2.2. Discuss the aims of punishment. Flashcards
(32 cards)
What are the aims of punishment?
Many people believe that punishment is an effective way to prevent/reduce crime. Others argue offenders deserve to be punished anyway, regardless of whether or not this reduces crime.
Different aims/purposes that punishment can have:
- Retribution - expressing society’s outrage at crime.
- Rehabilitation - making offenders change their behaviour.
- Deterrence - discouraging future offending.
- Public protection - from offenders.
- Reparation - making good the harm caused by crime.
What is retribution?
Means paying back. It involves inflicting punishment on an offender as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act.
Retribution - ‘Just deserts’
Retribution based on idea that criminals should get their ‘just deserts’: offenders deserve to be punished and society is morally entitled to take its revenge. The offender should be made to suffer for having breached society’s moral code.
Retribution - proportionality.
- Punishment should fit the crime - it should be equal or proportionate to the harm done, as in the idea of ‘an eye for an eye’. This is why some people argue that murderers should suffer the death penalty.
- Idea of proportionality leads to a ‘tariff’ system/fixed scale of mandatory penalties for different offences - so many years’ jail for armed robbery, such-and-such a fine for speeding etc.
Retribution - expressing moral outrage.
- Although retribution might have good effects, this is not its purpose. Instead, it’s simply a way for society to express its moral condemnation or outrage at the offender.
- Punishment is morally good in itself, regardless of whether it changes the offender’s future behaviour. Retribution is justification for punishing crimes already committed, not a way of preventing future ones.
- e.g. hate crimes such as racially aggravated offences carry an ‘uplift’ or higher tariff sentence. The maximum penalty for grievous bodily harm is five years’ imprisonment, but this can be increased to 7 years if it’s proven to be racially motivated. The uplift reflects society’s greater outrage at the offence.
Retribution: link to right realists theory - rational choice theory.
Right realists: linked to rational choice theory. Like these theories, retribution assumes that offenders are rational actors who consciously choose to commit their crimes and are fully responsible for their actions. They must therefore suffer the outrage of society for what they have chosen to do.
Retribution: link to functionalists - Durkheim.
For functionalist sociologists such as Durkheim, the moral outrage that retribution expresses performs the function of boundary maintenance. Punishing the offender reminds everyone else of the difference between right and wrong.
Retribution: Criticisms.
- It can be argued that offenders deserve forgiveness, mercy or a chance to make amends, not just punishment.
- If there is a fixed tariff of penalties, punishment has to be inflicted even where no good is going to come of it, e.g. on a remorseful offender who will commit no further crimes.
- How do we decide what is a proportionate penalty or ‘just desert’ for each crime? People disagree about which crimes are more serious than others.
What is rehabilitation?
The idea that punishment can be used to reform or change offenders so they no longer offend and can go on to live a crime-free life. Rather than focusing on punishing past offences, as retribution does, rehabilitation uses various treatment programmes to change the offender’s future behaviour by addressing the issues which led to their offending.
What do rehabilitation polices include?
- Education and training programmes - for prisoners so they can avoid unemployment and ‘earn an honest living’ on release.
- Anger management courses - for violent offenders e.g. Aggression Replacement Training and other cognitive behavioural therapy programmes.
- Drug treatment and Testing Orders - and programmes to treat alcohol dependence.
Support workers linking with rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation policies require offenders to actively want to change their lives, but they often also require considerable input of resources and professional support from therapists, probation officers or others to help them achieve change.
- Is particularly so where their offending has led to their exclusion from mainstream society and where they need to be reintegrated into the community, such as upon their release from prison.
Rehabilitation: link to individualistic theories.
Individualistic theories of criminality see rehabilitation as significant aim of punishment. They advocate various ways of changing offenders’ behaviour:
- Cognitive theories - favour CBT to teach offenders to correct the thinking errors and biases that lead to aggressive/criminal behaviour.
- Eysenck’s personality theory - favours the use of aversion therapy to deter offending behaviour.
- Skinner’s operant learning theory - supports the use of token economies to encourage prisoners to produce more acceptable behaviour.
Rehabilitation: link to sociological theories - left realism.
Favour rehabilitation in that they regard social factors such as unemployment, poverty, and poor educational opportunities as causes of crime. Therefore, addressing these needs among offenders will help to reduce offending.
Rehabilitation: Criticisms.
- Right realists argue that rehabilitation has only limited success, in that many offenders go on to re-offend even after undergoing programmes aimed at changing their behaviour.
- Marxists criticise rehabilitation programmes for shifting the responsibility for offending onto the individual offender’s failings, rather than focusing on how capitalism leads some people to commit crime.
What is deterrence?
To deter someone from doing something is to put them off doing it. The fear of being caught and punished may deter people from committing crime. Deterrence can be either individual or general.
What is individual deterrence?
Uses punishment to deter the individual offender from re-offending. Punishment may convince the offender that it’s not worth repeating the experience.
- In the UK in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s government introduced a tough new system in juvenile detention centres described as a ‘short, sharp shock’ to deter young offenders.
What is general deterrence?
- Aims at deterring society in general from breaking the law. If the public see an individual offender being punished, they will see what they themselves will have to suffer if they commit a similar crime.
- Making an example of individual will have general effect and teach everyone else a lesson.
- In past, this was done through public punishments e.g. executions, so that everyone could see for themselves the consequences of offending. Today, the public are more likely to learn about costs of offending from media reports instead.
Deterrence: link to Right realism theorists.
Favours deterrence as a means of crime prevention:
- Rational choice theory - sees individuals as rational actors who weight up costs and benefits before deciding whether to offend. Therefore, severe punishments and a high chance of getting caught will deter offenders.
- Situational crime prevention strategies - such as target hardening, make it harder to commit an offence successfully and therefore acts as a deterrent.
Deterrence: link to Social learning theory.
Relevant to understanding general deterrence. If would-be offenders see a model being punished for offending, they will be less likely to imitate that behaviour.
Deterrence: Criticisms.
- There’s little evidence that short, sharp shocks/boot camps reduced youth offending in either UK/USA.
- 1/2 of all prisoners re-offend within a year of release suggests that prison is not an effective deterrent.
- How do we decide how severe a punishment needs to be for it to deter enough would-be offenders?
- Deterrence assumes would-be offenders know what the punishments are, but they may be ignorant of the penalties.
- Deterrence assumes offenders act rationally, carefully weighing up the risks. But some act irrationally, driven by their emotions without through for the likely punishment.
- People who break laws they see as unjust are unlikely to be deterred by punishment.
Public protection: Incapacitation.
Punishment may be used to protect the public from further offending by incapacitating offenders. Incapacitation is use of punishment to remove the offenders physical capacity to offend again.
Public Protection: Policies.
There have been many types of incapacitation policy at different times and places, e.g.:
- execution - of offenders, preventing them from committing any further crimes.
- cutting off hands of thieves.
- chemical castration of sex offenders.
- banishment
- foreign travel bans - to prevent football hooligans attending matches abroad.
- curfews and electronic tagging - to prevent further offending by restricting offenders’ movements.
Public protection: Imprisonment.
- Main means of incapacitation in today’s societies. Important part of the claim that ‘prison works’ by taking offenders out of circulation, it prevents them committing further crimes against the public.
- Incapacitation for public protection has influenced sentencing laws e.g. Crime Act 1997 introduced mandatory minimum jail sentences for repeat offenders.
- US ‘three strikes and you’re out’ laws were introduced in 1990s. Gives offenders long prison sentences for a third offence, however minor, if either of their two earlier offences was a serious crime.
