Criminal Punishment
Criminal punishment refers to the legal sanctions imposed on individuals who have been found guilty of committing a crime. It serves as a form of retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and societal protection. Punishments can include fines, community service, probation, imprisonment, or in some cases, the death penalty, and are intended to uphold social order and justice.
7 Key excerpts on "Criminal Punishment"
- Peter Joyce, Wendy Laverick(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Teach Yourself(Publisher)
...Why do we punish criminals? Those who break the law will be penalized to express society’s disapproval of their behaviour. We refer to this as punishment. However, a key concern is what society wishes to achieve by punishing an offender. There are a wide range of possibilities: an important consideration being whether society carries out punishment in order to deter or prevent future acts of criminality or to exact revenge on those who have broken the law. The aim of this chapter is to provide you with an understanding of the wide range of outcomes with which punishment might be associated and to explain why the aims and methods of punishment alter over historical time periods. Punishment Key idea The term ‘punishment’ is capable of several definitions, although its meaning is often restricted to measures which are unpleasant and intended to inflict pain on an offender in response to an offence that he or she has committed. The scientific study of punishment is known as penology, which seeks to provide an understanding of the concerns that underlie the wide range of penal strategies that are available to society. We will consider these later in this chapter. Punishment is imposed by the state and has been defined as ‘the deliberate use of public power to inflict pain on offenders’ (Andrews, 2003: 128). However, inflicting pain is not universally accepted as a goal of punishment. Others prefer the use of the term ‘sanction’ ‘as the general term for any measure which is imposed as a response to crime, with adjectives distinguishing the various kinds of sanction according to their primary purpose – punitive sanctions, rehabilitative sanctions, punitive/rehabilitative sanctions (which are ambivalent about their aims), reparative sanctions and sanctions designed to protect the public through containment’ (Wright, 2003: 6–7). Andrews, M. (2003). ‘Punishment, Markets and the American Model: An Essay on a New American Dilemma’, in S. McConville (ed.). The Use of Punishment...
eBook - ePubRethinking Punishment
Challenging Conventions in Research and Policy
- Karol Lucken(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...A legal framework reflects the popular notion of punishment as well as the meaning of punishment conferred by the U.S. Supreme Court. Within this framework, punishment is largely allied with conventional forms (e.g., prison, probation, parole, death penalty) and philosophical functions (e.g., deterrence and retribution). A social control framework reflects a uniquely academic perspective. Within this framework, the many attributes and mutations of the control apparatus are fully observed. What is punishment? A legal framework A legal framework employs conventional benchmarks for defining penal activity. Therefore, punishment’s meaning is roughly conceived as a legally authorized state reaction to criminal behavior for the purposes of retribution, rehabilitation, or deterrence. Apart from the death penalty, this commonly accepted notion of punishment is equated with the “tough old-fashioned” (Van Swaaningen, 1999: 24) sanctions of prison, probation, parole, and jail. In fact, the construction of punishment through the pairing of these purposes and sanctions is nearly automatic in the public and political arena, criminal justice texts, and government reports and statistics. Annual and other routinely disseminated reports on punishment rates, using federal or state PPPJ populations, exemplify and reinforce this conventional meaning. This conception of punishment appears to have been affirmed in two fairly recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings. The practices prompting these constitutional reviews were sex offender civil commitment (SOCC) and registration-notification (SORN). 1 SOCC laws authorize the indefinite post-prison confinement of certain sex offenders, whereas SORN laws authorize community and government monitoring of sex offenders through the public recording and release of private information...
eBook - ePubPunishment and Modern Society
A Study in Social Theory
- David Garland(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
...For one thing, it is not ‘crime’ or even criminological knowledge about crime which most affects policy decisions, but rather the ways in which ‘the crime problem’ is officially perceived and the political positions to which these perceptions give rise. For another, the specific forms of policing, trial, and punishment, the severity of sanctions and the frequency of their use, institutional regimes, and frameworks of condemnation are all fixed by social convention and tradition rather than by the contours of criminality. Thus to the extent that penal systems adapt their practices to the problems of crime control, they do so in ways which are heavily mediated by independent considerations such as cultural conventions, economic resources, institutional dynamics, and political arguments. 24 Thinking of punishment as a social artefact serving a variety of purposes and premised upon an ensemble of social forces thus allows us to consider punishment in sociological terms without dismissing its penological purposes and effects. It avoids the absurdity of thinking about punishment as if it had nothing to do with crime, without falling into the trap of thinking of it solely in crime-control terms. We can thus accept that punishment is indeed oriented towards the control of crime—and so partly determined by that orientation—but insist that it has other determinants and other dynamics which have to be considered if punishment is to be fully understood. Punishment, then, is a delimited legal process, but its existence and operation are dependent upon a wide array of other social forces and conditions. These conditioning circumstances take a variety of forms—some of which have been explicated by historical and sociological work in this field...
