Crime Punishment

4 Key excerpts on "Crime Punishment"

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  eBook - ePub

  Rethinking Punishment

  Challenging Conventions in Research and Policy

  • Karol Lucken(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3 DEFINING PUNISHMENT The essential attributes of penal activity      

  The previous chapter concluded on a note of speculation about the current and future status of classic philosophies in light of recent policy rationales. As indicated, incapacitation and economic pragmatism are primarily focused on crime reduction and cost reduction by any means, sans any traditional explicit theoretical assumptions or ethical imperatives. However, existing definitions of punishment seem to defer to classic justifications to delineate what counts as punishment, when the means-neutral approach of incapacitation and economic pragmatism might be more appropriate, given the variety of crime control mechanisms in play. In short, classic philosophies provide a sound moral compass, but not a sound definitional one.

  In the field of analytical philosophy, it is generally accepted that what counts as punishment is not the same as what motivates or justifies punishment (Marshall, 2000). According to this premise, the question of what constitutes punishment cannot be simply answered by referencing the assumptions of deterrence, rehabilitation, or retribution. von Hirsch (1976) has similarly argued that the definition of punishment should not be confused with its justification or purpose.

  Outside of philosophical circles, the distinction between the two issues has not been well-articulated or fully appreciated. In law and much of the criminal justice literature, the way punishment has been defined has been closely aligned with the way it has been justified. Jurists are especially prone to define punishment by whether retributive or deterrent aims have been expressed or implied in a law or policy. This standard suggests penal activity is ultimately distinguished from other state action by the proclaimed motivations of the empowered rather than the attributes of the action.

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  Psychology and Crime

  An Introduction to Criminological Psychology

  • Clive R. Hollin(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Third, in operant theory the technical use of the word ‘punishment’ – a contingency in which behaviour is decreasing in frequency – is not the same as in general use where punishment means experiencing something most people would see as unpleasant. The high recidivism rates among young people subjected to punishment though the legal system suggests that these punishments are not punishing. This point will be taken up again in Chapter 11. The essential issue with learning theory, particularly radical behaviourism, lies at a philosophical level with the question it raises of what it means to be human (Ions, 1977; Modgil & Modgil, 1987) and whether our actions are determined by environmental contingencies or do we act of our own free will? The theoretical shift that sees cognition playing a fundamental role in determining behaviour reflects the dilemma ‘external’ or ‘internal’ causation. As mainstream theory and research returned to cognition as the driver of behaviour, so too did the field of criminological psychology. Cognition and crime The relationship of cognition with offending is implicit in suggestions that thinking styles, such as ‘impulsive’ or ‘concrete’, are characteristic of criminal populations (e.g., Glueck & Glueck, 1950). Several researchers were at the forefront of the move towards explicitly including cognition in explanations of criminal behaviour (e.g., Sarason, 1968; Yochelson & Samenow, 1976). A central issue, apparent in the early work, lies in the varied use of the term ‘cognition’: in general terms, cognition refers to concepts such as memory, imagery, intelligence, and reasoning, although perhaps it is most widely used as a synonym for thinking

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  Theories of Crime

  • Ian Marsh(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 3Psychological Explanations for Criminal Behaviour

  INTRODUCTION

  For many centuries, we have attempted to find out which people are likely to become criminals and what drives certain individuals to commit a particular type of crime in the first place. Over the years psychologists have considered a range of different explanations in order to answer these difficult questions. Some have argued that there may be a genetic explanation which is at the centre of explaining criminal behaviour; others have suggested that it is the environment in which people live which can influence their chance of becoming criminal.

  At different periods in history these ideas have been prominent in the minds of not only psychologists but also other professionals and the public alike. However nobody has seemingly provided a comprehensive and infallible answer to the question of criminality. This chapter will introduce some of the key theories that psychologists have attempted to use to explain criminal behaviour, such as personality, social factors and cognition.

  CRIMINALITY AS AN ELEMENT OF PERSONALITY

  It is common for us to attach labels to criminals and attempt to explain their behaviour through describing them as possessing a certain character trait. For example, it is common to refer to some criminals as ‘psychos’—particularly in films and the newspapers. This type of person is actually called a psychopath and labels such as these have been developed by psychologists to help us understand the different types of personality category that people fit into. Not all of these are criminal, but it is assumed that many criminals possess similar personality characteristics. Clearly there are some important factors to criminality that can be explained by situational and developmental factors, but there is also the psychological element to criminal activity that is relatively unique to that individual. One possible explanation for this desire to uncover the psychological traits of offenders is that it provides a quantifiable difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and to some extent further defines law-breakers as being almost another ‘breed’ of person. The following section will describe the different explanations of criminal personality

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  Russian Legal Culture Before and After Communism

  Criminal Justice, Politics and the Public Sphere

  • Frances Nethercott(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  37

  Foinitsky argued that attention to subjective circumstances (mental, emotional, physiological states of being) resulting in a criminal act, if not strictly part of the corpus delicti, was nevertheless crucial to the work of gauging the most appropriate punitive measures in each individual case: ‘The person in her entirety is brought before the judge; her character, motives, evidence that her criminal activity is habitual are all especially significant in the adjudication process.’38 Correspondingly, punishment understood as a battle with the complex body of circumstances that make up ‘criminality’ needed to be highly differentiated. Foinitsky distinguished three main types of criminal, each requiring a specific juridical response. An offender shown to be mentally deranged could not be held responsible for his actions: he was in need of a cure rather than punishment; a criminal who falls into crime by chance, perhaps committing just one crime, should be deterred from further crime; and punishment for reoffenders, however, should be corrective. In general, punishment had to be flexible and reversible (nakazanie dolzhno obladat’ gibkost’yu, delimost’yu); it had to be just, corresponding both to the objective weight of the infraction as well as to the established degree of subjective guilt.39

  At his own admission, Foinitsky was inspired by the English penal system with its classification of prisons into vocational and correctional institutions, which he characterized as the ‘individualization of prison discipline’. He singled out its system of ‘intermittent imprisonment’ and the patronat – charities set up to ensure the successful reintegration of prisoners into society once they had completed their sentence as practices to emulate.40 Having spent the early 1870s studying in various European cities (Berlin, Leipzig, Bern, and Paris), it was Foinitsky’s stay in London and Ireland, and his attendance at the International Penitentiary Congress held in London in 1872 where he became familiar with recent developments in theories of correction and sentencing, that proved formative for his work on the ‘prison question’ in Russia. A model for his arguments must certainly have been the British philanthropist, John Howard (1726–1790), whose vision of a unified penal system based on the corrective function of prison had gained posthumous recognition after the official abolishment of exile by an act of parliament in 1857 (though already the practice had been sharply reduced in the 1840s).41

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