Sociology of Punishment and International Penology - Term Paper Example

Introduction Different countries follow diverse strategies to handle criminals convicted of criminal activities and dating back to ancient history capital punishment has been practiced in virtually every society, nation and continent to check criminal activity rate. However, this is much influenced by political ideology or cultural region. In countries that practice capital punishment it is primarily reserved for charges such as murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In several others, sexual crimes such as rape, adultery, incest and sodomy, carry the death penalty. Death penalty is a capital punishment for drug trafficking in some countries. In China, death penalty is reserved for human trafficking and serious cases of corruption. According to the Shot at Dawn Pardons Campaign (2006), world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offenses such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny. Methods of Capital Punishments Since time immemorial capital punishments such as decapitation, electrocution, firing squad, gas chamber, hanging, lethal injection, shooting and stoning have been widely used. Decapitation super cedes all other form of penal practice and this practice has been proved to be fatal, as brain death occurs within seconds to minutes without the support of the organism's body. Decapitation was a common practice in the Asian continent. Countries such as China, India, Japan, Thailand and European, American, and African counterparts also greatly used reserved this practice to punish criminals. However, these types of capital punishment methods has been widely debated, where opponents of the death penalty often feel that there is the possibility of innocent or wrong execution, the lack of deterrence of violent crime; and religious grounds for opposition to the death penalty. Supporters of capital punishments often feel this to put an end to violent crime, closure to the families and friends of the victim and term of prison sentence is not an ideal way to punish. These debates across countries and among philosophers have gradually changed the style of handling criminals and punishing criminal activities. Foucauldian Perspectives Foucault brought forth the idea of the social permeation of power relationships inherently linked to resistance (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997). Foucault gives two senses to the word "subject": One is at once under the control of power and one is acting as one's own agent of power, but never is one outside of power (Foucault, 1972) According to Foucault (2005) "The emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries". He greatly looks are the development of highly refined forms of discipline, of discipline concerned with the smallest and most precise aspects of a person's body. He strongly believed that discipline develops a new economy and politics for bodies and those modern institutions required that bodies must be based on their tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. His prime argument is that discipline could mould a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to carry out their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today. Foucault challenges the commonly accepted idea that the prison became the consistent form of punishment due to humanitarian concerns of reformists. Hence Foucault's theory of "gentle" punishment made created a way for practice of more generalized and controlled means of punishment better compared to excessive force of the sovereign. In his lecture titled Governmentality, Foucault defines governmentality as "1.The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security. 2. The tendency which, over a long period and throughout the West, has steadily led towards the pre-eminence over all other forms (sovereignty, discipline, etc) of this type of power which may be termed government, resulting, on the one hand, in formation of a whole series of specific governmental apparatuses, and, on the other, in the development of a whole complex of savoirs. 3. The process, or rather the result of the process, through which the state of justice of the Middle Ages, transformed into the administrative state during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, gradually becomes 'governmentalized' (Foucault, 1991)". Postmodernism and Criminal Justification Social reforms also led to reformation in criminal justice. A movement in America worked as early as 1841 towards reform of criminal justice. John Augustus, Boston shoemaker, after observing repeated re-offending of drunkards, concluded that imprisonment was not an effective strategy (Mueller, 1969). Augustus is credited as being the first person to apply the term 'probation' to his correctional practice (Dressler, 1969; Beard, 1969). French post structuralist writers introduced a new terminology, "Postmodernism, that describes both social and cultural phenomena and a theoretical orientation". Those favoring postmodernism distinguish themselves from other theoretical orientations such as Marxism. They adhered to a radical politics on which all identities and relations to the social and natural world are perceived as decentered and "socially or discursively constructed", and open to reconstruction (Epstein, 1999). The poststructuralists gave culture a more complex reading through an analysis of power relations. This led to the news ways of punishment or rather ways to justify punishment. Incapitation was one way of justifying punishment, wherein the offender's ability to commit further offenses is removed. This strategy achieves it mission in two ways thus offering forward-looking justification of punishment. - Firstly, the offender's ability to commit crime can be physically removed (cutting the hands or crude punishments in case of theft) or alternatively imprisonment, which isolates the prisoners from the outside world. Selective incapacitation, a modified form of incapacitation believes in long term imprisonment to only dangerous and persistent offenders. Rehabilitation, is by means of education or therapy, to bring a criminal into a more normal state of mind, or into an attitude which would be helpful to society, rather than be harmful to society. This theory of punishment has the motive of punishing in a way that would lead them to reformation, rather