Unit 4, 2.2 Aims of punishment

Retribution- obtaining revenge or payback, addressing expressive/ emotional needs
- How does it work?
  - aims to actively punish criminal offenders, ideally in proportion with their injuries to society, and so expiate them of guilt.
  - creating a sense of balance and justice.
- Examples
  - death penalty
  - very long/ undetermined sentences
  - isolation in prisons
- Underpinning theory
  - natural human impulse and morally right.
  - moral feelings are considered- one of the mos powerful expressions of our humanity.
  - personal revenge- how victim’s close ones feel.
- Criticisms
  - subjective: proportionate?
  - other factors may affect actions (substance abuse, diagnosis, accidents, etc.)
Rehabilitation- is the idea that punishment can be used to reform or change offenders so they no longer offend and can go on to live a crime-free life.
- How does it work?
  - aims to change offender’s future bhv by addressing the issues which led to their offending.
- Examples
  - education and training programmes- to avoid unemployment.
  - anger management courses- eg. Aggression Replacement training (CBT)
  - drug treatment and testing orders
- Underpinning theory
  - Individualistic theory: see rehabilitation as significant: they advocate various ways of changing bhv:
  - Cognitive theory: favours CBT to teach offenders to correct their thinking errors and biases that lead to aggression and criminal bhv.
  - Eysenck’s Personality theory: favours the use of aversion therapy to deter offending (low effectiveness rate).
  - Skinner’s Operant Conditioning: supports the use of token economies to encourage prisoners to produce more acceptable bhv.
  - Sociological theories: favours rehabilitation in that they regard social factors such as unemployment, poverty, poor education as causes of crime.
- Criticisms
  - right realist: rehabilitation has only limited success; many offenders go on re-offend even after undergoing programmes aimed at changing their bhv.
  - Marxists: criticise rehabilitation programmes for shifting the responsibility for offending into the offender’s failing, rather than focusing on how capitalism leads to some people to commit crime.
Deterrence- to make the cost of the crime outweigh the benefits therefore put people off committing crime.
- How does it work?
  - Individual deterrence
  - General deterrence
- Examples
  - tough sentences
  - executions, floggings or public shame.
  - media reports
- Underpinning theory
  - right realism: favours deterrence as a means of crime prevention
  - rational choice theory- sees individuals as rational actors who weigh up costs and benefits of committing crime before deciding to offend.
  - situational crime prevention strategies- target hardening; makes it harder to commit an offence successfully.
  - social learning theory- relevant to understand general deterrence; if offenders see a model get punished they become less likely to offend.
- Criticisms
  - very little evidence of efficiency.
  - how do we decide the severity of the punishment needed for it to be a deterrent?
  - assumes should-be offenders know the punishments.
  - assumes offenders act rationally, however some act irrationally.
  - people who break the law see it as unjust being less likely to be deterred.
Public Protection- prevent further offending by removing the offender from society for as long as possible.
- How does it work?
  - incapacitation punishment may be used to protect the public from further offending.
- Examples
  - execution of offenders
  - cutting off hands of thieves
  - chemical castration
  - banishment
  - imprisonment
  - foreign travel bans
- Underpinning theory
  - biological theories: Lombroso argues that criminals are biologically different = not possible to change/ rehabilitate them; favours chemical or surgical castration to incapacitate sex offenders.
  - right realist: see incapacitating as a way of protecting the public from crime; a smaller number of persistent offenders are responsible for the majority of crimes- incapacitating them with long prison sentences would significantly reduce crime.
- Criticisms
  - incapacitation does nothing to deal with the causes of crime or to rehabilitate offenders.
  - unjust because it imprisons them for crimes that the law assumes they may commit in the future.
  - too tough sentences
  - ever rising prison population
Reparation- involves the offender making amends for the wrong they have done, whether to an individual victim, society as a whole, or both.
- How does it work?
  - making amends for the social damage done involves the offender recognising the wrongfulness of their actions; this can be done through restorative justice schemes (bringing offender and victim together with the help of a mediator).
- Examples
  - restorative justice
  - financial compensation to the victim
  - unpaid work- community payback
- Underpinning theory
  - labelling theory: allows the reintegration of offenders into the mainstream society- allows them to show genuine remorse, it prevents them being pushed into secondary deviance.
  - functionalists: argue that reparation puts things back to how they they were before the crime was committed- is essential for the smooth functioning of complex modern societies.
- Criticism
  - some regar reparation as too soft to be a punishment- lets offenders lightly.
  - may not work for all types of crimes- compensation for damage to property or minor offences may be fairly straightforward however not so much for sexual offences and murders (victims or families may not want to see the offender’s face or forgive them).
- Denunciation
  - public condemnation of someone or something.
  - helps reinforce moral and ethical codes or boundary maintenance.
  - this have changed overtime to what is acceptable in a society - producing social solidarity.
  - eg. Shannon Matthews
  - mother and uncle kidnapped Shannon trying to get a compensation for her disappearance like it happened in the Sarah’s Law case.
  - they kept her captive for 24 days and led one of the biggest research for a missing child in the UK.