Punishment! Forms?

Is it just an expensive way of making bad people worse?

There are FOUR main justifications for punishment:

• A DETERRRENCE

Set an example to deter others• B REHABILITATION

Reform offenders so they come out as good citizens who do not re-offend

• C INCAPACTITATION

Take people out of circulation so they can’t harm the public

• D RETRIBUTION

Society’s revenge, getting our own back, pay-back

STATEMENT JUSTIFICATION STATEMENT JUSTIFIC

ATION

1 Punish and discourage 7 The ‘short, sharp, shock’ regimes used by Thatcher’s 1980s conservative governments for young offenders

2 Reforming or changing offenders for the better

8 Remove the offender’s capacity to offend again by locking them up. This is a means to an end – an instrumental justification for punishment.

3 Vengeance and pay-back. 9 An expressive rather than an instrumental justification for punishment – the expression of society’s outrage.

4 Revenge! Society getting its own back on those who do wrong and can’ t behave themselves

10 Locking away the dangerous, the violent and the light-fingered means that law-abiding citizens can go about their business without fear of being attacked or robbed.

5 Education and training for prisoners so when they are released from prison they can earn an honest living

11 Anger management for violent offenders, drug counselling for substance abusers.....

6 Taking offenders out of circulation – removing criminals from society protects the public.

12 Making an example of offenders will put off others who may consider doing similar acts.

STATEMENT JUSTIFICATION STATEMENT JUSTIFIC

ATION

1 Punish and discourage A 7 The ‘short, sharp, shock’ regimes used by Thatcher’s 1980s conservative governments for young offenders

A

2 Reforming or changing offenders for the better

B 8 Remove the offender’s capacity to offend again by locking them up. This is a means to an end – an instrumental justification for punishment.

C

3 Vengeance and pay-back. D 9 An expressive rather than an instrumental justification for punishment – the expression of society’s outrage.

D

4 Revenge! Society getting its own back on those who do wrong and can’ t behave themselves

D 10 Locking away the dangerous, the violent and the light-fingered means that law-abiding citizens can go about their business without fear of being attacked or robbed.

C

5 Education and training for prisoners so when they are released from prison they can earn an honest living

B 11 Anger management for violent offenders, drug counselling for substance abusers.....

B

6 Taking offenders out of circulation – removing criminals from society protects the public.

C 12 Making an example of offenders will put off others who may consider doing similar acts.

A

Sociological Perspectives on Punishment

• Sociologists agree that all societies need to impose control on their members to ensure stability - punishment is one way of doing this

• Sociologists are interested in various aspects of punishment:

What is the relationship between punishment and society? What does punishment do?Why does its form vary over time?

Why has punishment changed over the years?

Sociological Perspectives on Punishment – consider 3

• FUNCTIONALISTS

• MARXISTS

• FOUCAULTGROUP TOPIC

1 FUNCTIONALISTS 1 TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES

2 FUNCTIONALISTS 2 MODERN SOCIETIES

3 MARXISTS 1 PRE-CAPITALIST SOCIETIES (UP TO C18TH)

4 MARXISTS 2 CAPITALIST SOCIETIES (AFTER C18TH)

5 FOUCAULT 1 SOVEREIGN POWER

6 FOUCAULT 2 DISCIPLINARY POWER

Functionalism: Durkheim

• function of punishment is to uphold social solidarity, reinforce shared values, strengthen the collective conscience

• This function is performed differently in different types of society

1 TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES • Use Retributive justice (getting your

own back) – because the collective conscience is so strong in these type of societies when people offend it the reaction is swift and vengeful as a means of repressing the wrongdoer. Punishment is severe and cruel and its motivation purely expressive e.g. stocks, hangings…

2 MODERN SOCIETIES• Use Restitutive justice (restoring what is lost) –

crime damages the interdependence between individuals so this needs to be repaired and restored to the pre-offence state of affairs. Punishment here is restitutive, it takes an instrumental role of restoring society’s equilibrium, e.g. through compensation.

• Nevertheless even here punishment has an expressive element – it expresses collective emotions e.g. US triumphalism after killing Bin Laden.

Functionalism: Evaluation (A02)

• Distinction between retributive justice in traditional societies and restitutive justice in modern societies not so clear cut e.g. in traditional societies blood feuds were sometimes settled by compensation rather than by execution or murder. Also still an expressive role of punishment today.

Marxism• For Marxists the function of punishment is to

maintain the existing social order (capitalism and the power of the ruling class). Part of the REPRESSIVE STATE APPARATUS (Althusser).

• E.P Thompson (1977): In the 18th century punishments such as hanging, and transportation to the colonies for theft and poaching were part of the ‘rule of terror’ by the aristocracy over the poor.

Marxism• Rusche & Kirchheimer (1939) argue that each type of

economy has its own corresponding penal system. For example money fines are impossible without a money economy. Under capitalism imprisonment became the dominant form of punishment because the capitalist economy is based on the exploitation of wage labour.

