Prevention strategies (punishment)

What are the 5 functions of punishment?

• Deterrence; discouraging criminals

• Reduction; preventing future crime

• Retribution; revenge

• Rehabilitation; changing behaviour

• Incapacitation; removing the ability to commit

What are the different ways of punishment?

• Jail (rehabilitation, deterrence and retribution)

• Community service (rehabilitation and deterrence)

• Mutilation (incapacitation, reduction and deterrence)

• Capital punishment (retribution, reduction and deterrence)

• Probation (rehabilitation and deterrence)

• Formal police caution (rehabilitation)

• CBO (reduction)

What is the functionalist perspective on punishment?

Durkheim argues that the main purpose is to reinforce the boundairies of acceptable behaviour (shared values). There are two kinds of justice which keeps the community safe and maintains social solidarity:

• Retributive justice: Strong, collective conscience responds with vengeful passion to repress the wrongdoer

• Restitutive justice: Solidarity is based on resulting interdependence- crime causes damage, so it is necessary to repair with compensation like community service.

What is the Marxist perspective on punishment?

Punishment reinforces ruling class hegimony (superior values to control) and existing social order and control w/c individuals.

• Melossi and Pavarini argue prisons reflect capitalist society as punishment is based on capitalist principles, such as fines.

What is the right realist perspective on punishment?

Heavy on deterrence and incapacitation; prison is important as may prisons are pushed away and removes known criminals from the street so they cannot commit.

What is the left realist perspective on punishment?

Punishment can reform or change offenders; they focus on education to help them go back into society smoothly

How has punishment changed overtime?

Early modern period: Focused on public and physical punishment to scare people into obeying (Retribution)

• Functionalists would argue that this punishment maintained social solidarity

Industrial period: Movement away from physical punishment to imprisonment (Reduction and retribution)

• Functionalists would like this as there is the separation of prisoners from main society

• Marxists would dislike how the w/c couldnt pay off their prison time, whilst the m/c could

1900-present: Punishment increasingly includes rehabilitation but deterrence remains important

• Functionalists would like the adaptation and change of prisons so they can fit back into society

• Marxists dislike how the m/c are overlooked

How does Foucault argue about the development of prisons?

Pre-industrial society: There was sovereign power, where the monarch controlled society

Post-industrial society: There is now disciplinary power, as control is exerted through surveillance

• Prisons now take on a panopticon structure, where the prisoners are being watched by the guards, but they don’t know where from. This makes them fearful of being deviant, and leads to self-surveillance.

He argues prison has changed into an area of reform where the behavior is punished, not the prisoner

How does Garland argue the USA is going through an era of mass incarceration?

The USA, since the 1970s, has had an increasing number of prisoners; about 1.4 millions state and federal prisoners which is 3x the rate of imprisonment in Europe. He argues that the reasons for mass incarceration is the growing movement from reintergrating people into society.

• Downes also argues the US prison soaks up about 30-40% of the unemployed, making capitalism look more successful

What is transcarceration?

An extension of mass incarceration as individuals are locked into a cycle of control- shifting between agencies of control throughout their life

• Sociologists see the cause of this through burring the boundaries between criminal justice and the welfare system.