than to conviction or rehabilitate them so as to make their re-integration into society easier. Nevertheless, effective rehabilitation is a prolonged process may be taking a lifetime, but it relies on two major aspects (a) individual commitment; and (b) socio-political and institutional recognition and support. Schweitzer (1992) states that "Individually, it means risking rejection by asserting oneself, so as to evolve a conscious meaning structure of oneself, in social life, as valid and worthy of mutual respect. Socio-politically and institutionally, recognition is expressed through the creation of safe channels for engagement, particularly with differences. I argue that alienation in our history does not have to result in violation today. Instead, lessons learned from history can be used to transform current alienating experiences into opportunities for transformative change." Restorative Justice is an alternate theory of justice that primarily focuses on crime and criminal activity as acted against the individual or community rather than the state. Hence this considers any crime to first affect the individual or community. This theory therefore encompasses a growing social movement to rationalize peaceful approaches to handle harm and any violations of legal and human rights. Prevention act as a measure of prevention to those who are contemplating criminal activity. This is done by public investigating on self protection. This works well with regard to theft, where burglar alarm can be used to alert household thus restricting theft rate. Studies reveal that in most of the European countries alarm use has gone up significantly since 1990 and this has significantly reduced theft rates in these countries (Dijk, 2006). Education - From German Criminal Law, Punishment can be explained by positive prevention theory to use criminal justice system to teach people what are the social norms for what is correct and acts as reinforcement. It teaches people to obey the law and eliminates the free-rider principle of people not obeying the law getting away with it. This is a kind of mentoring that enables criminal to change. There are a number of successful mentioning programs that have been identified as assisting young people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. In Canada, it was understood that mentoring was a better alternative to easily help youth who experience criminal problems, such as offending and drug-abuse. Hence in 1998, The Canadian Government responded by launching the National Strategy on Community Safety and Crime Prevention with a budget of $32 million annually (Manitoba Crime Prevention Initiatives Newsroom 24/04/03) (Dawes & Dawes, 2003). Similar mentoring successes were witnessed in Europe, where the "Breaking Through Europe", Mercerised Seminar Conference undertook a successful mentoring program involving the Merseyside Police and a cohort of youth who were identified as being at risk of offending. This project was a great success as it resulted in the development of an effective program where the students were re-engaged with an education program culminating with accreditation towards a Key Skills diploma. Another program called Route-53 in Manchester achieved a 60% success rate in preventing young people from re-offending. The program has also evaluated its performance and outcomes. The major outcomes of this program are that mentors played a significant and key role in enhancing young people's self-esteem, uplifting them, which provided links to further education and employment pathways and assisted them to reintegrate back to their community (Dawes & Dawes, 2003). United States also witnessed successful mentoring, course of which many young lives where challenged to give them a successful future career. There are quite a number of successful projects including The Mentoring-Plus Program (Dalston Youth Project, Benioff 1997). This program was targeted toward youth within the 15-18 year age bracket who had committed at least one criminal offence. After 2 years, an evaluation of the program indicated that 73% of the mentees in the program had enrolled in college, further training or employment. This has provided them a better future. This corresponded with 61% of the youth desisting from further offending. (The Bulletin. "Investing in Youth: International Approaches to Preventing Crime and Victimisation" 2001 p6). (Dawes & Dawes, 2003) Recidivism While, social reform and criminal justice aims at combating criminal activity and alternatively to keep them under control, on the other end of the string is recidivism, criminals relapsing back into crimes. A report on recidivism in Malaysia in the year 1995 shows that 51 per cent of prisoners were first timers, and decreasing proportions of prisoners had previously served sentences one or more times. However, the proportion of female prisoners who were recidivists was lower than the proportion of male prisoners. Similarly, in Brunei Darussalam, at 1 August 1995, 58 per cent of the total of 312 prisoners were first timers, 20 per cent were second timers, etc. Here to, female prisoners were less likely than males to be recidivists (15th Asian and Pacific Conference of Correctional Adminstrators, 2002). In Philippines, in each year from 1990 to 1995, 95 per cent of the admissions to prison were first offenders and five per cent were "ex-cons" or returnees. A report from Macau showed that the numbers of ex-prisoners who were re-incarcerated during 1993, 1994 and 1995 were, respectively, 105, 77 and 66. The most recent prison census conducted in New Zealand showed that 57 per cent of males and 28 per cent of females had had at least one prior imprisonment. Also, a study of recidivism conducted in years 1990 and 1991 found that 68 per cent of a sample of 1674 offenders who were serving custodial or community based sentences were re-convicted in a two-year follow up period, but those referred to and/or treated by a psychologist had lower recidivism rates. The data from Japan show that the number of re-incarcerated prisoners over a five-year period (1990 to 1994) as a proportion of all prisoners released over that period, was exactly 42.0 per cent. From Hong Kong it is shown that different success rates were achieved by different programs, for example, drug addiction treatment centers (55-65 per cent success), training centers (65-72 per cent), detention centers (90-95 