Criminology

1. Blood feud occurs when a victims family or clan retaliates against the person causing the injury. Lex salica is the doctrine of paying off a victims family for redress. Lex talionis is the primitive law of vengeance.  Wergeld is payment made to the victim. Friedensgeld is payment made to the government. Civil death means a person is stripped of all his civil rights as a result of a felony.

2. Free will means individuals are rational and are free in their choices. Thus, individuals who commit crimes choose to do so and must be punished for their offenses not only against the victim, but against God and the state.

3. Forms of punishment during the Middle Ages included physical mutilation, branding, and several types of public humiliation such as flogging, spitting, and garbage heaping. The rationale for such punishments was deterrence it was believed that social revenge was the greatest deterrent.

4. Bridewells are correction houses for those who commit minor offenses.

5. The classical school viewed crime as a phenomenon that can be understood and controlled and the individual as rational human being capable of choosing. Beccaria and Bentham opined that the punishment must be proportionate to the crime.

6. John Howard established the four principles in prison reform which are 1) improvement of security and sanitation 2) systematised inspection 3) fees abolition, and 4) reformatory regime.

7. The Great Law was a penal doctrine by the Quakers that eliminated capital punishment and pushed for more humane punishments such as hard labour.

8. The Walnut Street Jail was the first long-term prison to house felons in America.

9. Maconochie contributed to the reformative system in corrections in place of the punitive system.

10. The reformatory era was a period of systemic changes for corrections to shift toward a less brutal and less punitive nature.

11. Industrial prisons refer to the policy of transforming inmates into industrial workers.

12. The get-tough approach is a victim-oriented system characterised by harsher penalties or treatment of offenders.

Topic 3 Review Questions
1. The four main rationales for corrections are retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Retribution is fuelled by moral balance that requires punishment for offenders. Incapacitation excludes the offender from society. Deterrence aims to discourage crime. Rehabilitation seeks to remedy crime.

2. Selective incapacitation aims to reduce crime by removing so-called career criminals that contribute to increase in crime volume. Research has refuted its claims that it will reduce crime and the costs of selective incapacitation are too high.

3. Offenders are individuals convicted of a crime while rehabilitating offenders are those who are in the process of restoring themselves for re-entry into society as productive citizens.

4. It is possible to punish and rehabilitate at the same time. An example of this is parole.

5. Retribution and deterrence are broadly compatible with each other.

6. Imprisonment is considered the greatest deterrent of all punishments. Humane imprisonment must not deprive the prisoner of his other rights.

7. Rehabilitation and humanitarian reforms are different terms. Rehabilitation means to provide the offender with skills to help him reintegrate with society while humanitarian reform means to improve prison conditions.

8. Martinson has a point when he said nothing works. The overcrowding of prisons today reflects how ineffective correction systems are in deterring crime.

9. The just desert model seeks retributive justice through moral balance and proposes that punishments are meted out in proportion to the degree and extent of the offense. Similar offenses must incur similar punishment.

10. Determinate sentencing gives a definite release time to the prisoner which cannot be altered by good behavior or other factors. Indeterminate sentencing gives an indefinite release like parole. Just desert proponents favour determinate sentences because they tend to support get-tough approaches on crime while treatment model proponents favour indeterminate sentencing because they aim for rehabilitation.

11. Mandatory sentencing assigns a specific penalty for a particular crime. Just desert proponents favour mandatory sentencing because they believe punishment must be uniform for similar crimes. Treatment model proponents favour discretionary sentences to take into account individual circumstances.

12. Sentencing disparity is considered a bad consequence of giving wide discretion to judges in sentencing. The application of sentencing guidelines aim to prevent arbitrariness and promote equal justice.

Topic 4  Review Questions

1. The prison population has been increasing in recent years. Possible reasons that could account for this is that there have been more categories of punishment for certain crimes and that judges are more apt to sentence offenders to imprisonment and not other forms.

2. Daily average refers to the number of people imprisoned in a day in a particular year. Reception refers to the number of prisoners the corrections system receives for an entire year. 3. The predominantly Aborigine-populated Northern Territory and Western Australia have the highest imprisonments rate among all territories. A possible explanations is that these areas have a higher degree of social conservatism that results to a much lesser tolerance toward crime.

4. A remand prisoner is one held in prison who have not been convicted of a crime. They are held while awaiting trial or if there are security risks should bail be granted.

5.  Males predominate the corrections system with 93 representation while females only 7.

6. Nationally, the rate of imprisonment of indigenous persons (as of June 2009) was 2,343 per 100,000. The highest imprisonment rate recorded is in Western Australia and the lowest in Australia Capital Territory.

7. The typical prisoner is male, single, has few educational qualifications, committed non-violent offenses in the past, and is a recidivist or  has seen prison previously on at least one instance.

8. This is because homicide attaches a life sentence. Hence, people serving sentences for homicide do not dwindle, they only increase.

9. Crimes that typical Aboriginal offending include violating good order, assault, driving, debts, drinking, and offences in family law.

10. Lincoln and Watson observed that the average age of incarceration among Aborigines is declining. More and more Aborigine children are sent to prison due to the policy of assimilation.

11. Lincoln and Wilson suggested that there are a number of violent crimes such as manslaughter and domestic abuse in the Aboriginal communities that are underreported and escape public notice, hence, hidden.

12. Lincoln and Wilson posited four theories of Aboriginal offending. The first theory is that the criminal justice system itself is inherently racist. The second theory is that present practices in corrections merely continue the oppressive and abusive practices during the colonial era. The third theory is that Aboriginal offending should be interpreted as expressive of resistance. The fourth theory suggests that Aboriginal offending should be seen as cultural conflict because Aborigines have different views on social control than Whites.