Aims of punishment

Discouraging future offending - Individual/ General

Theories

• Rational Choice Theory
• Situational Crime Prevention Strategies
• Social Learning Theory
• Right Realism

Criticisms

• Very little evidence of reduction of reoffending in boot camps or shocks
• Reoffending within a year of release
• Needs a severe enough punishment
• Ignorance of punishments
• Crimes of passion
• Morality – right to follow the law

Making offenders change their behaviour - education and training/ anger management courses/ drug treatment and testing orders/ support

Theories

• Cognitive theories
• Eysenck’s personality theory
• Skinner’s operant learning theory
• Left realism

Criticisms

• Right realists – many people reoffend after these programmes
• Marxists – focuses on individuals’ faults and ignores capitalism as the true blame

Expressing society's outrage at a crime - inflicting punishment on an offender as revenge/ individuals should get their 'just deserts'/ should be proportionate to the crime/ expresses moral outrage

Theories

• Right realism
• Functionalism 

Criticisms

• Offenders deserve forgiveness
• Fixed tariffs mean people are punished even if no good comes from it
• Need to decide what a proportionate penalty is - people disagree on the seriousness of the crime

Taking offenders off the streets - Incapacitation/ execution/ cutting off body parts/ castration/ banishment/ travel bans/ tags/ curfew

Theories

• Biological - Lombroso/ Sheldon
• Right realism

Criticisms

• Leads to longer sentences and 'warehousing' of inmates - ever rising prison population and associated costs
• Ignores causes of crime
• Doesn't change offenders into law-abiding citizens
• Re-punishment of offenders
• Imprisons offenders before they commit crimes the law has assumed they will commit

Making good the harm caused by crime - financial compensation/ unpaid work

Theories

• Labelling theory
• Functionalism

Criticisms

• Doesn't work for every offence
• Is it soft on criminals?