Punishment, Deterrence, And Rehabilitation Essay

Discuss: The tension between rehabilitation and punishment in an incarceration setting. What happens when one is emphasized over the other? Is it possible to strike a balance?

Nationally, every 7 minutes, another person enters prison. And every 14 minutes, someone returns to the streets, beaten down and, more often than not, having suffered a great amount of violence during his or her incarceration. Professionals will tell you that incarceration really does very little to stop crime, but we go on spending billions of dollars in order to lock up more and more people. We have become the country with the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world. (National Criminal Justice Commission)

The offender must have some type of punishment for the action he or she chose. Deterrence is a type of sentencing that prevent future actions of crimes. There is a general deterrence and specific deterrence. Specific deterrence is punishment that prevents the criminal to commit additional crimes by enforcing fear. "Back in the day", depending on the crime, the criminals would get parts of their body removed. For example, rapist were castrated. General deterrence is when examples are shown to prevent someone, that is contemplating on committing crimes, to change their minds. Sometime's when a person is put in jail it does not change their criminal minds.

Retribution has been associated with increased punishment, decreased treatment, but not with reduced recidivism (Andrews et al., 1990). Not only has there been no reduction in recidivism, there has also been no increase in deterrence through the use of punitive measures (Cullen & Gendreau, 2000). Deterrence-oriented interventions have actually been shown to increase recidivism by 12%, as demonstrated by Lipsey’s (1992) meta-analysis (as referenced by Cullen & Gendreau, 2000).

What has society done about reforming sentencing laws in order to reduce the incarceration population? The fair sentencing Act which was signed by president Obama has helped reduce the number of inmates impacted by mandatory minimum sentencing by “reducing the disparity in the amounts of powder cocaine and crack cocaine required for the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences and eliminates the mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine, it also increases penalties for major drug traffickers” (White House 2010). What the Act did was changed the ratio of Crack cocaine v Cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1 (U. S. Department of Justice 2010). This Act is beneficial because it

Since World War II through the 1970s, many changes occurred in the United States correctional systems. Rehabilitation Model is a treatment program that was designed to reform the inmates. According to www.copower.org, “This model is similar to the medical model; it regards the person with a disability as in need of services from a rehabilitation professional who can provide training, therapy, counseling or other services to make up for the deficiency caused by the disability. Historically, it gained acceptance after World War II when many disabled veterans needed to be re-introduced into society. The

There are many different philosophies that are in use in the court systems when determining what sort of punishment will be imposed on someone who is found guilty of committing a crime. These philosophies are in use in both the adult courts and juvenile courts. The juvenile court system is similar to the adult courts, but there are many differences between the two. Both court systems try and keep crime from happening and both courts sentence those found guilty to some sort of punishment through the punishment philosophy that the court determines is a suitable approach for preventing future crime.

The four goals of punishment are retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. Retribution is a punishment that when a person gets a punishment for something that they have done and to get back at them. An example for a retribution would when someone gets a death penalty for commenting a murder. Incapacitation is when a person is trying to prevent a person who already had a sentenced felony from committing any other future offenses. For example, say a person has robbed a bank multiple times and he is trying to commit it again but the authorities are preventing him doing that because they don’t want him to be sentenced a longer than what he is already sentenced for. Deterrence is a punishment for any criminal activity that is involved

Deterrence is the primary justification for punishment. In the practice, this deterrence-centric philosophy serves as the fundamental principle for many criminal justice systems in the U.S., no matter explicitly or implicitly (Eassey and Boman, 2015). According to Beccaria (1764), the central hypotheses of the deterrence theory are that crime can be prevented when punishment is more significant than the perceived benefits, and the punishment should be swift, certain, and severe. Generally, there are two types of the deterrence, one is general deterrence, which emphasized on the impact of punishment on the general population; while the other one is specific deterrence, which uses punishment to reduce recidivism (Stafford and Warr,

I believe what should be emphasized in punishment is the verdict or outcome to all that have done something wrong or harsh. Though we may not agree always on the decisions of the courts (parents, teachers, etc), they are there for societies protection of right and wrong. I believe that the deterrence sentence (or rather a sentence with a deterrent element) are aimed at deterring not only the actual offender from further offences but also potential offenders from breaking the law. This sets a good example for society as a

To the mind of a criminal, it is very logical - although of course not ethical-- to steal rather than work because he thinks it is worth taking the risks for the profits he gets from stealing. These are individuals with "deviant" motivations. As a factor that tends to reduce crime, incarceration has two main effects: imprisonment and deterrence. The imprisonment reflects the fact that a person who is in jail cannot commit crimes against others members of society because of his position. In contrast, deterrence seems to function better because the person thinks about the potential consequences of their actions. This distinction has become critical to relate it with the so-called laws of "three strikes" which is sentencing repeated criminals

Be sure to address the four types of sentencing models and the issues surrounding them (equity, truth-in-sentencing and proportionality).

For the philosophy of punishment I chose deterrence, specifically because of the goals and benefit this philosophy. The deterrence punishment is divided in to two separate categories. First on is the general deterrence, the goal of general deterrence is to prevent non-offenders (those who’ve not committed a crime) from committing crimes by exposing non-offenders to the reality of the punishment that they would possibly be given if indeed they committed a crime. For example showing juveniles the process from being arrested, booked, charged, sentenced, and then incarcerated. The goal by doing this would be to teach the

In Chapter 10 “Corrections”, it went over the history, different kinds of punishments, how it affected the inmates, and how the corrections system is now and how different it has changed since the first penitentiary. Being in prison has always been an act of punishment and gives time to the inmate to reflect their actions. Prison isn’t a place to relax and enjoy oneself, an inmate needs to do work or will suffer the consequences. We will look more into the different kinds of systems and how we got to where our system is at today.

In the 18th century Cesare Beccaria- an Italian philosopher, doomed the concept of torture and death penalty by introducing the term "criminology" to the world. At present, nearly all countries in the world have adopted the criminal justice system. Criminal justice consists of two tools: Law and Order. On the road to maintain Law and Order, penalty like Prison Term has been espoused. Prison Term could be defined as the length of incarceration for an offender, where the legnth varies from few days to months in a prison. It also embraces life terms in case of serious crimes like manslaughter, rape, murder, armed robbery, and kidnapping. However in the past two decades, increase in a crime rate and prisoners in incarceration indicate the