punishment

• purpose of punishment - NEWBURN

  1. rehabilitation - discourage reoffending
  2. deterrence - to prevent other people from offending in the future
  3. restorative justice - to force criminals to make amends to the victims they have harmed
  4. protection of society - incapacitation takes the offenders out of society so they are unable to harm others
  5. boundary maintenance - reinforce the social norms and values and remind people of what is acceptable
  6. retribution - because the criminals deserve to be punished for their crimes
• Perspectives on punishment

  Functionalism

  • society can only exist if there is a shared system of values that tie a society together morally
  • laws are representation of this collective conscious
  • DURKHEIM - retribution gives people an outlet for anger and reaffirms collective consciousness
• Perspectives on punishment

  Marxism

  • laws are reflections of ruling class ideology and punishment is part of the repressive state apparatus (Althusser) which keeps people people in line and in their place
• perspectives on punishment

  Weberianism

  • only the state has the power to punish offenders, not the church or landowners as in the past
  • legal-rational authority meaning punishment is based on impersonal rules and regulations set out by a vast bureaucracy and set of checks and balances
• Changing forms of punishment

  • FOCAULT - postmodernism
  • sovereign power - public forms of punishment and physical punishment were forms of showing power by monarchs rather than deterring criminal behaviour
  • Disciplinary power - decline in sovereign power and new forms of state power moved punishment to disciplinary power which includes surveillance and monitoring
• changing forms of punishments

  • GARLAND =
  • in the 1950s the state practiced 'penal welfarism' - criminal justice system did not just try to catch and punish offenders but also tried to rehabilitate them so that they could be reintegrated into society
  • we have now moved into a new era in which a 'punitive state' enforces a 'culture of control' -

  1. politicians increasingly use the issue of crime control and being tough on crime as a means to win elections
  2. 'mass incarceration'
• changing forms of punishments

  • RUSCHE AND KIRCHHEIMER
  • Marxist approach - sees punishment as a form of social control and class domination
  • punishment changes as economic needs change
  • they see the change in punishment from physical punishments to transportation and now with cheap prison labour
  • this reflects the changing economic needs of the dominate class
  • brutality rose when population was plentiful - land declines as labour forces declined
• are prisons effective as a form of punishment - YES

  • keeps society safe from dangerous criminals
  • resocialisation into social norms and values
  • education to prevent recidivism
  • bad experiences in prison will stop reoffending
• are prisons effective as a form of punishment - NO

  • school of crime
  • leads to labelling which can cause reoffending
  • high recidivism rates show it is not effective