Punishment and crime do not exist individually in isolation, they coexist but they have to be in balance in the sense of justice. While crime must not evade justice, at the same time the punishment should be proportional to the nature and the social impact of the crime committed. Both, crime and punishment are a manifestation of and an institution that shapes the community.
2. Definition of crime
Crime has always been regarded by the courts as a moral wrong and conduct demanding retribution. Crime is a myth of everyday life and has no ontological reality e.g. credit card fraud, rape, the use or sale of illegal drugs are all defined as crime and the people offended should be punished. Criminology is still producing meta- theory to explain crime and yet its focus is on content rather than on the political, economic and social context of the production of the regimes of truth.[1] However the criminal law uses a number of rules and tests to determine whether or not a crime has been committed e.g. actus and mens rea.3. Danny Dorling’s analysis of murder rate in Britain
Dorling says that murder is part of our everyday life and that the murder buys votes through fear and sells the media. The British people see murder as the isolated acts of individuals and they think that if you kill the killer the killing goes away. Dorling made a statistical approach through the recorded murder in Britain
According to Dorling murder is a social marker and the murder rate tell us further more about society and how it is changing than each individual murder tell us about the individuals involved. He found that poverty is one of the strongest factors influencing an individual’s chance of being murdered and the possibility of this kind of death rises if life in general made more difficult to live people have to be made to feel more worthless.
It is accepted that a huge amount of criminal offences are crimes against property e.g. damage, theft. But a genuine understanding of crime cannot be reduced to showing that poverty drives people towards offending behavior neither can crime prevention policy simply be dismissed as a means by which the state can control the population.
4. Punishment and reform
The very basis of the criminal justice system is punishment and reform. The public expect from the criminal justice system on their behalf to punish those who have broken the law. The justice system is based on three principles: rehabilitation, preventing recidivism and deterrence. Many reject the claim that prison seeks to rehabilitate, deter or provide just desert.
Need is the most valid reason for the commission of a crime. When the choice is between death and life the instinct for survival becomes the primary drive in all but the most disciplined of individuals. By punishing the criminal you will not solve the problem. They will go back in to the same situation. People must receive job training and guidance not incarceration and fines.
Former prison governor David Wilson argues that- "prison is a trick - all those who have disappeared [from mainstream society] will return. And when they do, none of their underlying problems will have got better; many will have got worse. Prison does not make a community safer. The opposite: prison ultimately contributes to making it more dangerous." In my opinion, it is true that individuals become better criminals in jail not better citizens. There is no better place to learn crime.The masses will continue to conform to ineffective ideals and call retribution rather than rehabilitation. The worst is that the future criminal will continue to be born at the same rate.
5. Crime and punishment are a reflection of and an institution that shapes the community
A mass of statistical data shows that the bigger the gap between the poorest and the richest in a country the higher the levels of crime, ill health and societal breakdown will be.
Nowadays we live in a world of capitalism. Under capitalism the justice system has a purpose beyond restraining the “have nots” and legitimizing the rule over society by a privileged minority. It regulates the machinery of state and systems of trade. The wealthy want their claims to property and goods to be normalized by law and to ensure that none among them has an unfair advantage over the others. Therefore, capitalist society offers every one the same goals e.g. a nice house, a sport car, designer clothes. But it can offer these only to a tiny minority the prospect of enjoying this kind of existence. Most of people will never have the chance to secure the standard of living that is sold to them towards television and in advertising. The vast inequalities produced by capitalism mean that, for many people at the bottom of the society, “a life that involves crime is a mean of survival.”
My view is that,crime and punishment are a reflection of and an institution, that partially shape the community. As discussed above there are a number of other factors that influence and shape a society, most important of which is poverty, deprivation and social injustice. Today’s social system, capitalism in one form or another has not only failed to address these problems but amplified the social breakdown during the last century. The social gap has widened and as a result we see an upward trend in crime statistics. Crime and punishment is indeed is a reflection of and an institution that shape the society but not the only one and most probably not the most important. Society must look beyond capitalism through a better way of organizing society which minimizes social injustices, poverty and deprivation. The justice system should then fill the gaps and heal the wounds that crime inflicts on both the victim and offender.
p.s: i know that is a long post but i wanted to give a good explanation of crime and punishment the analysis and views of others and of-course mine. I couldn't do it in 3 paragraphs.However I hope that you will find it interesting.
For further reading-
Donny Gluckstein, Crime: Capital's Punishment January 2007,
Dorling (et al), Criminal Obsessions: why harm matters more than crime, 2nd edition, Centre for Crime & Justice Studies, 2008,
Home Office, Crime in England & Wales 2008/09, Home Office, 2009.
Jack Straw, Speech on Punishment and Reform, Royal Society of Arts, 2008
http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/criminalobsessions2.html
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/hosb1109vol1.pdf
http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/sp271008a.htm
http://www.reasoned.org/rs_txt14.htm[1] Dorling (et al), Criminal Obsessions: why harm matters more than crime, 2nd edition, Centre for Crime & Justice Studies, 2008, chapter 1, pages 7-8
2 comments:
again , I apologise for the long post but i explained in detail so you my readers could understand exactly why crime and punishment do not exist in isolation but both are a reflection of an institution that shapes the community.
further thought:
- if we put a child from the time he/she is born in an empty room without any communication with the outside world and give him/her through a small hole a piece of meat and water, the only thing he/she can do when we allow him/her to leave outside the room is to walk on four legs and look for meat and water. This is because he/she is used to it from the time he/she was born.
- in the same way a human is not born a murderer but becomes one.
you can check this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
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