PSYC39H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Master Sergeant, Therapeutic Community, Capital Punishment By Country
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Chapter Four: Liking Theories to Practice
Bill (age 28) for armed robbery charge admitted to being high on drugs & needed $$ not
1st involvement w/ property theft
o Chaotic childhood, family situations, family & friends predominantly antisocial
o Dropped out of high school at Grad 10 & alcohol and drug abuse
Ideology typically polarize Canadians’ view on how to enhance public safety 2 side debate:
o Greater Rehabilitation vs. Greater Punishment
Rehabilitative program / Correctional Program - structured set of methods & activities
delivered by skilled staff to provide opportunities for offenders to gain new attitudes & skills in
order to reduce the likelihood of reoffending
Offender Rehabilitations - the delivery of correctional programming that targets criminogenic
needs for the purpose of reducing rates of reoffending by program completers
Custody classification – is the method by which incarcerated offenders are assigned to security
level
o Canadian assessment method (usually) consider treatment issues & development of
correctional plan throughout the offender’s sentence
Offenders w/ different #s & severities of criminal risk factors may warrant assignment to
different security levels or custody placement & to different correctional programs – to better
manage their risk of escape, institutional adjustment problems & reoffending
Risk Assessment – the determination of risk or probability of reoffending through the
systematic review of static & dynamic factors
Risk Management – the application of risk-assessment info to differentially allocate resources
such as programming & supervision in order to manage changes in risk over time
Changing Criminal Behaviour
Table 4.1 presents a simiplistic guidelines for what should be increased or decresed in order to
decrease crime
Behaviour
Rewards
Cost
Criminal
Reduce
Add
Prosocial
Add
Reduce
Over time – there is shift from individual rehabilitation program to greater reliance on
punishment to reduce crime
Utilitarian approach – people engage in crimineal beahvaioru because it pays thus to reduce
crime, its cost must increase
o Andrew & Bonta & others – refined this to Table 4.1 to reduce rime
Over dedaced – U.S. focus on increasing individual cost to crime as detterent
Though Canada championed before the rehabilitate approach – it is losing ground here
regardless of the evidence that supports it
Hence, multiple efforts required to change offenders behaviour & to decrease crime
Different elements of criminal justice system( e.g. court, prison) have different foci despite
agreed goal of crime reduction
Purposes of Sentencing
Canadian Criminal Code ,section 718 – sentencing is to ensure respect for law & the
maintenance of just, peaceful and safe society
o Expectation is that this is achieved via imposition of sanctions
Other purpose include: to denounce unlawful conduct, to remove offenders from society, to
assist in rehabilitation of offenders, to provide reparation to victims, to promote a sense of
responsibility in offenders
Via Specific deterrence & general deterrence – the expectation is that sanctions by court will
reduce criminal behaviours of both individuals & general population
Deterrence
Punishment extreme – “hard” / world realistic underlying this approach are views that:
o 1) those who commit crimes are bad
o 2) criminals are unlikely to change unless compelled to do so
o 3) criminals need to be dealt w/ more strictly (to get their attention)
o 4) cost & consequences of committing crimes need to be made serious as possible
Rehabilitation extreme – “soft”/world liberal underlying this are views that:
o 1) those who commit cries are no different than others
o 2) criminals have capacity to live decent live & reform
o 3) offenders have grown up in adverse surroundings & need to be presented w/ better
opportunities
Both of these viewpoint influence public perception of the courts
Sentencing & sanctions reflect major themes of :
1) Retribution – asserts that society has the right, when harmed ,to harm the offender
o This harm should correspond w/ the crime (“eye for eye”)
o From justice perspective – wants social retribution than at individual level
2) Incapacitation – application of crime control by removing offender ability to commit crimes
by incarcerating them
o Reality – majority of offenders return alive to communities commission of this have
limited impact
o There is data consistent w/ that incapacitation is expensive method to reducing crime
3) Deterrence – application of punishment to influence behaviour popular viewpoint
McGuire (2004) - measured deterrence across 4 Dimension & concluded that for punishment to be
effective should follow this sequence:
1) Certainty – likelihood of legal punishment
o 1st – punishment to target behaviour should be unavoidable
2) Celerity - amount of time that elapses b/w offence being committed & an official sanction
being imposed
o 2nd –application should be immediate following the target behaviour
3) Severity – magnitude of punishment
o 3rd – it should be severe
4) Scope – the relationship b/w types of crime in states & types of punishment
o Lastly is to ensure that individuals being punished cannot meet their goals via
alternative manner
These dimension rarely applied in systematic manner possibly diminishing effectiveness of
punishment to change behaviour
o E.g. delay b/w arrest & conviction result in two-for-one rule (1 day on remand = 1 day of
sentence if found guilty)
Look at deterrence in crime justice applications coming from 6 areas: Sentencing (in term crime
statistics), Relationships b/w imprisonment & crime rates, Effects of enhanced punishers, Meta-analytic
reviews of outcome studies, Self-report surveys, Research on death penalty
United Kingdom research – compare 2 year reconviction data by type of sentence while
controlling for risk level of the offender
o No difference b/w immediate custody & community penalties of reconviction rates
o Similar result in meta-analysis longer sentence had 2 & 3% increase in recidivism
o Suggest general deterrence does not reduce crime in that longer sentence &
incarceration not highly related to recidivism
If specific deterrence is effective – should see association b/w activity of courts for target crimes
& amount of that crime don’s see this
o Compared fines vs. shorter jail sentence – no effect on rates of drinking & driving
o No difference in crime rate in white collar crime (prison vs. no prison w/ 10 year follow
up)
Suggest – simply getting tougher on certain type of crimes may not diminish the rates of these
crimes
Another deterrence approach is enhanced punisher (punish smarter) -e.g. boot camp, shock
incarceration, electric surveillance, curfews, intensive supervision
o Meta –analysis of 29 studies w/ boot camp in U.S. found not effect in reducing
criminal behaviour
o Study w/ intensive supervision – does not reduce crime unless it includes rehabilitation
programming
o Study w/ 135 outcome students – mean effect size around 0 fines & reinstitution
reduce recidivism but only slightly
Effect of deterrence by self-report of offender
o Study of shoplifting teenagers experiencing an arrest had little impact on their
subsequent criminal behaviour