per cent) and young prisoner programs (77-86 percent) (15th Asian and Pacific Conference of Correctional Adminstrators, 2002). Information provided from New South Wales shows the lowest recidivism rates (between 10 and 15 per cent) who were for ex-prisoners who had served sentences for murder, sex offences and drug offences, while the highest (over 35 per cent) were for those who had served sentences for breach of parole, assault, stealing and robbery. For all offence groups, 23 per cent of first timers, and 46 per cent of recidivists, returned to prison again (15th Asian and Pacific Conference of Correctional Adminstrators, 2002). Netherlands has taken great efforts to establish the level of recidivism in the entire population of prosecuted offenders. Some countries monitor recidivism rates over time. In countries like, the United Kingdom, the Nordic countries, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, monitoring is done on annual basis. Germany also plans to measure recidivism on a yearly basis. Austria carries out one-off monitoring on this issue. Situation in France and Ireland is unclear yet, whether the research will be repeated. This makes it clear that each country handles crime in its own way, so there are bound to be cross-national differences in how central concepts are defined (source: Wartna & Nijssen, 2006). Table 1 - Reconviction Rates of Prisoners in Six European Countries and in the USA Percentage of prisoners reconvicted at N years after release Country Release Period N Age range Imprison-ment Rate * 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Netherlands 1996-99 69,602 18 and up 85 43,4 55,5 62,0 66,0 67,0 71,1 72,9 74,1 Scotland 1999 5,738 16 and up 120 46,0 60,0 67,0 71,0 England &Wales 2001 14,569 18 and up 127 58.2 France 1996-97 2,859 13 and up 89 51,9 N. Ireland 2001 703 17 and up 52 45,0 Iceland 1994-98 1,176 18 and up 44 37,0 53,0 Switzerland 1988 6,393 18 and up 79 12,0 26,0 34,0 40,0 45,0 48,2 USA (15 states) 1994 33,796 18 and up 600 21,5 36,4 46,9 * Approximate figures per 100,000 population from the International Centre for Prison Studies/World Prison Brief (source: Wartna & Nijssen, 2006) The above table depicts the reconviction rates of prisoners released in several European countries and the USA. In each country recidivism is defined as 'having a new conviction', so there is no prima facie problem of incomparability. For each country the answers to these questions define the universe of possible events of recidivism. It is unlikely that these universes are identical. Data reveals that there are slight differences in age ranges of the prisoners from the six countries (Wartna & Nijssen, 2006). Age is major criterion. Knowing age is a strong predictor of recidivism, these differences must have affected the reconviction rates. Furthermore, if a country greatly restricts in imposing unsuspended prison sentence, only high-risk offenders will be sent to prison and it would be quite natural for this country to have higher reconviction rates than the others. Apart, it is evident that better security against crime by mainstream society has greatly discouraged potential offenders from committing volume crimes. This is much applicable to crime such as burglary or theft, and thereby rates of volume crime have been driven down. It is apparent that increased readiness of the public to invest in self-protection have credited for these types of crime drops. In such case, the role of governments is only of secondary importance. Dijk (2006) puts it this way "Crime rates are decreasing everywhere in the Western world, regardless of national anti-crime policies. Countries that have invested comparatively little in their state based anti-crime policies are reaping the benefits of crime drops against considerably lower costs for the tax payer. Governments are well-advised to rely more strongly on market forces in the fight against volume crime. Anti-crime efforts should focus more on the regulation of crime markets through financial interventions in the use of crime prevention than in conventional criminal justice initiatives alone." References 15th Asian and Pacific Conference of Correctional Adminstrators. (2002). Australian Institute of Criminology http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/apcca/1995/ Beard, B. (1969). Juvenile Probation, Montclair, Boston. Benioff, S. (1997). A Second Chance Manual, cited in "Mentoring: Movement to 'reconnect' youth to society sweeps inner-city Black Britain. Chronicle World- Changing Back Britain. http://www.thechronicle.demon.co.uk/tomsite/8-7-2men.htm Dawes, G., and Dawes, C. (2003). Mentoring as a program for reducing recidivism among young offenders. Workshop paper no. 26. IFECSA Conference 2003, Cleveland Education and Training Centre Townsville North Queensland. Dijk, J.V.( 2006). National Reconviction Rates. Newsletter of the European Society of Criminology, 5(3), 17 - 18. Dressler, D. (1969). Practice and Theory of Probation and Parole, 2nd edition, Columbia University Press, New York. Epstein, B. (1999). Why post-modernism is not progressive. Free Inquiry (spring). 43-7. Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House. Foucault, M.(1991) 'Governmentality', trans. Rosi Braidotti and revised by Colin Gordon, in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, pp. 87-104. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Foucualt, M. (1972). Truth and power. In Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, ed. Colin Gordin. NY: Pantheon Books. Gupta, A., and Ferguson, J. (1997). Culture, power, place: Ethnography and the end of an era. In Culture, power, place, eds. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mueller, G. O. W. (1969). Crime, Law and the Scholars, Heinemann, London. Schweitzer, D. (1992) Marxist theories of alienation and reification: the response to capitalism, state socialism and the advent of postmodernity. In F. Geyer & W.R. Heinz (Eds.). Alienation, society and the individual: continuity and change in theory and research (pp. 27-52). New Jersey, Transaction Publishers. Shot at Dawn Pardons Campaign. http://www.shotatdawn.org.uk/. "Shot at Dawn, campaign for pardons for British and Commonwealth soldiers executed in World War I". Retrieved on 2006-07-20. Wartna, B., & Nijssen, L. (2006). National Reconviction Rates. Newsletter of the European Society of Criminology, 5(3), 12 - 15. Read More