Crime and Punishment in American Society



Crime and Punishment in American Society.

There can be few Americans who are not concerned by, or have been personally affected by the crime rates in our country. Our politicians have a remit to protect us, and we shall examine whether or not the punishments they have put in place are effective in achieving this aim.

Retribution – an eye for an eye – is perhaps society’s oldest response to crime. Superficially, it has many attractions – the perpetrator certainly suffers, and the victim and society at large have their natural urge for revenge satisfied. In its primitive form, it may have been literal in the Biblical sense of an eye for an eye, but such a literal approach is no longer morally acceptable.

Retribution now consists of causing the perpetrator financial pain or removing his liberty – and our prison population continues to rise. America has by far the highest incarceration rate in the developed world by a factor of five. The prison system is overcrowded, incredibly in effective, and incredibly expensive. America’s hunger for retribution is the main driver in this scenario, and has resulted in some extreme absurdities. In one particular case, a criminal received a fifty year to life sentence for stealing $150 worth of video tapes. (Lockyer v. Andrade, 123 S. Ct. 1166 (2003).)

Financial retribution in the form of fines can be effective, but the peculiarities of the justice system are such that the fines levied are often disproportionate (in either direction) to the gravity of the offence. According to Martin “In the case of fines, the financial position of an offender is not taken into account, leading to situations where an unemployed man and a millionaire could be forced to pay the same fine, creating an unjust situation; either the fine would be too punitive for the unemployed offender, or not large enough to punish the millionaire.” (2)

Societal retribution insofar as it is incorporated into the prison system is clearly designed to cause the offender to suffer – by removing some of his civil rights, taking away his liberty, giving him relatively harsh ( and in the case of the so-called Supermax prisons) extremely harsh living conditions.

It also, for the medium to long term prisoner, takes away hope. People are resilient, they adapt well, in the prison population this means that they quickly adapt to a new social grouping, a new sub-culture and mindset that makes it much easier for them to tolerate their imprisonment. They are, however, exposed to serious violence on a daily basis, sometimes maltreatment by guards, and a poor health care system, which inevitably changes their perspective on prison – and on the society that put them their.

It seems clear, however, that most of the prison population go on to re-offend after release. Recidivism rates (defined by re-arrest within 3 years of release from prison) in the United States are high – an average of 67.4% in 1994 – and show no sign of decline.

So is retribution – in the sense of imprisonment – work for society? It would appear not, and that the $60 billion spent annually on perpetuating the existing system is money ill-spent.

The US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons said in their 2006 report

“What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons. It comes home with prisoners after they are released and with corrections officers at the end of each day’s shift. When people live and work in facilities that are unsafe, unhealthy, unproductive, or inhumane, they carry the effects home with them. We must create safe and productive conditions of confinement not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it influences the safety, health, and prosperity of us all.”

Deterrence as a reaction to crime is a slightly more modern approach to punishment. In any situation, people carry out actions which bring rewards, whether these may be money, status pleasure or anything else. They will continue to repeat that behaviour as long as it brings the reward, and have no reason to change.

However, when the behaviour stops brining a reward, and indeed brings discomfort, there is an incentive to change. The greater the discomfort, the greater the incentive is to change. This is the principle of deterrence.

Deterrence, by it’s very nature, is a preventive measure, and if it is effective in that sense, its effectiveness is very difficult to measure, simply because the crimes it may have prevented cannot be quantified.

In American society, there are probably three major deterrents to criminal behaviour – societal disapproval, incarceration or ultimately judicial execution.

It is likely that at grass roots level, and in small ways, societal disapproval is an effective deterrent to minor misdemeanours. It is well recognized that people who engage in minor misdemeanours tend to go on to larger ones, and to that extent at least societal disapproval as a deterrent has a positively beneficial effect.

In the area of more serious crime however, it is important to realize that deterrence is only likely to be effective in premeditated crime, usually that against property. Criminal acts carried out in the heat of the moment are not likely to be prevented by the principle of deterrence. The effectiveness of deterrence as a crime prevention tool is modified by two other significant factors – the probability of being caught, and the severity of the punishment eventually handed down.

As to the first, we need only examine the statistics relating to unsolved crime.

