This document discusses different justifications for punishment and sociological perspectives on punishment. There are four main justifications for punishment: deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation, and retribution. Various sociological perspectives are also discussed, including functionalism, Marxism, and the views of Michel Foucault. Functionalists see punishment as upholding social solidarity and shared values. Marxists see punishment as maintaining the existing social order under capitalism. Foucault analyzed the shift from sovereign power to disciplinary power and how punishment has changed from physical to imprisonment and surveillance.

1. Punishment! Forms?
Is it just an expensive way of
making bad people worse?

2. There are FOUR main justifications for
punishment:
• A DETERRRENCE
Set an example to deter others
• B REHABILITATION
Reform offenders so they come out as good
citizens who do not re-offend
• C INCAPACTITATION
Take people out of circulation so they can’t harm
the public
• D RETRIBUTION
Society’s revenge, getting our own back, payback

3. STATEMENT
1 Punish and discourage
2 Reforming or changing offenders for the
better
3 Vengeance and pay-back.
4 Revenge! Society getting its own back on
those who do wrong and can’ t behave
themselves
5 Education and training for prisoners so
when they are released from prison they can
earn an honest living
6 Taking offenders out of circulation –
removing criminals from society protects the
public.
JUSTIFICA
TION
STATEMENT
7 The ‘short, sharp, shock’ regimes used by
Thatcher’s 1980s conservative governments
for young offenders
8 Remove the offender’s capacity to offend
again by locking them up. This is a means to
an end – an instrumental justification for
punishment.
9 An expressive rather than an instrumental
justification for punishment – the expression
of society’s outrage.
10 Locking away the dangerous, the violent
and the light-fingered means that lawabiding citizens can go about their business
without fear of being attacked or robbed.
11 Anger management for violent offenders,
drug counselling for substance abusers.....
12 Making an example of offenders will put
off others who may consider doing similar
acts.
JUSTIFIC
ATION

4. STATEMENT
JUSTIFICA
TION
STATEMENT
JUSTIFIC
ATION
1 Punish and discourage
A
A
2 Reforming or changing offenders for the
better
B
7 The ‘short, sharp, shock’ regimes used by
Thatcher’s 1980s conservative governments
for young offenders
8 Remove the offender’s capacity to offend
again by locking them up. This is a means to
an end – an instrumental justification for
punishment.
3 Vengeance and pay-back.
D
4 Revenge! Society getting its own back on
those who do wrong and can’ t behave
themselves
D
5 Education and training for prisoners so
B
when they are released from prison they can
earn an honest living
6 Taking offenders out of circulation –
C
removing criminals from society protects the
public.
C
9 An expressive rather than an instrumental D
justification for punishment – the expression
of society’s outrage.
10 Locking away the dangerous, the violent C
and the light-fingered means that lawabiding citizens can go about their business
without fear of being attacked or robbed.
11 Anger management for violent offenders, B
drug counselling for substance abusers.....
12 Making an example of offenders will put
off others who may consider doing similar
acts.
A

5. Sociological Perspectives on Punishment
• Sociologists agree that all societies need
to impose control on their members to
ensure stability - punishment is one way of
doing this
• Sociologists are interested in various
aspects of punishment:
What is the relationship between
punishment and society?
What does punishment do?
Why does its form vary over time?

6. Why has punishment changed
over the years?

7. Sociological Perspectives on
Punishment – consider 3
• FUNCTIONALISTS
• MARXISTS
• FOUCAULT
GROUP
TOPIC
1
FUNCTIONALISTS
1 TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES
2
FUNCTIONALISTS
2 MODERN SOCIETIES
3
MARXISTS
1 PRE-CAPITALIST SOCIETIES (UP TO C18TH)
4
MARXISTS
2 CAPITALIST SOCIETIES (AFTER C18TH)
5
FOUCAULT
1 SOVEREIGN POWER
6
FOUCAULT
2 DISCIPLINARY POWER

8. Functionalism: Durkheim
• function of punishment is to uphold
social solidarity, reinforce shared
values, strengthen the collective
conscience
• This function is performed differently in
different types of society

9. 1 TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES
• Use Retributive justice (getting your
own back) – because the collective
conscience is so strong in these type of
societies when people offend it the
reaction is swift and vengeful as a means
of repressing the wrongdoer. Punishment
is severe and cruel and its motivation
purely expressive e.g. stocks, hangings…

10. 2 MODERN SOCIETIES
• Use Restitutive justice (restoring what is lost) –
crime damages the interdependence between
individuals so this needs to be repaired and restored
to the pre-offence state of affairs. Punishment here
is restitutive, it takes an instrumental role of
restoring society’s equilibrium, e.g. through
compensation.
• Nevertheless even here punishment has an
expressive element – it expresses collective
emotions e.g. US triumphalism after killing Bin
Laden.

11. Functionalism: Evaluation (A02)
• Distinction between retributive justice in
traditional societies and restitutive justice
in modern societies not so clear cut e.g. in
traditional societies blood feuds were
sometimes settled by compensation rather
than by execution or murder. Also still an
expressive role of punishment today.

12. Marxism
• For Marxists the function of punishment is to
maintain the existing social order (capitalism
and the power of the ruling class). Part of the
REPRESSIVE STATE APPARATUS
(Althusser).
• E.P Thompson (1977): In the 18th century
punishments such as hanging, and
transportation to the colonies for theft and
poaching were part of the ‘rule of terror’ by
the aristocracy over the poor.

