Punishment as Rehabilitation (original) (raw)
Related papers
Philosophies, 2023
Incarceration remains the foremost form of sentence for serious crimes in Western democracies. At the same time, the management of prisons and of the prison population has become a major real-world challenge, with growing concerns about overcrowding, the offenders' well-being, and the failure of achieving the distal desideratum of reduced criminality, all of which have a moral dimension. In no small part motivated by these practical problems, the focus of the present article is on the ethical framework which we use in thinking about and administering criminal justice. I start with an analysis of imprisonment and its permissibility as a punitive tool of justice. In particular, I present a novel argument against punitive imprisonment, showing it to fall short in meeting two key criteria of just punishment, namely (i) that the appropriate individual is being punished, and (ii) that the punishment can be adequately moderated to reflect the seriousness of the crime. The principles I argue for and which the aforementioned analysis brings to the fore, rooted in the sentient experience, firstly of victims, and not only of victims but also of the offenders as well as the society at large, then lead me to elucidate the broader framework of jurisprudence which I then apply more widely. Hence, while rejecting punitive imprisonment, I use its identified shortcomings to argue for the reinstitution of forms of punishment which are, incongruently, presently not seen as permissible, such as corporal punishment and punishments dismissed on the basis of being seen as humiliating. I also present a novel view of capital punishment which, in contradiction to its name, I reject for punitive aims, but which I argue is permissible on compassionate grounds.
Going Inside Crime & Punishment: The Oranges of Anti-Rehabilitative Justice
Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology, 2017
This paper investigates constructions of crime and punishment and the cultural webs of internal meaning as described in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866) and Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1963). Chosen for the sophisticated, lasting images they provide of the spirit within which the operation of state punishment is carried out, these novels are understood as products of a symbolic interactionist theory of self-consciousness. For this reason, biographical elements of the authors’ lives are examined in addition to the conditions surrounding the writing and publications of their works, and the works themselves. A focus in the textual analysis is given to the offender/protagonist in each story, to the construction of their criminality, and to the framing of the experience of state punishment. The meanings that one gives to punishment are a reflection of one’s psychology, identity and beliefs about the nature of crime, as much as they are the products of political and religious culture. These meanings shape the value of punishment (for offenders and non-offenders), and the public’s views about what the state should and should not do when it comes to intervening after criminal behavior. Suggestions are made for the development of a broader phenomenological study of situated and subjective constructions of punishment.
RETRIBUTION REHABILITATION AND DETERENCE PHILOSOPHIES OF PUNISHMENT
Iam Timothy, 2021
ABSTRACT The administration of punishment for crime began since men began to live in groups, bands, families and communities, all individuals and groups had to surrender their freedom to common rules that prevent the ruin of society’s common good. Philosophies of correction therefore suffix to explain the best way crime can be prevented in society. Utilitarian and non-utilitarian philosophies of correction emerge with deterrence and rehabilitation from the utilitarian block and retributivism from the polar block. What this differentiation entails is the call by retributivist to measure and administer punishment proportionately to crime, in the assumption that individuals are rational actors and commit crimes after a careful evaluation of the cost and benefit, and must be administered just deserts, they must be rewarded for the work of their hands. From the utilitarian block, rehabilitation is intended to reform the individual to become a better and functional fit for the society, deterrence also from the utilitarian block intends to prevent crime but administers punishment unlike in rehabilitation but without any proportionate measure of administering punishment as is obtained by the postulations of retributivism. Deterrent philosophies may therefore administer punishment disproportionately to the crime commitment in an attempt to scare those intending to pick up a career in crime.
Punishment, danger and stigma: the morality of criminal justice
1980
There is no space here to do justice to all the topics dealt with in this collection, which include the nature and importance of rights, .social contract theory in Hume and Kant, civil disobedience, paternalism, and the death penalty. All the papers are vigorously argued and written with admirable clarity and a refreshing absence of jargon; the book would make a stimulating text for an undergraduate course in the philosophy of law. One serious irritant should be noted. Although the author claims he has revised his work for republication, there is an annoying amount not just of repetition but of plain duplication. Whole paragraphs on pp. 7819, for example, are duplicated en bloc on pp. 8314, and then served up again, word for word, on pp. g g /~o o. (The aspiring academic will get a valuable lesson here on how to swell his publication list by rearranging the same material for different journals.) There are other signs of lack of proper revision. In his "Kantian Essay on Psychopathy", Murphy argues that psychopaths cannot be the bearers of rights. Yet another essay, "Rights and Borderline Cases", published subsequently but printed earlier in the collection, completely undermines this argument by articulating a certain kind of right (viz. a "social contract right") which the psychopath could possess. A little more work with the scissors and paste could have given more cohesion and unity to what is nevertheless a very useful collection.
