Term Paper on "Corrections Rehabilitation the Limits of Punishment"

Term Paper 11 pages (3662 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Corrections

Rehabilitation

The Limits of Punishment

The Limits of Deterrence

The idea of deterrence is based on the notion that that people will do whatever they can to avoid things that are unpleasant and seek things that are pleasant. The premise as it relates to crime is that if the choice of committing a crime is unpleasant then people will not chose to engage in such behavior. In general this perspective would predict that crime rates would be lowest in those places where offending brings about unpleasantness and highest in those places where offending is pleasurable.

According to MacKenzie (2012) deterrence theory make certain predictions. It predicts that the more punishment that exists, the less crime there will be. The more that people are watched and threatened with punishment, the less crime people will commit. The more that people think they will be punished, the less crime they will commit. Supporters of deterrence theory really think that consequences make a difference. It would be great if this was true because corrections would be really simple. If people were punished crime would go away. But the evidence does not support this. The evidence shows that for the most part, deterrence theory proves to be wrong or only weakly supported.

Deterrence is characteristically linked with imposing additional punishment on offenders. It is defensible by the claim that there is high crime and recidivism rates for the reason that offenders are not punished severely enough. This leads to the notion that reducing crime should involve getting tough. Conservatives have in general agreed with this idea. They have argued that crime must be made not to pay by putting into place a range of laws that augment the costs of crime. This would be something like compulsory minimum penalties. In spite of the insight of these views, it should be understood that deterrence is not intrinsically a conservative theory. That is, it does not unavoidably lead to a rationalization of ruthless correctional policies. Deterrence is founded on the idea that people deliberately try to stay away from unpleasantness and seek things that are pleasurable. It follows that by making the choice of committing crime painful; people will choose not to do it (Gendreau, 2012).

According to Nagin (2012) the idea of deterrence is that laws should be put into place to ward off possible offenders, but once a crime has been committed and the punishment of the offender is in question, deterrence can no longer be the main concern. Surely the only morally valid reason for punishing a person is that they are guilty of some offense and deserve to be punished for it, which is why careful consideration of the balance of justice is essential to any ethically defensible theory of punishment. The basis for punishment is retrospective, not prospective. Although deterrence of the offender in prison to protect society might be laudable secondary goals, they can never be the primary justification for punishment being meted out. If deterrence were really the central rationale for punishment, a person known by the authorities to be innocent might nevertheless rightfully be punished, provided only that the public believed the accused to be guilty and was, by virtue of their punishment, deterred from committing crimes themselves. This is one illustration of the barbarity of a theory of punishment founded on deterrence. Deterrence strategies frequently incite the very behavior of the challenger that one is trying to avert, and that such strategies hardly ever meet the challenging set of conditions under which their supporters say they would work.

The Limits of Control-Oriented Supervision Programs

The control-based model is founded on a premise that is shared by liberal treatment supporters, that society relies too deeply on imprisonment as an offender control strategy. Additionally, there is an essential role to be played for community corrections programs in both a treatment-centered and the control-centered model of offender alteration. The dissimilarity is that the control-centered model would devise community corrections programs that centered primarily on offender observation and control, while treatment supporters would devise community corrections programs that highlighted the delivery of treatment to criminals in both institutional and community locations. Both models look at the effects of crime control and both portray success in terms of individual restraint from crime, rather than alterations in the crime rates in general in a particular community (MacKenzie, 2000).

According to Akers & Jensen (2002) there is quite a bit of research that suggests that casual social controls are more successful than formal social controls, at both the individual and community level. On the other hand, it is surely reasonable to suggest that the association that develops between a probation or parole officer and a criminal, in combination with other things, such as family, peers, work, neighborhood, could symbolize a considerable casual social control mechanism. With lesser caseloads, and closer contact, it seems reasonable to propose that criminals will think about the consequences of their choices in terms of the impact of these measures on their relationship with their parole officer. There is a probable deterrent effect that may function as a consequence of augmented contact between officers and offenders; but it will more likely take place as the consequence of the bond that grows between these two people.

The Limits of Incapacitation

Incapacitation uses imprisonment as a manner of separating criminals from the rest of society so that they are not able to commit offences while confined. According to MacKenzie (2012) there is no question that the main crime-reduction strategy used since the 1980's has been to augment the use of punishment, predominantly that of incarceration, under the supposition that people who are locked up will be prevented by from committing additional crimes.

The basic trouble with incapacitation is that of space. The criminal justice system is currently facing a tension between the publics demand for more harsh punishment of convicted criminals and its unwillingness to supply additional resources to put it into place. The principal operational restraint is that of prison capacity. Prisons are already filled to capacity. The current level of incarceration represents an issue of enormous political and social concern, as well as considerable expense.

The present growth in prison populations comes at a time when there is relatively little growth in prison capacity, and so the result is prison overcrowding and serious concerns about the effects of that over crowding. It has led to circumstances of confinement that are inappropriately severe, and these have resulted in court interventions directed as correcting such conditions. Saturated prisons inevitably increase the difficulty of managing the institutions and lead to a transfer of control from those charged with managing the intuition to the worst of the inmates, with the attendant deterioration of staff morale, reduction of security and increase risk of riot or other severe problems (Wilson, 2012).

The Limits of Restorative Justice

MacKenzie (2012) suggests that restorative justice (RJ) is a set of principles about justice that assumes a liberal, compassionate, helpful, and lucid human spirit. It takes for granted that victims can be kind to those who have injured them, that criminals can be remorseful and sorry for their actions, that their personal communities of care can take a dynamic role of support and aid, and that a facilitator can guide balanced conversation and persuade consensual decision-making between those with opposed interests.

The restorative justice model entails a set of principles and values that include: limiting values, maximizing values, and evolving values. While the criminal justice system today is offender-centered and focused on punishment, the restorative justice model offers a more balanced view of the suitable public response to crime. It supports the public facet of criminal law but initiates the victims' viewpoint and the compensation of the needs created by the crime as an undividable characteristic of justice (MacKenzie, 2012).

Compared with the conventional model of justice, restorative justice offers a more hopeful and dynamic approach to restoring affiliation between the victims of a crime, the person who committed the crime the community as a whole. It does not get rid of condemnation and reaffirmation of social standards, but it does tend to make justice more sympathetic and more responsive to the pain of the people and communities affected by crime (Wilson, 2012). Restorative justice encourages such values as healing for the criminal and the victim, community involvement, polite dialogue between the parties concerned, pardon, accountability and organization. It is presented as an option to the adversarial system of justice and a cure to penalizing policies.

Restorative justice has yet to alter the fundamental course of the criminal justice system. It has confirmed to be a more triumphant substitute to prison or other kinds of punishment, but has produced decreased consequences in terms of victim partaking and reimbursement for harm. Victims' troubles are not determined once and for all by the declarations made accessible to them. The goals of compensation and healing put forward in these advances must not seen as an simple view of their needs and the comprehensive… READ MORE

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