Your Verdict

What punishment or treatment should be given to these criminals?

1. Well-off housewife takes a bottle of perfume from a department store.

2. A husband kills his wife after finding she has been unfaithful.

3. A group of men kill 5 customers in the pub by leaving a bomb there.

4. A group of schoolboys break all the windows in a telephone box and damage the telephone.

5. A motorist kills a pedestrian after an evening’s drinking.

6. An office worker helps himself to pens and paper from his office for his personal use.

7. A group of young men take a woman’s handbag after threatening to attack her in a dark street.

8. A motorist parks in a no-parking area and obstructs the traffic so that an ambulance can’t get past.

9. Two groups of rival football supporters start a battle and are arrested.

10. A man attacks a girl in a park and has sex with her against her will.

11. A teenager hacks into an airline company’s computer system and deliberately introduces a virus.

12. A man is attacked by muggers on the subway, defends himself with a gun and shoots his assailants dead.

13. A small business is caught selling pirated CDs.

Punishments:

a) long prison sentence/short prison sentence

b) community service

c) fine

d) caution (a formal warning)

Text B

Punishment is a complex concept which arouses great emotion. It involves the infliction of pain on one person by another. This pain is usually justified on the grounds that the first person has been guilty of some wrong-doing and that the second has a legal or moral right to respond by inflicting punishment. The right to inflict pain in this way comes, it is argued, from the authority of one party in relation to another, whether it be parent to child, teacher to pupil or judge to offender. It is generally accepted that any such punishment should be proportionate to the wrong which has been done.

The emotion surrounding this subject arises when one begins to consider the nature of punishment and the purpose which it is meant to achieve. It is an emotion which has loomed large in recent years, particularly when the discussion is about the punishment which is to be meted out to those who have been found guilty of breaking the criminal law. The most extreme form of punishment which can be imposed in British society is imprisonment. One oft-quoted aphorism is that “People are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment”. In other words, the punishment consists solely of being deprived of liberty. The only additional punishment should come about as a direct consequence of loss of liberty and not through any added penalties imposed by the prison system, such as restriction of diet or prohibition of contact with family or insanitary living conditions.

This debate very quickly leads on to a discussion about the purpose of punishment. If it is purely retributive, one can argue that conditions of imprisonment should be as punitive and restrictive as possible. But most commentators wish to add an element of reform or rehabilitation to the concept of punishment. One of its consequences, they argue, should be that the person who is subjected to the punishment will be less likely to commit further offences or crimes in the future and will be helped to lead a useful life in society. The change in behaviour will come about either because of the deterrent effect of the punishment or because it has led the person being punished to a greater awareness of the need to live differently in the future. The judge, like the parent of the wayward child, punishes an offender for his or her “own good”, in order to help the offender to become a better person.

The difficulty with this worthy ambition is that the British criminal justice system finds it very difficult to cope with such complex objectives. The offender who goes to prison regards imprisonment primarily as retributive and is not convinced by arguments about their potential for rehabilitation. The victim of the original offence is likely to be confused by a series of mixed messages about how he or she is meant to benefit from the outcome of court proceedings. The public is at best ambivalent – unsure, that is, as to whether the process of justice is working or not. One of the unfortunate results of this confusion is that all parties are left dissatisfied and in a state of ambivalence about the whole system.

As we begin a new century, it may be that the time has come to review the place of punishment in society. In particular, we need to consider the extent to which any criminal justice process is used as a means of repairing the harm which has been done by one individual to another. Certainly, this process is probably best equipped to deal with extreme acts of violence or breach of trust. However, there are already a number of successful examples, both in Britain and internationally, of forms of justice in lieu of imprisonment which better meet the needs of the victim, of the offender and of society.