Asses the usefulness of the different types of punishment in our society Punishment has always been part of society; it has always been seen as a key element that allows us to see how far society goes to maintain social control. In today’s society Freely and Simon argue that the stress of social control has changed from controlling deviant people’s behaviour to controlling people that are heading down a potentially deviant route, this has been done through schemes such as NACRO which is a charitable organisation which provides houses for criminals, it also helps prisoners to find work and works with families and communities to cut crime.
Functionalist Durkheim says that society can only exist if members share a collective consciousness and share common values. He says that a legal system is then put in place to create boundaries between them and the rest of society , prisons are an example of a system that creates such boundaries functionalist say that prisons function is to act as a warning device so it can be said that prisons are useful in such manor.
Marxist however have a different approach and say that the law reflects the ruling class and go further to say that punishment also reflects their interests they believe that punishment is a ruling class phenomena and is sued to oppress and punish the working class, they strongly believe capitalism has allowed prisons to serve useful purposes such as, training workers in discipline of long working hours in poor conditions. So it can be said that imprisonment is not a very useful form of punishment.
The Essay on Brave New World Society And Socio economic Class
ter> Discuss how the society in Brave New World works to ensure that people do not change their socio-economic class. Through Brave New World, Huxley depicts a new, industrialized world, which is financially stable and has prevented poverty and self-destruction. Dictatorial governments are there to ensure stability and maintain perfection of the world. Therefore, just like under any other ...
Prisons are a major source of punishment in our society today and one of the main functions of the prison is to deter people from crime which helps to protect the general public, it can be said that it is useful in this way as a form of punishment as it does separate the criminals from the society however it can also be highly argued that the prison is not a useful type of punishment at all as it fails to perform some major functions such as the humane, decent and lawful treatment of inmates.
This has been highly criticized as recent statistics have shown a rise in suicide rates and mental health cases within prisons. Interactionists also agree and say that prisons lead to the Mortification process this is when an inmate follows the same dull repetitive routine day in and day out for the duration of their sentence, this can be very dehumanising and bad for the prisoner as it means prisoners are not getting humanly treated and also it shows that prisons lack useful ness if all they re doing is mortifying prisoners because that will intern lead to more crime as inmates are not ready to be integrated back into society upon release this also links into another function of prisons which is to reduce recidivism, this has been highly criticized as statistics show that 2 third of the prison population that are released end up back in prison within the first 6 months this shows that not only are prisons not humanly treated but in fact they don’t even work.
This is agreed by Left realist who believe that prisons are not the answer but in fact rehabilitation is the answer and that instead of punishing the criminals we need to work on tackling the crime at the core which they say is by improving housing and community facilities, they also suggest that Consensus policing is needed as a form of punishment which will help tackle crime however this solution is very impractical as it means spending money that the government just doesn’t have.
Right realist however believe that prisons are useful because they believe a zero tolerance policy should be taken against crime and that harsher punishments should be used against delinquents, however prison statistics alone have shown that their approach is not the way forward as re offending rates are very high, so rehabilitation seems to be the answer but prison is not the best way of rehabilitating someone as the conditions are disgusting, many prisons are very overcrowded and lack decent sanitation.
The Term Paper on Can Prison Deter Crime?
... 99% of prisoners being sent to a more comfortable prison for 6 months. This being said a correlation between punishment and deterrence ... meaning they are soon once again capable of committing crimes, leaving society exposed. This issue was addressed in the first half ... for repeat offenders preventing them from reoffending. However, this form of sentencing was seen as unjust and quickly abandoned ...
So is not a useful type of punishment in society as they do more harm than good. Fulcault however believes that prisons are the solution he investigated the disciplinary power of prisons he illustrates this with the Panoptican design prison, in which all the prisoners cells are visible to the guards from a central tower but the guards are not visible to the prisoners.
So therefore they do not know if they are being watched or not, as a result they have to behave at all times as if they are being watched, so in turn the surveillance turns into self-surveillance and discipline into Self-discipline so therefore it can be said some prison designs are useful as they can teach discipline to a prisoner thus meaning they are a useful form of punishment in some cases.
ASBO’s are another type of punishment in society introduced under the Crime and Disorder Act of 1998, and are said been the least useful although It meant less people going to prison, it also meant a massive increase in youth offences as ASBO’s became ‘fun’ for the youth as it gave them an almost powering feeling of being delinquent. This as not a useful form of punishment as not only did it not work but it became a game for people and all the kids wanted to have one. Community Service Orders however are a more useful form of punishment as not only do they prevent more crime than ASBO’s but they also teach criminals discipline and possible reduce certain crimes in society.
These orders mean that offenders must pay back to the community by doing unpaid work in order to help rebuild the community or even to repair damage that they have caused this is a very useful method as it means that not only are criminals punished but they also are taught a valuable lesson of law and order so will not commit the same crime again for example if someone has been guilty of Defacing of property then their punishment would be to go and do a set number of hours per week cleaning up the property they have defaced until it is fully clean and the mark/ tag has been removed, this will teach criminals of the hard work that it takes to remove a small tag that they made so in future will be less likely to commit the crime so they don’t have to do the community service. In conclusion there are a number of different types of punishments in society and some are more useful than others overall the more rehabilitated methods such as Community orders have more of an effect than the more harsh Imprisonment method.
The Essay on Control And Punishment Crime Prison Problems
Better Alternatives Other Than Control and Punishment Society has other alternatives to decreasing crime than simply locking people in prison. Preventative programs focus on the community, school, family, employment and places. In addition, there are rehabilitation and restorative justice programs that can also be used to decrease crime. Prisons are the only alternatives we hear about from ...