13. Marxism
• Rusche & Kirchheimer (1939) argue that each type of
economy has its own corresponding penal system. For
example money fines are impossible without a money
economy. Under capitalism imprisonment became the
dominant form of punishment because the capitalist
economy is based on the exploitation of wage labour.
• Melossi & Pavarini (1981) argue that imprisonment
reflects or corresponds to capitalist relations of
production:
CAPITALISM
Puts a price on worker’s time
Factories use strict discipline
PRISONS IN CAPITALIST SOCIETIES
Prisoners ‘do time’ to ‘pay’ for their crime or ‘repay
a debt to society’.
Prisons use strict discipline, subordination and loss
of liberty

14. Marxism: Evaluation
1 Fails to explain the differing experiences
of women and ethnic groups in the prison
system.
2 Too deterministic and simplistic to
suggest that punishment is directly linked
to the economic base of society.

15. Foucault – birth of the prison

16. Foucault
• Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish
opens with a striking contrast between two
different forms of punishment, which he
sees as examples of sovereign power
and disciplinary power.

17. 2 types of power in different periods
• Sovereign power was typical of the period
before the 19th century, when the monarch had
power over people and their bodies. Inflicting
punishment on the body was the means of
asserting control. Punishment was a spectacle
such as public execution.
• Disciplinary power becomes dominant from the
19th century. In this form of control, a new system
of discipline seeks to govern not just the body
but also the mind or ‘soul’. It does so through
surveillance.

18. The Panopticon
• Foucault demonstrates his point with the panopticon, a
prison which was designed so that the prisoners could
be observed by the guards at all times. Because they
might be watched the prisoners behaved themselves at
all times so the surveillance turns into self-surveillance/
self-discipline.
• Foucault argued that the panopticon was one of a range
of institutions that, from the 19th century, increasingly
began to subject individuals to disciplinary power through
self-surveillance. Other institutions include mental
asylums, work houses, factories and schools.

19. The
Panopticon
Earlier forms of
punishment!

20. The
Panopticon

21. CCTV
Most modern form of
surveillance, now
appearing in classrooms
across the UK!

22. Foucault
• To Foucault disciplinary power has
infiltrated all parts of society, even into the
human ‘soul’. Therefore according to
Foucault this change in the form of
punishment from sovereign to disciplinary
power in the penal system tells us how
power operates in societies as a whole.

23. Foucault: Evaluation
• 1 The shift from physical punishment to
imprisonment is less clear than he
suggests.
• 2 Expressive aspects of punishment
ignored.
• 3 He exaggerates the extent of control that
the state has over individuals. Goffman
(1962) showed how inmates can resist
controls in prison and mental hospitals

24. Changing Role of Prisons
Pre-industrial society had a wide range of
punishments – banishment,
transportation, execution, ducking stools,
flogging…
Until the 18th century prison was mainly
used for holding offenders prior to
punishment. Only following the
Enlightenment did prison come to be seen
as a form of punishment in itself – a place
of ‘reform’, for example through hard
labour or religious instruction

25. Imprisonment Today
• In the UK the death penalty was ended in 1998 although
the last hanging was in 1964
• Life imprisonment is considered the most severe form of
punishment
• Not proved an effective form of rehabilitation – recidivism
(re-offending) currently stands at 60-70% of offenders
• However bang ‘em policies/tougher sentences have
proved an election vote winner since the 1980s – known
as ‘populist punitiveness’
• As a result the prison population has continued to rise around 84,000 in 2013. Overcrowded prisons/staff
shortages are now seen as a problem. A ‘riot’ in
Maidstone prison in October 2013 illustrates this

26. Imprisonment Today
• The UK imprisons a higher proportion of its population
than anywhere else in Western Europe – around 150 for
every 100,000 of population. However in the US the
figure is 5 times higher at around 750 for every 100,000
of population.
• Most of the UK prison population is male, around 5% are
female. As we know ethnic minorities are overrepresented

27. Prisons in the US: An era of mass incarceration?
• Rising numbers of prisoners in the US (and to a certain
extent in the UK) led Garland (2001) to call the
noughties and an era of mass incarceration, for
example there are over 1 million black men in prison in
the US.
• Downes (2001) argues this has an ideological function –
the US prison system soaks up 30-40% of the
unemployed making capitalism seem more successful
• Garland argues it is due to the rise of control/get tough
policies over the old penal welfarism (prison is there to
rehabilitate)
• Simon (2001) argues that prisons are used to wage war
on drugs – ½ million of the US prison population are
imprisoned for drugs offences.

28. Transcarceration
• Sociologists have also identified a trend to
transcarceration (individuals get locked into a
cycle of control shifting between different
carceral agencies – care, young offenders
institution, adult prison, mental hospital….)
• This might be due to the fact that the boundaries
between the CJS and welfare agencies are
blurring, welfare services increasingly being
given crime control roles and sharing information
(multi-agency idea of the Left Realists)

29. Alternatives to Prison
• At one time the major goal with young offenders was
‘diversion’ – divert them away from contact with the
CJS to avoid the self-fulfilling prophecy which can turn
them into hardened criminals. Welfare and treatment
ideas meant that non-custodial community based
controls were used e.g. probation.
• The number of community based controls have risen in
recent years – now have tagging, curfews, community
service…
• However the numbers actually in custody have been
rising especially among the young

30. Stan Cohen (2003)
• Argues that the growth of community controls has simply
cast the net of control over MORE people. Using Foucault’s
ideas argues that the increased range of sanctions
available led to the following:
Penetration: law now penetrates much deeper into society
Size and Density: sheer scope of activities: control now
on massive scale
Identity and Visibility: control and punishment used to be
obvious and public but now more subtle forms e.g. CCTV,
tagging, curfews often privatised now.
Far from diverting the young away from the CJS these
community controls may just divert them into it.

31. Perspective
Functionalism
Marxism
Foucault
Era of punishment 1
Era of punishment 2