custodial sentencing

• Custodial sentencing:

  • When a convicted offender spends some time in prison or another closed institution such as psychiatric ward or young offenders centre 
• aims of custodial sentencing:

  1. Deterrence 
  2. Incapacitation 
  3. Retribution 
  4. Rehabilitation 
• 1. Deterrence 

  • Prison is designed to put people off committing crimes 
  • 2 types of deterrence:
  • General deterrence - aims to send a message to society that crime will not be tolerated
  • Individual deterrence- should prevent a person from wanting to commit a crime again because of past experience in prison 
• 1. Incapacitation 

  • Offender taken out of society to prevent them from reoffending - protecting the public
  • Length of incapacitation depends on the severity of the crime committed 
• 1. Retribution 

  • Society is enacting revenge/justice for the offence by making the offender suffer
• 1. Rehabilitation 

  • Prison is both to punish and reform 
  • On leaving prison, offenders should be better adjusted and ready to integrate back into society 
  • Prison should give training/treatment programs 
• • Recidivism = reoffending
• Psychological effects of custodial sentencing:

  • Stress and depression - 
  • Suicide and self harm 9X higher in prisons 
  • Institutionalisation and labelling-
  • Inmates adapt to prison life and don’t know how to live on the outside - can't readjust
  • Deindividualisation -
  • Leads to aggression inside prison 
  • Overcrowding-
  • 25% of prisoners live in overcrowded cells
  • Calhorn found this can lead to aggression and stress   
  • Effects on family -
  • Parents in prison feel guilty and their children suffer financially and psychologically 
• psychology and the economy:

  • £50,000 per year to keep a single prisoner  -  funded by the taxpayers 
  • Reoffenders take from the economy and do not contribute back to it 
• The high rates of recidivism suggests that the punishment of prison doesn’t work. In the uk, 30% of young offenders left prison and then went onto reoffend. According to the behaviourist approach, punishment is most effective when it is immediate, which doesn’t happen in custodial sentencing, suggesting why recidivism is so high.Custodial sentencing may be less valuable in society as it shows it cannot always stop criminals from reoffending. 
• Prison may be a training ground for crime rather than a rehabilitative opportunity. According to Sutherland, procrime and anticrime attitudes are learnt from close personal groups. In prison people live very close to each other, providing an opportunity to learn more criminal attitudes and techniques. Individuals also become institutionalised, making it harder for them to readjust to life on the outside.This means that custodial sentencing may have more negative effects than positive when dealing with criminal behaviour