in crime rates of fear of crime

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10
Q

What are the problems of deterrence effects?

A

o Deterrence is hard to show: Problems
• People don’t know the rules/laws
• Some people are less risk aversive than others
• Policies must aim to change risk perceptions

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11
Q

What are 2 deterrence effects?

A
  • Absolute
  • The effect of having any criminal justice system at all
  • Marginal deterrent effect
  • Changing the amount of police on the streets
  • Adding 10% more police doesn’t decrease crime by 10%
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12
Q

Define Incapacitation?

A

control of convicted offenders so they cannot commit crimes against the general public
o Render criminals harmless, or
o Remove them from circulation

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13
Q

What are ways to incapacitate?

A

o Lock people up
o Make it more difficult for them to commit crime
• House arrest
o Checking in with a probation officer
o Probation, electronic monitoring, capital punishment

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14
Q

What are two types of incapacitation?

A

Collective and Selective

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15
Q

Explain collective incapacitation?

A

o Targets all persons who commit crime with equal punishments
• We want to affect everyone whose committing violence, so we raise the cost of it from 1 year to 2 years

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16
Q

Explain selective incapacitation?

A

o Targets “high-risk” offenders for enhanced incapacitation

o Designed to reduce crime and save money

17
Q

What study relates to selective incapacitation?

A

• Wolfgang’s Philadelphia Cohort Studies
o A relatively small proportion of “chronic offenders” commit a large proportion of all crimes, e.g., 6% commit 52%
o With selective, if you could identify who the 6% are you can prevent them from committing the crimes

18
Q

What are 3 methods of predicting criminal behaviour?

A

o Prior history
• Uses frequency and seriousness of previous offenses to predict future offenses
o Clinical evaluation
• Personal interview by a psychologist or a social worker
• Presentencing reports by probation officers are clinical evaluations based on an offender’s social history
o Actuarial Approach
• Based on membership in groups known to have high offending rates
• Insurance companies use age, gender (and sometimes smoking) to determine auto insurance premiums
o Can not determine the 6% they get too many false positives, to many people predicted to be high risks but show that they aren’t later on

19
Q

What are philisophical critiques to selective incapacitation?

A
  • Punishment for future crimes one might commit
  • No connection to harm done
  • False positives (philosophical critique)
  • Punishing people for future crimes they might commit
20
Q

What are empirical critiques to selective incapacitation?

A
  • Prediction failure
  • Inability to identify the high risk group
  • Therefore economically impractical
  • Really high rate offenders already have long sentences
  • Age curve
  • By the time someone is showing they deserve to be locked up, a lot of people are coming out of crime anyway
21
Q

Explain Rehabilitaiton?

A

• Restoration of offenders to a law-abiding way of life through treatment

22
Q

What are the types of rehabilitation?

A
  • Some deal with individuals, other with groups
  • Some seek to alter personality, others simply to change behaviour
  • Some equip offenders with vocational skills and education credentials, others simply work to cure addictions, etc.
23
Q

What is the history of rehab?

A

o Dominant perspective 1920s-1970s
o Declined in 1970s after:
• Tremendous increases in crime
• Official rates of murder, assault, robbery and theft doubled or more 1963-1973
• Martinson “nothing works” article in Public Interest (1974)
• A lot of thins seems like nothing works, there are a lot of reasons though because not administered properly
o Re-emergence in the 1990s through today

24
Q

Does Rehab work?

A

o Would be surprising given the shoddy way it is administered
o Current meta-analyses suggest positive results
o Generally tested via “recidivism rate”
• Measured in different ways, re-arrest, reconviction
o But enlightened tests might add changes in personality, attitude, function in community/school, and length of time between recidivistic episodes
• Not just did you recidivate or not, but was length of time between events getting longer
• Different ways to measure improvement

25
Q

What is the problem of rehab?

A

o Selection problem: need randomized experiments
• The people selected to go through rehab aren’t the same as people who the judge says aren’t fit for it, so those two groups can’t be compared
• Those who were rehabbed that have lower recidivism rates may be because they are improved, or because they are already less offensive

26
Q

What is retribution?

A

o Desert: Deserve Punishment

27
Q

What is the theory of retribution?

A

o Punishment should never be a means to an end, but an end in itself (Immanuel Kant (1724-1804))
o Backward-looking
• Looking at crime that has occurred and damage
o Proportional
• The punishment should fit the crime
some say punishment should be based on harm, or harm+blamworthiness

28
Q

What does blameworthiness reflect in retribution?

A 
o	Intentionality
o	Non-victim precipitation
o	Peripherality
o	Relationship to victim
•	But in practice, it is generally based on prior record
29
Q

What happens sans desert?

A

• Sans desert (without retribution)
o Deterrence: Harder to deter poor than rich from stealing bread. So poor get a longer sentence
o Rehabilitation/ Incapacitation: A rehabilitated murder can go free, but an incurable jaywalker must stay in treatment
o So although we want to drop retribution, we can’t drop it completely, things go amiss

Criminology (22 decks)

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