Punishment Flashcards
(15 cards)
What are the 3 ways punishment can be used to reduce further crime?
- Deterrence > discourage them from future punishment (making an example)
- Rehabilitation > punishment used to reform or change offenders so they no longer offend
- Incapacitation > use punishment to remove the offenders capacity to offend again (imprisonment, execution, cutting off of hands, chemical castrations)
What is retribution?
A justification for punishing crimes that have already been committed, rather than preventing further crime. Like revenge.
Not trying to make anything better or helping the public or the person.
What is reduction?
Stopping additional or future crimes from happening.
Done through deterrence, rehabilitation and incapacitation.
Its instrumental where punishment is a means to an end.
What are Durkheim’s forms of Justice?
Believed there were 2 main types of Justice:
- Retributive > done for vengeance
- Restorative > aims to repair social damage caused by crime and to restore balance
What are examples of retributive punishment?
- Beheading
- Torture
- Flogging
What are examples of restorative punishment
- Counselling
- Perpetrators sitting with victims and hearing about how their crimes affected them, give them the opportunity to apologize
- Fines
- Community service
What does Elias say?
Came up with the theory that changes in punishment were a reflection of a broader ‘civilisation process’ in which countries were gradually changing their sense of morality and appropriateness away from more violent forms.
What is a criticism of Elias’s theory?
- Torture still happens even in civilised societies
- There is still someone in power, a hierarchy of power who has control over everyone else and makes laws (Trump saying he thinks its fine that torture is a form of punishment)
- Are people really rehabilitated in prison or are they just tortured - people can come out worse or traumatized.
What is the function of punishment?
Why we punish.
What is the forms of punishment?
How we punish.
What did E.P Thompson say?
Describes how in the 18th century punishments such as hanging and transportation to the colonies for theft and poaching were a part of a ‘rule of terror’ by the landed aristocracy over the poor.
What did David Downes say?
Argued the US prison system soaks up about 30-40% of the unemployed, thereby making capitalism look more successful.
What did Melossi and Pavarini say?
See imprisonment as reflecting capitalism relations of production.
What did Rusche and Kirchheimer say?
Argue each type of economy has its own corresponding penal system.
Under capitalism, imprisonment becomes the dominant form of punishment.
What are the theory pairs?
Function of punishment:
- Parson vs. Downes
Forms of punishment:
Elias vs Foucalt
Durkheim vs Melossi and Pavarini
