Jeremy Bentham Criminal Justice Essay

It was with the work of Beccaria and Bentham that saw a change in imprisonment. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) insisted crime prevention was the only way

One of the many things that has been highly controversial and still is to this very day is how to properly punish and treat criminals. Here in America we now have the Eighth Amendment to protect us from cruel and unusual punishment. This was based off of a Parliament Act of 1689 that created England’s Bill of Rights. Before England had come up with the idea that humans should have guaranteed basic rights, it wasn’t a matter of whether or not a criminal would die, as much as it was a matter of how they would die. Torture devices such as the guillotine, the stake, the brazen bull, and the rack were used to spread the idea of fear and punishment that was ineffectually used by leaders to try and control their people throughout the history of Europe.

From the late Middle Ages to the end of the nineteenth century punishments changed quite greatly although some things, of course, remained the same. A few things that changed were the policing, the use of gaols and the ideas based around capital punishment.

 Punishment has been a subject of deliberate among philosophers, political leaders, and lawyers for centuries. Various theories of punishment have been developed, each of which attempts to justify the practice in some form and to state its proper objectives. The quantity and severity of punishments were reduced, the prison system have been improved. According to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, Maryland, some of the major reasons for punishment are to reform, deterrence, rehabilitation, compensation, and retribution. Punishment for reform is intended to benefit the offender and society by changing the

A punishment is the infliction of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group because they have done wrong. Punishments are administered with the notion that a ‘wrongdoing’ can be corrected (Frase, 2011). Throughout the 17 and 18th century the legal system in Britain was incredibly harsh, disposing death penalties for often minor offences, the intention of this was general deterrence to discourage individuals from committing crime. There were great structural insufficiencies in the justice system and due to it being so punitive, juries were hesitant in finding people guilty of offences (Bentley, 1998). This era became known as ‘The Bloody Code’. During ‘The Bloody Code’, prison ships were introduced to separate young people from adults. They were criticised for their

Over time, the logics of social control and punishment have transformed dramatically and are designed to be effective based on the overall structure of society. During the ancient regime, society was under a feudal system controlled by the monarchy who used fear, torture, and public executions to keep citizens submissive. Accompanying the transition of the logics of punishment under the ancient regime to those introduced by the reformers is the new form of control through the use of discipline and punishment to produce productive members of society and to rehabilitate those who do not conform to societal expectations. During the seventeenth century, the monarchy relied upon the techniques of penal torture and public execution to reaffirm

Introduction Throughout eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain, the ways of punishing criminals and the ways in which criminals were treated, went through many changes. In the start of punishing criminals, the idea was to punish the body of the criminal for all to see as a public example. Without a fully developed justice system, those guilty of almost every crime, even petty crimes, faced their fate through public execution. As society faces urbanization, citizens rely on the anxiety of fear through the justice system and instead of public punishment, Britain’s justice system moves from punishing the body of the criminal to punishing the mind and those guilty of crimes were sentenced to imprisonment and later transportation to America

Playing outside, coloring, and dressing up are common activities of a normal seven year old girl. When you are seven years of age, you are still a child of innocence barely starting school. But imagine being seven years old and having your purity, innocence, and childlike wonder taken away from you.

It was Bentham’s thinking that to prevent crime; the punishment must outweigh the joy of committing the crime. The ideas of Beccaria and Bentham fostered the rational basis for choice theory and concepts for deterrence(Schmalleger, 2012). There two types of deterrence associated with this approach specific and general deterrence. Specific deterrence which is aimed a particular offender engaging in the same criminal behaviors or continuous delinquency. General deterrence is preventing others from participating in illegal actions similar to the one the offender is being sentenced for (Schmalleger, 2012). There are so many factors involved in why people involve themselves in criminal behavior. It is my opinion that no matter the consequence people will still commit all levels of crime. Criminal behavior begins and ends with the individuals and their concept of what is right and what is wrong. What is deviant to you may be right for someone else, this all depends on their perspectives on life, crime, and values. Deterrence is a theory that will only work on certain individuals who are afraid of the

In classical theory, the main objective of study is the offence and the nature of the offender is a rational, free-willed, calculating and normal individual (Aker, 2012). However, it became apparent that some were more motivated to commit crime than others, regardless of deterrence. Therefore, the classical doctrine cannot account for re-offending. Based on empirical research done on convicted offenders, the notion of deterrence was rarely given thought of (Burke, 2013). Initially, most offenders give a lot of thought to the notion of punishment; however, in the process of committing the offence, offenders give little consideration to deterrence and consequences. As a result, this defies whether the purpose of deterrence is, in fact, achieving what it is meant to (Burke, 2013). The model is idealistic, that individuals could be controlled by the threat of punishment- by the likelihood of arrest, prosecution and

Torture, pain, and death; they are three simple words that describe the nature of punishment under most Middle Age law codes. This paper will go over a few of the methods that were used on people to get confessions or to punish them for crimes that would seem rather insignificant today and then focus on the humanitarian response which evolved into the modern penal code.

It is true that “sentencing is not like baking a cake; you cannot lay down in advance, for every case, the exact ingredients and proportions, the exact temperature required… In sentencing, courts are not dealing with standards and ingredients but with an infinite variety of offences, offenders and situations.” Nevertheless, there ought to be some definite criteria to decide the sentence. Taking a lead in this direction, the Federal Authorities in U.S.A. established sentencing Institutes in 1957 to impart some sort of training for magistrates in matters of sentencing. Sentencing Councils are also set up in USA to discuss the problem of sentencing and adopting a uniform policy on judicial sentencing. In England, vigorous efforts have been made by Lord Chief Justice ever since 1970 to ascertain definite principles of sentencing. The length of the prison sentence is usually commensurate with the seriousness of the offence as provided under the Criminal Justice Act, 1991. S.2(2) of the Act further empowers the court to imprison a person convicted of a violent or sexual offence for longer than the seriousness of the case requires, but not exceeding the maximum in any case. Another Act passed by the British Parliament, namely, the Crime (Sentences) Act, 1997 has removed the provision of remission from the penal code. In order to provide safeguard against the arbitrary use of judicial discretion, efforts are being made to introduce computerized sentencing system ever since

There has been a shift in types of punishment for criminals. Once these tended to focus on torture are dismemberment applied directly to bodies, but now the notion of punishment involves a public appearance in court, as well as much more “humane” sentences. This change involves distancing ourselves from spectacle, and is accompanied by a division of labor between courts and jails. Crucially, there is also an underlying technology of punishment, which changes from machines to do capital punishment to developing social machines to accomplish reform or conversion. There is also a shift from a notion of the body as a site of pain to one where a body simply loses rights. This is not an even historical process, and not a simple one.

Bentham opposes ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out’ laws. Pain and pleasure dictate what we should do and what is right and wrong. It is about maximizing the pleasure and minimizing the pain. ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out’ laws does not bring pleasure to society when a person goes to jail for life for stealing a pizza or a small amount of marijuana. These acts are wrong, but they are not evil. The value of pain and pleasure is based on the intensity, the duration, the certainty or uncertainty, and its nearness or remoteness. For instance, the pain of a stolen pizza and a murder, the intensity of the pain is not the same, nor does it last as long (hours as oppose to a lifetime). More so, “utility is meant the property of something whereby it

During the Victorian Era, different types of punishments were used for the crimes. Prisons served as lock-ups for debtors and places where the accused were held before trial. The prisons were becoming an acceptable form as punishment for serious offenders and had become the main form of punishment for a wide range of offenses. As most towns grew the crimes went up and townspeople were worried about how criminals would be kept under control (‘’Victorian Crime and Punishment”).