CHAPTER SUMMARY
CHAPTER SUMMARY
The eight chapters that follow this one all explore different aspects of the criminal justice process - the end point of which involves the imposition of punishment. In this chapter we consider the idea of punishment - what it involves and how it is to be understood. In the main, the chapter focuses on two sets of debates:
the first, a largely philosophical discussion, focuses upon the nature and rationale for punishment: is it primarily imposed in order to prevent criminality in the future, or is it a penalty imposed for misconduct in the past?
the second set of debates is primarily sociological and concerns how we are to conceive of the place of punishment within society and to understand punishment as a set of social practices.
What is punishment?
What is punishment?
There are a number of criteria that can be laid down in order to distinguish punishment in the sense that interests us as criminologists from other forms of unpleasant forms of pain. According to various experts these include:
One. The involvement of an evil and unpleasantness for the person on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Two. It must be for an offence, actual or supposed.
Three. It must be of an offender, actual or supposed.
Four. It must be the work of personal agencies.
Five. It must be imposed by an authority conferred through or by the institutions against the rules of which the offence has been committed.
Six. The pain which is inflicted must be intentional, not accidental or coincidental.
Seven. To interest criminologists, the punishment should be imposed in response to a 'criminal offence'.
Eight. It should be imposed by a judicial authority. Not surprisingly punishment can and does take a variety of forms, particularly if one looks cross culturally. Until relatively recently most liberal democracies still used the death penalty. However, during the course of the twentieth century most abandoned it. The United States remains the great exception - but even within America there is significant variation, state by state, in the use of the death penalty. In this opening section we will quickly look at some of the central issues in discussions of punishment, what these days is generally referred to as 'penology'.
Having provided a brief overview, we will then look at ideas of punishment in greater detail. In the context of criminal justice, Zedner says there are six key questions in relation to punishment: