Changes In Crime And Punishment - Attitudes To Crime And Punishment Flashcards
What was the purpose of medieval punishment?
Deterrence - make them scared of punishment
Retribution - an eye for an eye
Keeping order
How was humiliation used?
The Tudor and Stuart period saw little change in punishment
Increased crime rate meant more public punishments
Vagabonds where whipped and flogged through the streets and heretics were burned at the stake
Those put in the stocks an pillory for drunkenness and sweating were ridiculed and pelted with rotten food
What was a gibbet?
A warning post where the corpses of executed criminals were left as a warning to others
When was public execution a common form of punishment?
The sixteenth and seventeenth century
Crimes threatening the order of society, such as treason, rioting, arson, murder or counterfeiting, heresy
Hanging was most common
What were lesions used for in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
Places of detention for holding offenders before other punishments would be carried out. These were often secure rooms or dungeons in castles or fortresses
What was the shift in attitudes in the eighteenth century?
Shift away from brutal punishments to the idea that punishment should fit the seriousness of the crime and criminals should have help to build better lives
What was the idea of banishment?
Transportation
What happened in 1717?
An Act laid down a formal system of transportation with sentences of 7 years, 14 years, or life
Convicts would be transported to penal colonies to work
Why was transportation introduced?
Hanging was the only punishment for theft so judges would let offenders off
Building and maintaining prisons was expensive
Workers were needed on the plantations and farms of Britain’s empire
Criminals would be reformed by hard work as part of the pardon system
Dangerous and undesirable people removed from the country
What happened when transportation ended?
Caused problems
Old and rotting ships, hulks, were used
Taken ashore to work
Hulks continued to be used for convicts awaiting transportation
Why were prisons used more in the nineteenth century?
The gradual abandonment of transportation
Reduction in capital crimes
1868 end to public execution reflected attitude to punishment
Most criminals could be reformed with right punishment
What did John Howard believe?
Prison could be use to reform, not just for deterrence and retribution.
Prisoners should be kept in solitary confinement to prevent bad influence.
Sir George O Paul devised a prison with an exercise yard, good ventilation, a chapel, workrooms
What happened as a result of the 1823 Gaols Act?
Improved security and sanitation
Tried to bring order
Silent and separate system
What happened as a result of the separate and silent systems?
Reoffending rate did not decline
Suicide and insanity rates high
Government decided to return to deterrence
The 1865 Penal Servitude Act ruled that all prisoners should experience hard labour, hard fare and hard board
What were the contrasting views of punishment in the twentieth century?
Retribution
Rehabilitation
What were Reform Schools?
1850s offenders aged 10-15 separated from home environment
1970s replaced with community homes
What happened in 1902?
An experimental school to try to reform repeating offenders aged 15-21 was set up at a Borstal in Ken, focusing on routine, discipline and respecting authority
Borstals spread across UK 1908, abolished 1982
What were Detention Centres/ Young Offenders Institutions?
Young offenders could also be given a custodial sentence at Juvenile prisons depending on age and offence
When were ASBOs first used?
1999
Tagging and curfew orders 2003
What was the system of dealing with young offenders?
Removing liberty
Designed to encourage self respect and self discipline as well as developing skills for employment
What were arguments in favour of abolition of capital punishment?
Innocent person could be hanged
Not deterrent as most murders happen impulsively
Even the worst person may be reformed
The crime rate did not increase in countries who abolished capital punishment
Can make martyrs of criminals and terrorists
What were arguments against abolition of capital punishment?
Hanging is the ultimate deterrent
A dead murder cannot kill agin
Prisons expensive
Satisfies victims family and public
Who was Timothy Evans?
Hanged in 1950 for murders he did not commit after changing statement several times and confessing to accidentally murdering wife and daughter
Pardoned in 1966 after evidence found John Christie guilty
Who was Derek Bentley?
Hanged in 1953 for a murder carried out by his juvenile accomplice
Bank robbery in 1952, ‘let him have it’
200MPs signed petition to prevent execution
