Introduction to Penology

Hello.

I'm Dr David Scott from the Open University.

And today I'm going to be talking about penology.

Penology

is the study of punishment and the institutions of punishment. Like prisons,

penology

is therefore largely focused upon state punishments

rather than simply punishment in society

more generally

and specifically whether states have the right to punish.

When we talk about the right to punish

what we are ultimately referring to our issues around

legitimacy,

the idea whether something is right, valid and appropriate.

Philosophers and sociologists have highlighted four different ways

of thinking about the justifications of punishment.

So the first justification is the idea that punishment

can be justified on the grounds of deterrence.

Deterrence

is basically the argument that an individual

is deterred

from breaking the law because they are psychologically

changed in terms of their desire to offend.

This idea of deterrence is based on the assumption

that people are rational

and that they calculate their future behaviours.

There are two different forms of thinking about deterrence, both

individual deterrence

and general deterrence.

Individual deterrence is very much focused on deterring

the individual who has broken the law,

whereas general deterrence

is actually looking at a very different group of people

in terms of who is to be deterred by the punishment

for general deterrence.

The aim is not just to deter the person who's been imprisoned or punished,

but rather to send a message to wider society

to deter

a broader social audience,

notably

the people who have not actually been punished

themselves but rather see the nature and extent of the punishment

and

through a calculus of fear,

are prevented in terms of their own desires,

of actually looking to break the law in the future.

A second justification

is incapacitation.

Incapacitation

relates to those notions of removing the physical capacity of somebody

to break the law.

Once again, there are two different dimensions

to incapacitation,

selective incapacitation

and general incapacitation.

Selective incapacitation

refers to

the harsher punishment of particular people who are considered

to be of a higher risk in society.

Therefore,

those people who have a history of breaking

the law in the past will receive harsher punishments

and longer prison sentences because of their perceived higher

risk of breaking the law in the future.

There is also then general incapacitation,

which is very much focused on the idea that we have the ability

through various different forms of punishment,

such as the death penalty and also the prison

to remove the physical capacity

to offend in the wider community.

The third groupings of justifications are those around reform

and rehabilitation.

Although reform and rehabilitation are often used sin ominously,

they actually are quite different things.

Reform is based on the idea that a person who offends

needs to change,

that they need to be educated,

and this could be through various different forms of education,

but also things like developing a greater sense of commitment to work

and also a change in their sense of morality.

Rehabilitation

is based on the assumption

that the person who has broken the law has done so because in some way or other,

either shortly before the criminal activity or through the

criminal activity itself there themselves have actually been harmed.

Therefore,

because they have been de habilis stated

through the occurrence of the criminal activity,

what is required, just like in a kind of medical model,

or in terms of looking to deal with the causes and the cures for criminal activity.

Those who advocate rehabilitation advocating treatment,

they are calling for attempts to cure the offender

and to make that person well again,

just like you would do through a medical treatment.

So therefore, when you talk about reform and rehabilitation,

on the one hand you have this argument that we should reform

and therefore look to educate and to change the morals of a given individual,

or that we need to rehabilitate,

which means to restore the person back to who they

were before they broke the law in the first instance,

and therefore they need to be treated

as one would treat

a person who was ill.

This then leads us to the fourth approach to justify and punishment,

which is the approach grounded in the idea of retribution.

Retribution

and its associated concept of revenge

are based on the premise

that

it is appropriate and right to punish somebody

to,

in other words, harmed them

to

deliberately inflict pain against them

because they have harmed

somebody else.

There are a number of aspects to

retribution which make it an attractive justification.

First of all,

it's linked to the notion of proportionality

that there can be somehow

an association

between the kind of wrongdoing and crime that somebody is done

and the nature and extent of the punishment that they should receive.

Therefore, proportionality and a proportionate response

to a given crime is something which is very, very important

to retribution.

Secondly,

it's also about sending a moral message, indicating that a given behaviour

is wrong and immoral.

And this notion of denunciation

is something which has been very, very important in terms of defences of punishment

in the past and also

in the present.

This is because punishments are considered as a

means of sending a moral message to society about the moral boundaries

that exist within a society

and what should happen to individuals who breach those moral boundaries.

What notions around

the ideas of the right to punish justifications

and indeed

notions of legitimacy imply

our ideas around the concept

of power

and the idea that the power to punish ultimately

is something which is fairly distributed across society.

What pin ologists and those writing in this

tradition of the sociology of punishment have pointed to

is that

the power to apply punishment is not fairly distributed across society, but rather

is disproportionately directed against people from

impoverished and poor social backgrounds.

There is therefore an inherent bias within the way in

which punishments and notably step punishments like imprisonment are applied

in modern societies.

One of the things that the sociology of punishment and penology have pointed to

is that it's very,

very important to understand all of these issues within their broader historical,

social and economic context,

and also that is necessary to understand how and why we punish and indeed,

why prisons continue to be so important in terms of modern societies.

To look at this discussion within wider

issues around social structures around race,

class and gender

ultimately,

and this has been noted by a number of pathologists in the past,

the extent and nature of punishment within a given society

is reflective of the kind of civilisation

that that society is at that given time.

Indeed,

as we will see when we consider

various different source ologists and philosophers,

there is a continued emphasis

that the more civilised society is,

the less the need

to punish