• Melossi & Pavarini (1981) argue that imprisonment reflects or corresponds to capitalist relations of production:

CAPITALISM PRISONS IN CAPITALIST SOCIETIESPuts a price on worker’s time Prisoners ‘do time’ to ‘pay’ for their crime or ‘repay

a debt to society’.Factories use strict discipline Prisons use strict discipline, subordination and loss

of liberty

Marxism: Evaluation

1 Fails to explain the differing experiences of women and ethnic groups in the prison system.

2 Too deterministic and simplistic to suggest that punishment is directly linked to the economic base of society.

Foucault – birth of the prison

Foucault

• Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish opens with a striking contrast between two different forms of punishment, which he sees as examples of sovereign power and disciplinary power.

2 types of power in different periods

• Sovereign power was typical of the period before the 19th century, when the monarch had power over people and their bodies. Inflicting punishment on the body was the means of asserting control. Punishment was a spectacle such as public execution.

• Disciplinary power becomes dominant from the 19th century. In this form of control, a new system of discipline seeks to govern not just the body but also the mind or ‘soul’. It does so through surveillance.

The Panopticon

• Foucault demonstrates his point with the panopticon, a prison which was designed so that the prisoners could be observed by the guards at all times. Because they might be watched the prisoners behaved themselves at all times so the surveillance turns into self-surveillance/ self-discipline.

• Foucault argued that the panopticon was one of a range of institutions that, from the 19th century, increasingly began to subject individuals to disciplinary power through self-surveillance. Other institutions include mental asylums, work houses, factories and schools.

The Panopticon

Earlier forms of punishment!

The Panopticon

CCTV

Most modern form of surveillance, now appearing in classrooms across the UK!

Foucault

• To Foucault disciplinary power has infiltrated all parts of society, even into the human ‘soul’. Therefore according to Foucault this change in the form of punishment from sovereign to disciplinary power in the penal system tells us how power operates in societies as a whole.

Foucault: Evaluation

• 1 The shift from physical punishment to imprisonment is less clear than he suggests.

• 2 Expressive aspects of punishment ignored.

• 3 He exaggerates the extent of control that the state has over individuals. Goffman (1962) showed how inmates can resist controls in prison and mental hospitals

Changing Role of PrisonsPre-industrial society had a wide range of punishments – banishment, transportation, execution, ducking stools, flogging…

Until the 18th century prison was mainly used for holding offenders prior to punishment. Only following the Enlightenment did prison come to be seen as a form of punishment in itself – a place of ‘reform’, for example through hard labour or religious instruction

Imprisonment Today• In the UK the death penalty was ended in 1998 although the

last hanging was in 1964

• Life imprisonment is considered the most severe form of punishment

• Not proved an effective form of rehabilitation – recidivism (re-offending) currently stands at 60-70% of offenders

• However bang ‘em policies/tougher sentences have proved an election vote winner since the 1980s – known as ‘populist punitiveness’

• As a result the prison population has continued to rise - around 84,000 in 2013. Overcrowded prisons/staff shortages are now seen as a problem. A ‘riot’ in Maidstone prison in October 2013 illustrates this

Imprisonment Today• The UK imprisons a higher proportion of its population

than anywhere else in Western Europe – around 150 for every 100,000 of population. However in the US the figure is 5 times higher at around 750 for every 100,000 of population.

• Most of the UK prison population is male, around 5% are female. As we know ethnic minorities are over-represented

Prisons in the US: An era of mass incarceration?

• Rising numbers of prisoners in the US (and to a certain extent in the UK) led Garland (2001) to call the noughties and an era of mass incarceration, for example there are over 1 million black men in prison in the US.

• Downes (2001) argues this has an ideological function – the US prison system soaks up 30-40% of the unemployed making capitalism seem more successful

• Garland argues it is due to the rise of control/get tough policies over the old penal welfarism (prison is there to rehabilitate)

• Simon (2001) argues that prisons are used to wage war on drugs – ½ million of the US prison population are imprisoned for drugs offences.

Transcarceration

• Sociologists have also identified a trend to transcarceration (individuals get locked into a cycle of control shifting between different carceral agencies – care, young offenders institution, adult prison, mental hospital….)

• This might be due to the fact that the boundaries between the CJS and welfare agencies are blurring, welfare services increasingly being given crime control roles and sharing information (multi-agency idea of the Left Realists)

Alternatives to Prison• At one time the major goal with young offenders was

‘diversion’ – divert them away from contact with the CJS to avoid the self-fulfilling prophecy which can turn them into hardened criminals. Welfare and treatment ideas meant that non-custodial community based controls were used e.g. probation.

• The number of community based controls have risen in recent years – now have tagging, curfews, community service…

• However the numbers actually in custody have been rising especially among the young

Stan Cohen (2003)• Argues that the growth of community controls has simply cast

the net of control over MORE people. Using Foucault’s ideas argues that the increased range of sanctions available led to the following:

Penetration: law now penetrates much deeper into society

Size and Density: sheer scope of activities: control now on massive scale

Identity and Visibility: control and punishment used to be obvious and public but now more subtle forms e.g. CCTV, tagging, curfews often privatised now.

Far from diverting the young away from the CJS these community controls may just divert them into it.

Perspective Era of punishment 1 Era of punishment 2

Functionalism

Marxism

Foucault