Early Schools: Linking Crime Causes to Punishment PDF

EARLY SCHOOLS Linking crime causes to punishment Agenda Activity Early schools Soft or hard Activity I will present very short biographies of some offenders and you should decide what you think the appropriate punishment for each would be Explain why you made that decision in each case....

EARLY SCHOOLS Linking crime causes to punishment Agenda Activity Early schools Soft or hard Activity I will present very short biographies of some offenders and you should decide what you think the appropriate punishment for each would be Explain why you made that decision in each case. A short history (assumptions over time) Punishment – Legal=State authorized imposition of some form of deprivation Code of Hammurabi/Hebrew Code 1789 BC – Recognized natural desire for revenge, but removed the responsibility (right) to punish from the wronged to the State – Controlled vengeance Original sin (assumption) – Prior to 18th Century – Cruel torture “Beat the devil out of them” – Barbaric punishment A short history (assumptions over time) Enlightenment Period – Late 18th Century – Shift in views of world and place – Mental Distance (Thompson, 1975) Narrowing of circles between law makers and ordinary citizens A short history (assumptions over time) The Emergence of the Classical School  Beccaria 1738-1794 – Laws for public safety and order, not revenge – Right to confront accuser – Know the charges – Public trial – Impartial judge – Sentence codified with no judicial discretion – Swift and certain – Punishment proportionate to harm done without regard to social status of offender or victim A short history (assumptions over time) Jeremy Bentham 1748-1832 – Principles of Morals and Legislation Principle of utility (Utilitarian Principle) – Greatest happiness for greatest number of people Legislation should maximize pleasure and minimize pain of the largest number in society Human Motivation – Legislators must understand if they are to legislate under the principle of utility – Enlightenment concept of human nature (assumptions) Hedonistic Rational Endowed with free will Created Panopticon “all seeing” A short history (assumptions over time) The Emergence of Positivism Should Punishment Fit the Offender or the Offense?  Late 19th Century  Need for empirical science  For which more positive conclusions could be drawn  All human actions have causes (assumption)  Can be found in uniformities  Led to dismissal of classical school notions  Hard form of determinism  Characteristics and circumstances of offender are important  Voluntary v. involuntary actions  Legal responsibility A short history (assumptions over time) Early still assume that criminals are born, but we need to find a way to identify and sort them (a taxonomy of criminals) Over time though positivism shifted to a broader range of causes and opened the door for considering circumstance and rehabilitative potential – Extreme=execution – Impulsive=penal colony – Endemic=change the law Neoclassicism: Rational Choice Theory Human agency versus rational choice Human agency maintains humans have the capacity to make choices and the moral responsibility to make moral choices. Rationality is the quality of thinking and behaving in accordance with logic and reason, such that one’s reality is an ordered and intelligible system. Choice structuring focuses on the process of the choice to offend. A short history (assumptions over time) And now…why do we punish, what do we expect punishment to do, and what does this imply about our assumptions? Soft or hard on crime?  Incarceration rates  Problems with comparisons  Alternative punishments and/or conditions of confinement  United States is soft on crime  Punishment in United States v. China or some fundamentalist Islamic countries  Calculation of rates  Problematic  Is the U.S. harder or softer than other countries?  Depends on:  Conceptualization and measurement of the concepts of harshness and softness, and  Which countries we compare ourselves to Sentencing Disparity