The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 2012
Autobiographies of serving, or former, prisoners are a staple of the 'true crime' genre and can trace their origins back to the picaresque novels of the 18th Century; the exemplary confessions contained within the Newgate Calendar; and even execution broadsheet pamphlets which were distributed on 'hanging days'. Some recent contributions to the genre-which is now so well established as to have a number of subgenres to differentiate, for example, 'straights' accounts of prison from those of the 'cons'would include Ruth Wyner's (2003) From the Inside, Noel Smith's (2004) A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun, Erwin James's (2005) A Life Inside and Smith's (2008) most recent work about his time at HMP Grendon called A Rusty Gun: Facing Up to A Life of Crime. This obvious market for books describing prison conditions by former prisoners has not been replicated by prison officers offering us their views on prison life. In common with an historic academic neglect of prison staff more generally, there is a comparative dearth of prison officials who have put pen to paper and that small number who have done so have tended to be of a senior rank. For example, Professor Andrew Coyle (1994) wrote about his time as a governor in Scotland and England in The Prisons We Deserve; the former director general of the prison service, Derek Lewis (1997), described his period of office in Hidden Agendas: Politics, Law and Disorder; and so, too, the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, David Ramsbotham (2003), gave us his view about prisons in Prisongate: The Shocking State of Britain's Prisons and the Need for Visionary Change. Interestingly, despite the unique access and authority of their authors, these two latter books suffered from the same process of official denial that prisoner autobiographies routinely experience. Nonetheless, Coyle, Lewis and Ramsbotham all had something powerful to say about the management of our jails and how that management was often shaped by the broader political process. While this is of interest, not one of Coyle, Lewis or Ramsbotham could tell us very much about what it means to be a prison officer, patrolling the landings on a day-today basis and how the nature of imprisonment might be shaped by small, seemingly banal, decisions, routines and relationships between the basic grade officer and the prisoner. This is a serious omission, for as Liebling and Price (2000) have put it, prison officers play a 'peacekeeping' function in our jails which they feel has allowed them to become the 'human face of the Prison Service'. As such 'the role of the prison officer is arguably the most important in the prison' (p.191). Indeed, there has of late been a growing academic interest in prison officers (Liebling and Price 2001; Crawley and Crawley 2008), which has uncovered a working culture that sees itself 'as part of an unvalued, unappreciated occupational group. Their understanding is that they are regarded by the public as unintelligent, insensitive and sometimes brutal, and that their work is perceived as entailing no more than the containment of society's deviants and misfits' (Crawley and Crawley 2008, p.134).
Criminal Punishment as a Restorative Practice
New Criminal Law Review: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal
This article offers a conceptualization of crime and punishment that serves to explain current trends in criminal law doctrine and, at points, recommends their reconsideration. Drawing on Hegel's concept of mutual recognition and on insights developed in fair-play accounts of punishment, the article suggests that crime disrupts the subject-subject relation between the victim and the offender, and that punishment works to restore this relation. To advance this argument, the article first proposes that subjects can only exist in equilibrium of connectedness and separateness whereby they mediate each other's equal personal boundaries. It then analyzes crime as a failure by the offender to mediate the victim's equal boundaries, which creates inequality of boundaries and brings about the collapse of the equilibrium and of the victim's subjectivity. Next, it is suggested that punishment re-equalizes the parties' respective boundaries, thus restoring the disrupted equil...
Retribution, restoration and the public dimension of serious wrongs
The International Journal of Restorative Justice
Restorative justice has been criticised for not adequately giving serious consideration to the 'public' character of crimes. By bringing the ownership of the con ict involved in crime back to the victim and thus 'privatising' the con ict, restorative justice would overlook the need for crimes to be treated as public matters that concern all citizens, because crimes violate public values, i.e., values that are the foundation of a political community. Against this I argue that serious wrongs, like murder or rape, are violations of agent-neutral values that are fundamental to our humanity. By criminalising such serious wrongs we show that we take such violations seriously and that we stand in solidarity with victims, not in their capacity as compatriots but as fellow human beings. Such solidarity is better expressed by organising restorative procedures that serve the victim's interest than by insisting on the kind of public condemnation and penal hardship that retributivists deem necessary 'because the public has been wronged'. e public nature of crimes depends not on the alleged public character of the violated values but on the fact that crimes are serious wrongs that provoke a (necessarily reticent) response from government o cials such as police, judges and o cial mediators.