More than half of violent crime reports are unresolved. In other words, the chances of getting caught are quite low – hardly a disincentive to the potential criminal. Rates of recidivism, as we have noted, are high, which suggests that imprisonment is not a significant disincentive either.

It is tempting to conclude that deterrence is not particularly effective preventive strategy.

If we consider crime as a phenomenon relating from social issues such as poverty, poor housing, lack of education and lack of opportunity, then helping the offender post-sentence to escape these factors could make a positive contribution to improving recidivism rates. Significantly reducing them could probably the best preventive measure ever employed.

There is some evidence to suggest that there is a correlation between the state of the economy and crime rate. When the economy decline, crime rates rise, and vice versa.

It is clear that most crime is committed by people from ‘deprived’ backgrounds. Poor education, social and financial poverty and a highly materialistic culture all contribute heavily.

In the American system dozens of rehabilitation programs have been tried, and while some have failed completely, others have been remarkably successful. The ‘scared straight’ system typified by the Ralphway State Prison program “Juvenile Assistance Program Help” showed early promise, later analysis of its results proved disappointing. Boot Camp type programs have shown no significant success in reducing later criminality in their participants.

Some rehabilitation approaches are being effective. These share similar characteristics - concentration on the needs and difficulties of the individual prisoner.

The first important step is profiling of potential candidates to identify those at the highest risk of re-offending, and the next is that of addressing these in a way that is focussed on the unique needs of each individual, whether they are matters of unemployment, drug abuse, and lack of education and so on.

This highly individualised approach has shown most promise, and while it is staff intensive, in the long run it has the potential to reduce recidivism rates and the cost of those to the government.

Further developments of these, such as the “Key” and “Crest” programs probably represent the best way forward.

Finally, we need to examine the concept of societal protection – the separation of the offender from the rest of society, either totally by judicial execution or long term by long term sentencing.

Characteristic of the approach is that no special effort is made to rehabilitate the offender, or to offer him the chance to change. It is a simplistic approach which may have the benefit of assuaging the public need for retribution, but (with the exception of execution) offers little prospect of reducing re-offending.

One prison guard thought that “The value of the prisons is that they keep bad people

locked away from the good people. Let them out and, surprise, they

are still bad people. Those who want to change do so. Most never will.

My primary job as a correctional officer was to keep their hands from

around your throat and the throats of your and my loved ones. There

are plenty of things that need doing. Wasting time bleeding your heart

over bad apples doesn't make the cut.” (3)

It is a system that offers little in the way of hope to the offender, is extremely expensive and offers little payback to the community.

Overall, then, society’s response to crime has to be multifactorial if it is going to have any chance of being effective. Prevention – in the form of improving education, housing, literacy and job prospects has a great part to play.

Moral considerations on the death penalty aside, societal protection – the “lock them up and throw the key away”, may make us feel good, but does little or nothing to reduce reoffending rates and the effect of crime on the community.

Deterrence, except in the case of minor criminality, is largely is largely ineffective, and almost entirely so in the case of non-premeditated crime.

However, efforts should not be abandoned, and deterrence should be linked to the reduction of social deprivation.

Crime cannot be allowed to go unpunished – so society simply cannot do without incarceration as a punishment. History teaches however that on its own, incarceration does not reduce re-offending. The reduction of judicial

Freedom to sentence appropriately and the increasing emphasis on mandatory sentencing collaborate to produce a system where sentences can be totally absurd and ineffective.

Probably, criminal and the rest of society would benefit from a thorough re-examination of the system to ensure new approaches based on individual assessment of prisoners’ needs, together with intensive, closely focussed and individually targeted intervention to meet those needs are incorporated.

There has to be hope - without hope there is no incentive to change.

According to Reiman, 1998 “…our criminal justice system fails if we release people, who have paid for their crime, with no legitimate skills. The ex-felon is likely to return to crime with no other legitimate options at his or her disposal.” (4)

If we always do what we always did, we shall always get what we always got.

Sources.

2. Martin, Jacqueline (2005). The English Legal System (4th ed.), p. 174. London: Hodder Arnold. ISBN 0-340-89991-3.

3. Prison Guard quoted in Murray, I., 2002 “Making Rehabilitaion Work”, Civitas Organisation, p.4

4. Reiman, Jeffrey 1998 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

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