Criminology: Retribution, Incapacitation, and Theories of Punishment

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering legal cases, philosophies of retribution, sociological perspectives, and incapacitation theories.

Ewert v. Canada (2018)

A Supreme Court of Canada case in which an Indigenous offender serving two concurrent life sentences successfully challenged five actuarial risk assessment tools used by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), arguing the tools failed to account for Indigenous backgrounds and violated human rights.

Tapia v. United States

A legal case in which the court ruled that sentencing length cannot be lengthened or calculated based on how long it is estimated an offender needs to complete a rehabilitative drug program.

R v. B.W.P.

A legal case concerning a 15-year-old Indigenous male in Winnipeg who caused a fatal injury with a pool ball, where low recidivism risk led the court to favor rehabilitation over general deterrence, imposing pre-trial custody, conditional supervision, and probation.

Retribution

Punishment inflicted for bad conduct considered in terms of redress or repaying a debt to society, driven by the state's requirement that the offender suffer so they may repent for their bad actions.

Vengeance

The act of avenging oneself or another through the retributive infliction of injury or punishment, functioning as payback because the victim needs the offender to suffer.

Punishment

The infliction of a penalty or sanction in retribution for an offense to uphold the legitimacy, application, and enforcement of formal laws and rules.

Code of Hammurabi

An ancient legal code specifying retributive principles, including the rule that an accuser who charges another man with murder without proof shall be put to death.

King's Peace (~1000 CE)

A historical legal doctrine establishing that criminal offenses are committed against God or against the Monarch (the state), shifting punishment away from private blood feuds.

Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria

Enlightenment philosophers who opposed retributivism, asserting that it is immoral for punishment to cause more pain or harm to an offender than the harm they originally prevented or caused.

Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals, 1797)

Philosopher who argued that punishment must only be retributive to respect individual autonomy, declaring that penalties can never serve secondary social goods and must strictly match the exact harm inflicted.

Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

Concepts introduced by Émile Durkheim describing social cohesion: mechanical solidarity occurs in less-diverse societies with shared values, whereas organic solidarity occurs in diverse societies where public punishment unites weakly connected people through shared moral outrage.

Ressentiment

A defensive, negative emotion described by Friedrich Nietzsche in 'On the Genealogy of Morals' (1887), experienced by individuals lacking self-identity who seek to define themselves purely in opposition to 'bad people' through retribution.

Functionalism

The sociological perspective holding that all elements in society, whether ostensibly good or bad, serve an essential purpose or function (such as crime creating employment in policing).

David Garland (Peculiar Institution, 2010)

Criminologist who characterized capital punishment as the ultimate form of retribution, framing it as a functional social drama that provides public forums for debate among lawyers, politicians, and the media.

Nada Gligorov (2014)

Scholar who argued that human bodily actions often lack conscious forethought, asserting that the diminished reality of free will undermines the concept of moral and legal retributive responsibility.

Peter Strelan and Jan-Willem Van Prooijen (2013)

Researchers who found that victims who witness their transgressors receiving 'just deserts' feel justice has been validated, which directly facilitates forgiveness.

Frank Zimring (2003)

Author of 'The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment', who mapped American executions (1977-2014) against historic lynchings (1877-1946) to demonstrate that modern executions are deeply tied to Southern traditions of violent local control.

Chief Justice Lamer's Definition of Retribution

An objective, reasoned, and measured determination of an appropriate and just punishment.

United States v. Burns (2001)

A Supreme Court of Canada case establishing that extraditing individuals without diplomatic assurances that capital punishment will not be imposed violates Section 7 principles of fundamental justice.

R v. Bissonnette

The prosecution of the 2017 Quebec mosque shooter where the Crown's request for consecutive life sentences resulting in 150 years of parole ineligibility was deemed grossly disproportionate, ultimately yielding a 25-year sentence.

Dangerous Offender

A Canadian legal designation for high-risk individuals who pose an undue ongoing risk to society, subjecting them to federal custody for an indeterminate period (potentially for life).

Cultivation Theory (1976)

A media theory stating that individuals who consume high quantities of television and sensational news systematically overestimate the prevalence of violent crime in society.

Incapacitation

A penological practice that deprives an offender of capacity or renders them physically unable to commit crimes, historically realized through ostracism, exile, shunning, deportation, and imprisonment.

Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer (1939)

Marxist criminologists who argued in 'Punishment and Social Structure' that prisons are an economic enterprise used to warehouse and incapacitate the poor and disorderly across historical epochs.

William Chambliss (1964)

Sociologist who demonstrated that English vagrancy laws between the 14th and 17th centuries were manipulated to manage surplus labor, filling or emptying penal mechanisms depending on labor demands.

Loïc Wacquant (2009)

Sociologist who argued that modern states utilize prisons for men and welfare denial for women to regulate poor populations and preserve racial and class hierarchies in the wake of the civil rights movement.

Cesare Lombroso (1887)

Founder of positivist criminology and author of 'The Criminal Man', who theorized that certain individuals possess biological and physical traits that mark them as naturally predisposed to criminal behavior.

Atavistic Criminality

The positivist theory developed by Cesare Lombroso asserting that some individuals are born criminals who can be recognized by specific physical anomalies, features, and tattoos.

Selective Incapacitation

David Greenberg's (1975) penological strategy proposing that incarceration should focus strictly on isolating the small, chronic subset of pathological offenders responsible for a disproportionate volume of crime.

Superpredator Scare (1996)

A 1990s moral panic popularized by John DiIulio, Bill Bennett, and John P. Walters falsely predicting a rising demographic of remorseless juvenile offenders, resulting in harsh adult sentencing for youth.

Robert DeFina and Lance Hannon

Researchers whose empirical work showed that the broad social, economic, and community harms produced by mass incarceration outweigh the crime-prevention benefits of incapacitation.