eBook - ePubCriminal Justice Theory
An Introduction
- Roger Hopkins Burke(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Perhaps even more important is the reality that theorists, administrators and practitioners of the criminal justice process, as well as the electorate, cannot agree on the purpose of punishing criminals. Depending on who is speaking, at what time, about which offender, who has committed which crime, the goals of punishment alter, and in many cases conflict with and contradict each other. The Purpose of Punishment Punishment is an institution in almost every society. Only very small and very isolated communities are at a loss about what to do with transgressors and even they recognise the punishment of children by parents. Punishment, however, has different names. When imposed by English-speaking courts it is called ‘sentencing’. In the Christian Church it is ‘penance’. In schools, colleges, professional organisations, clubs, trade unions, and armed forces its name is ‘disciplining’ or ‘penalising’. It is an institution which is exemplified in transactions involving individuals, transactions which are controlled by rules, laying down what form it is to take, who may order it, and for what. (Walker, 1991: 1) The fact that punishment is common in most societies is well documented through anthropological, philosophical, sociological and historical studies but important questions remain. First, exactly what is the purpose of punishment? Second, why do we punish at all, what purpose does it serve, if any? Third, what is it about the breaking of rules, be they familial, group, societal, religious, national or universal, that makes us want to respond with punishment? We nevertheless need to keep in mind that the main aspect we will consider is that of legal punishment. Punishment can be defined as a deliberately negative response to an action that is deemed wrongful, inappropriate or criminal – it is rule-breaking behaviour followed by a possibly unpleasant and definitely unwanted infliction – often referred to as ‘pain and suffering’ imposed on an offender...
eBook - ePub- Nicola Lacey(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Hard though the attainment of such objectives may be (their assessment presents further problems of its own 23) a certain level of general deterrence through the threat of punishment, and individual deterrence through its experience, might realistically be hoped for, although in the ideal community it might well be hoped that more ‘internal’ motivations having to do with the affirmation of the values embedded in the law, or at least recognition of their importance to others and to the community itself, would suffice for the great majority of the population. 24 Furthermore, there is the (albeit very modest) contribution which can be made to the level of social security by the practice of punishment, not only by way of deterrence, but also, in the case of some forms of punishment, through the incapacitation of the offender for a certain period of time. Related to social protection, but also closely linked to the need to demonstrate that the norms of the criminal law are ‘for real’, is the need to forestall, or at least to minimise, any resort to private vengeance or self-help, which might cause disproportionate suffering and indeed involve excessive costs, whilst undermining the stability of and respect for the community’s legal system as a whole. Again linked to these aims is that of appeasing and satisfying the grievance-desires of victims, not only so as to reduce their suffering and forestall self-help, but also to demonstrate that the community takes seriously the harm done to the victim and takes upon itself the responsibility for upholding the standards breached, which it hopes to vindicate through the process of conviction and punishment...
eBook - ePubPenology
Theory, Policy and Practice
- Karen Harrison(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
...2 Punishment and the Foundations of Penal Theory INTRODUCTION The most logical starting point for a book that considers penal policy and practice is penal theory. Penal theory seeks answers to the questions of whether, and if so on what grounds, we are justified in punishing offenders and to what ends, this punishment should be used. When somebody has committed behaviour that breaches the criminal law, there is a belief that that person should suffer something unpleasant. Punishment in this sense is therefore a penalty that is imposed in response to proven criminal behaviour. Duff (1998) argues that it is a communicative act, which informs the offender that what they have done is wrong. In England and Wales, as in other countries, punishment is carried out in a formalised way, a process that is administered through the criminal courts on behalf of the state (although see Chapter 5 for a discussion of out of court disposals and Chapter 11 for a brief consideration of civil orders). This includes ensuring that first, if the defendant pleads not guilty, they have had a fair trial and then second, that published sentencing policies and principles are adhered to (see Chapter 4). Due to the fact that the deliberate infliction of harm can be regarded as an evil and may, out of a sentencing context, be considered to be a breach of the criminal law, for it to be seen as a necessary evil, it must be warranted. To this end, punishment must have a justifying aim or function, because to punish merely because a harm has been committed may be considered by some as reprehensible as the original behaviour. What that justification should be is the more difficult and controversial question, although in general the main sentencing theories can be divided into those which are forward-looking and those which are backward-looking (Brooks, 2015) (Hudson, 2003)...
eBook - ePub- Anthony Bottoms, Sue Rex, Gwen Robinson, Anthony Bottoms, Sue Rex, Gwen Robinson(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Willan(Publisher)
...Chapter 5 Punishment as communication Sue Rex Introduction The Criminal Justice Act 2003 sets out in legislation for the first time the purposes of sentencing: punishment; reduction of crime (including by deterrence); reform and rehabilitation; protection of the public; and the making of reparation. This makes it pertinent to consider how these purposes — and the normative theories in which they originate — apply to community penalties. Traditionally, debate in penal theory has focused on the competing claims of what are seen as two rival theories: consequentialism and retributivism (or desert). However, most contemporary theorists now favour a ‘hybrid’ approach combining elements of both (see Bottoms 1995). The difficulty with such a compromise is that it confronts inherent tensions between consequentialism, as an approach that looks forward to reduce future offending, and retributivism, as one that looks backwards to punish the offence. These tensions have become apparent in the case of community penalties, in relation to which there has been a failure to find a balance between their role as punishments ‘deserved’ by the offence and their role in crime prevention. One consequence of the various permutations through which community penalties have moved in the successive ‘eras’ discussed in Chapter 1 has been to create considerable confusion about the purpose of community orders and their place in the sentencing framework. This problem is not confined to England and Wales. Internationally, too, the lack of a clear consensus about the rationales underlying community sanctions has undermined their credibility and application (Roberts 2002, citing Kalmthout 2002). It was argued in Chapter 1 that the provisions for mixed custody— community disposals in the 2003 Act are likely to reinforce the subordinate role that community penalties play in relation to custody...
