Can Punitive Measures Curtail Crime? Essay

In the United States there are four main goals when it comes to punishment which are retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation (DeJong, 2016, p. 288). The main goals for these punishments are to maintain order over society and to prevent recidivism (DeJong, 2016, p. 288). This ties into the Ecology perspective. By maintaining order over society and preventing recidivism, it ties into all of the issues regarding the Ecology perspective which requires for each issue to address the individual, family, community and society. Maintaining order over society and preventing recidivism strives toward making a safer environment for the individual, family, community and society. There is no universal agreement for making the severity of punishment just or fair (DeJong, 2016, p. 288). When it comes to retribution the person who is getting punished deserves the punishment (DeJong, 2016, p. 289). Retribution refers to when an individual commits a certain crime then that person must receive a punishment proportionate to that crime or suffering that they may have caused towards the victim (DeJong, 2016, p. 289). Regarding deterrence there are two types, general deterrence and specific deterrence (DeJong, 2016, p. 289). General deterrence focuses on the society in general and wants to scare everyone away from committing crimes (DeJong, 2016, p. 289). Specific deterrence focuses on criminals that have already been convicted and wants to prevent them from

To begin with, criminal justice is a system that is designed to maintain social control, which means it is a necessary aspect of every society since “Laws are the conditions under which independent and isolated men united to form a society” (Beccaria, 1764: 16). In order words, crime control deals with the methods that are taken by a society to reduce its crime. As a matter of fact, there are various crime control strategies from community policing to risk assessments. In addition to the different tactics for controlling crime, there are several theories that not only attempt to explain the causes of crime, but also outline different ways to handle offenders; for example, deterrence, rehabilitation, and even retribution.

The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past forty years, and many Americans today tend to believe that the high levels of incarceration in our country stem from factors such as racism, socioeconomic differences, and drugs. While these factors have contributed to the incarceration rate present in our country today, I argue that the most important reason our country has such a high incarceration rate is the policy changes that have occurred since the 1970s. During this time, the United States has enacted policy changes that have produced an astounding rise in the use of imprisonment for social control. These policy changes were enacted in order to achieve greater consistency, certainty, and severity and include sentencing laws such as determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three strikes laws (National Research Council 2014). Furthermore, I argue that mandatory sentencing has had the most significant effect on the incarceration rate.

In our current system of measuring crime has grown overtime. But we still enforce the notion of punishment. It was evident in Malinowski’s time and even in 2017. Before the idea was to shame the criminal and punish him or her to generate fear among others not commit the same crime. In today’s world, we have jail, penalty system, and prison to fulfill the same purpose. Prospective criminals still face the same process of being shamed and end up becoming a statistics to the society.

Deterrence theory of crime is a method in which punishment is used to dissuade people from committing crimes. There are two types of deterrence: general and specific. General deterrence is punishment to an individual to stop the society as a whole from committing crimes. In other word, it is using the punishment as an example to “scare” society from precipitating in criminal acts. Under general deterrence, publicity is a major part of deterrence. Crime and their punishments being showing in the media or being told person to person can be used to deter crime. Specific deterrence is punishment to the individual to stop that individual from committing other crimes in the future. This type of deterrence is used to teach the individual a

For centuries governments have acted on behalf of society removing and punishing criminals with the goal of protecting its citizens. Criminals were arrested and locked-up in jails awaiting their sentencing. Once sentenced, they were publically humiliated, tortured, or killed. Early forms punishments were cruel and mostly focused on retribution.

E., Bridges, G. S., & Weis, J. G. 2008). Punishment is based on deterrence and is aimed at providing the greatest happiness for all of society without harming oneself or others.

Sentencing intended to shame offenders for wrongdoing. There are two types of punishments: criminal can go to jail either choose shame-based sentencing. Sometimes, judges allow preference to offenders which is not a good way to punish an individual who attempt a crime. It is very nondescript offering choices to a wrongdoer. An individual should be treated the way that he shouldn’t think again to attempt any crime again. Specially, public shaming based sentences are easy approach for criminals in the view of the fact that if the wrongdoer doesn’t feel humiliated. Moreover, these kinds of criminals don’t feel embracement because they don’t care but public thinks about them. It gives them opportunity to attempt crime again and again. In result, they indeed learn anything from punishment.

The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners (Madden, 2015). A longtime reform advocate Jim Webb wrote, “Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something dramatically wrong in how we approach criminal justice.” (Dickinson, 2015, p. 34). Crime control policies in the United States centered heavily on the increased use of prisons. Just about 40 years ago, 100 out of every 100,000 citizens of this country were in prison; today, there are over 700 people under lockdown for every 100,000 Americans (Subramanian & Shames, 2014). Everyone across the political spectrum seems to be singing from the same hymn book; far too many young men and in particular African-American

You noted in your post that “social welfare program was created to help individuals in society improve their own life; however, the program must also maintain control within society”. Where you surprised by the notion that programs are used to maintain control within society? I found a few passages from our weekly readings regarding the need to control society through social welfare programs a little unsettling and have spent the last day reflecting upon them trying to figure out what it is that bothers me about the passages. According to Day and Scheile (2012), “social welfare is based partly on the need to control the poor and keep works available for low-wages work” (p. 17) and “poverty does not “just happen”…The gap is maintained through

Secondary idea behind punishment is to scare the society to commit crimes and to build a better

What are the claims as to why punishment should be morally used? The author looks at three main justifications of punishment. Those who believe that the offender deserves to be chastised for his or her crime justify punishment by appealing to desert thereby retributive in nature thus backward-looking. The justification of punishment on forward-looking factors justifies punishment for its ability to prevent and reduce crime therefore through punishment the offender is capable of reform and rehabilitation. The third justification is the mixture of both justifications in which punishment is deserved for some past offences, and also it reduces crime. From these Justifications, it is clear that one cannot justify punishment without stating its aim. Honderich argues persuasively that these justifications that these justifications are not satisfactory.

Social control is necessary because when there is lack thereof, there is also no societal order. Social control is used by those with power, money, and influence; there are many different levels and forms. Our parents exercise social control on us from birth in order to raise a person that can thrive in a controlled society. They may ground us if we stay out too late on a school night to reinforce responsibility, or instead of using negative reinforcement, they may use positive approaches. Such as acts of love and kindness in hopes that one day, you will replicate similar behaviors. A more formal example of social control is the espionage and spying that the National Security Agency has been carrying out on innocent Americans.

Thirdly, another theory of punishment is incapacitation. The central idea of incapacitation is the society must be protected from dangerous person disposition from acting upon their destructive tendencies. There have many ways of punishment can be applied to incapacitate the criminal offenders, for example, imprisonment temporarily puts the convicted criminal act of general circulation and the death penalty does so permanently under S.295 Criminal Procedure Code. It would also be the case if the offender, when released from prison had become dangerous then he was before. Hence, the crimes he commits after release are more numerous or more serious than these which were prevented while he was imprisoned. Next, the theory of punishment which is applicable in criminal law is Reformation. The objective of reformation is to reform the

There are many explanations for what punishment characterises. For Emile Durkheim, punishment was mainly an expression of social solidarity and not a form of crime control. Here, the offender attacks the social moral order by committing a crime and therefore, has to be punished, to show that this moral order still "works". Durkheim's theory suggests that punishment must be visible to everyone, and so expresses the outrage of all members of society against the challenge to their collective values. The form of punishment changes between mechanic (torture, execution) and organic (prison) solidarity because the values of society change but the idea behind punishing, the essence, stays the same - keeping the moral order intact not