Theories of punishment Flashcards
(47 cards)
According to Zedner (2004) what are the prerequisites of formal punishment?
(a) There can be no crime without law
(b) There can be no punishment without law
Punishment can be divided into three camps, what are these?
reductivist (reduces future potential crime), retributivist (from retribution,
the offender deserves to be punished) and reparation (repairs and restores- criminal makes
amends).
What does Reductivism focus on?
Reductivism is based around the idea that punishment can be justified by its ability to prevent crime from happening again in the future. There are several different forms of reductivist justification for punishment; deterrence (putting people off), rehabilitation (improving people) and incapacitation (reducing or removing the possibility of offending). These are collectively known as consequentialist approaches.
Explain the theory of deterrence.
Deterrence involves putting people off committing crime through either a sentence of punishment they themselves have received and found to be unpleasant (individual deterrence) or through seeing the unpleasant effects on other people (general deterrence).
What is a quote from Bentham on deterrnece?
According to Bentham, general deterrence is when “The punishment suffered by the
offender presents to everyone an example of what he himself will have to suffer, if he is
guilty of the same offence”
Explain utilitarianism and deterrence.
by this theory you should always strive for the greater good and in punishment terms that means you should punish people so that others are put off from committing crimes in the future as that will save potential victims from pain and potential future criminals from
punishment, therefore a harsh sentence is justified for deterrence purposes but only as much as is necessary to achieve this.
Jeremy Bentham argued that
only the minimum amount of punishment necessary to produce deterrence should be used. True or false?
True
Under utilitarianism, how has punishment evolved over the years?
However, historically, punishments have often been arbitrary (based on random choice or
personal whim, rather than any reason or system) and overly severe like being hung, drawn and quartered or shipped to another country for a relatively minor crime. The system of punishment has moved from severity to certainty with a more consistent tariff approach.
Beccaria argued what when it comes to punishment?
Cesare Beccaria was an Italian philosopher who believed that punishment was too harsh and people of lower status were often much more harshly treated. He believed punishment should be measured to fit the severity of the crime. He believed offenders made decisions based on “rational choice”, uninfluenced by their social or personal conditions (such as poverty or any
biological factors) and so the extent of punishment should be graduated to fit the severity of the crime and not the nature of the individual criminal.
What is quote from Beccaria regarding purpose of punishment?
The purpose, therefore, is nothing other than
to prevent the offender from doing fresh harm to his fellows and to deter others from doing likewise…
What is a summary of Beccaria’s theory of punishment?
in a nutshell, punishment should only be severe enough to put others off doing the same thing in future, thus creating happiness for the largest possible number of people and
avoiding too harsh a level of pain on the criminal.
There are a number of difficulties with general deterrence theories according to Von Hirsch et al; 1999) what are these?
- How does one decide how severe punishments have to be in order to make people
decide not to commit offences? - Is the same level of severity appropriate for everyone? (are we all deterred by the
same things?) - Are all offences rationally assessed? What about those offences where there is a
high degree of emotion? - Is it the case that all those people one might wish to deter will actually know about
punishments that have been imposed?
Individual detterence such as young offenders detention centres are widely critiqued, why?
The Home Office’s own evaluation of the initiative was that the regimes were no more
effective than those they had replaced. Reviews of research evidence on boot camps conclude that the “evidence suggests that the military component of boot camps is not effective in reducing post-boot camp offending” (Wilson et al, 2005: 18) or that “by themselves, (boot camps) typically do not have an effect on participants odds of recidivism” (Meade and
Steiner, 2010: 841).
What is a critiques of the USA’s “Three strikes and you’re out” individual deterrence approach?
. The idea is that the extent of the punishment increases as the number of previous
offences rises, with a cut off, usually of three, which triggers an exemplary sentence. Huge
numbers of offenders have been sentenced to lengthy periods of imprisonment, especially in states such as California, and yet there is little evidence of any significant impact on crime
(Zimring et al, 2001).
Hudson 2003 critiques individual deterrence. why?
- It allows the innocent to be punished (the principle os simply that some punishment
must be meted out in order to remind others of its existence). - It allows some punishments to be imposed that are in excess (often well in excess) of
the harms done by the offence (in one infamous case in California a twice-convicted
felon received a “third strike” life sentence of 25 years to life for the theft of a slice of
pizza from a group of children. The sentence was reduced to 6 years on appeal.) - It allows for punishment of crimes that have not yet been committed.
Another theory of punishment within reductivism is rehabilitation. What is rehabilitation?
Rehabilitation is the idea that an offender can be “cured” of wanting to reoffend, and
reintegrated into society, by forced treatment, given as part of the punishment imposed
through sentencing. Sentences that were longer than what would be proportionate to criminal
responsibility for the offence would be justifiable under a rehabilitation-based approach,
depending on how long it took each individual offender to be rehabilitated. This theory
reached its height in the 19th and 20th centuries in part due to the significant social changes
that took place during this period. Industrialisation and urbanisation lent weight to views that
suggested that social and political circumstances were important in understanding human
behaviour.
What is Zedner’s quote regarding rehabilitation?
“At its height, punishment was recast as a means of restoring the
offender to good citizenship through programmes of training, treatment, counselling,
psychotherapy, drug and even shock treatment.”
What is one reason critiques would argue that rehabilitation as a purpose is not effective?
If not treated they will get worse
Labelling theorists, such as Becker and Braithwaite there is much evidence that the criminal justice process is in itself “criminogenic”.
Many who come into contact with the criminal justice system will, in fact, go on to
display more extensive patterns of offending than might otherwise be the case.
Why can causal factors of crime not necessarily be ‘fixed’.
Not all criminality and delinquency has causes that are discoverable.
What does rehabilitation overlook?
Overlooks the fact that much offending is opportunistic Thus, rather than taking the view that there are deep, underlying causes that must be “treated”, there are schools of thought within criminology which take the view that even if this is the case, such causes have not shown themselves to be especially
amenable to manipulation and, consequently, we are better advised to manipulate the
circumstances in which offending takes place
What does rehabilitation often overlook?
rehabilitative approaches are criticised for holding to an overly determined view
of behaviour, placing too much emphasis on social and cultural conditions, and too little on
the ability of individuals to make decisions and choices.
Another form of reductivist punishment we will study is incapacitation, what is incapacitation?
Incapacitation refers to the restriction of an individual’s freedoms and liberties that they
would normally have in society. Within the criminal justice system, incapacitation is the
response used when a person has committed a crime. By incapacitating the convicted
offender, we prevent the individual from committing future crimes because he is removed
from society and locked up or restrained somehow.
Why is incapacitation often critiqued?
It can be noted that incapacitation takes a forward-looking perspective in that it cannot rectify crimes that have already been committed and only attempts to prevent crimes from being committed in the future. Incapacitation is also described as being one of the four goals of
incarceration, or imprisonment. Incapacitation comes first, and then comes deterrence, rehabilitation, and finally retribution.
Most commonly, the term incapacitation is reserved for individuals who are sent to prison or given the death penalty. What else could it include?
it also includes things like being supervised by
departments within the community, such as probation and parole. Day reporting centres and ankle bracelets with GPS tracking devices may also be incorporated to incapacitate an
individual.
