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Crime and Violence: Forces for Good or Evil?

Lecture Five

Consequences, punishment and treatment

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Punishment in the past

Foucault, Discipline and Punish Public executions ended in England in the 1860s The death penalty was abolished in the 1960s Report on death penalty: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=

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Kimmett Edgar and Carol Martin 2002

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141 incidents of violence in four different types of prison

Two hundred and nine prisoners were interviewed

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Prisons

require inmates to interact with others whose behaviour they cannot predict;

deprive people of privacy; are a place where others pose a risk to one's

physical well-being; turning to staff to resolve disputes is condemned as

a betrayal of inmate solidarity and seen as weakness; and

the expected response to being wronged is to react with violence.

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Men in Prison

National Prison Survey 1991 41% of male prisoners came from social

classes 4&5 - compared to just 18% of the general population

15% of males in prisons described themselves as Black or Asian - compared with less than 5% of the general population.

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Ryan and Sim (in Ruggiero, Ryan and Sim, 1995: 119) suggest that:

Once inside, prisoners are … placed in regimes which will emphasize authority rather than rehabilitation, security rather than justice and privileges rather than rights.

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Cycle One - force begets force

How prisoners deal with their fears for their personal safety increases the likelihood that fights and assaults will result.

Kimmett Edgar and Carol Martin (2002) Conflicts and Violence in Prison

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Cycle One - force begets force

Actual risk of assault: 1 in 5adults and 1 in 4 youngmales assaulted per month. Feelings of intimidation

Psychological preparationsfor violent self-defence

Perceived need to use forceto demonstrate toughnessto others leads todefensive reactions

Hostility, deception, suspicion, challenges, accusations…

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irrational, grubby and pedestrian, and lack panache and drama. Escalations that are apt to lead to bloodshed originate in the silliest issues of the most miniscule import. Persons fearful of others strike pre-emptively at more fearful adversaries. Yet-unshaven children posture and bluff and have their bluffs called. The most non-tough of men act tough until they think they are tough, and believe that others think they are tough. (Toch, in Stanko, 1994:94)

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Power, masculinity and prison violence

Rod Morgan - Oxford Handbook of Criminology

BBChttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7806840.stm

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Prison service website: http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/library/dynpage.asp?Page=

339 On a Saturday in the middle of April almost 200 women

crammed into HMP Wandsworth’s Greenside Club to watch a dozen men perform in a Man-o-Man competition. The ladies paid heavily to watch six prison staff and six local men compete over ten events.

The men had to prove their masculinity over a range of gruelling tests from having to eat a cream doughnut blindfolded to giving their best chat-up line to a member of the audience and doing press-ups with a lady on their backs.

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The decent men and women in the service are regularly betrayed from within by their colleagues; 99 officers nationwide are currently suspended from work on suspicion of range of offences, including absence, fraud, racist abuse and assaulting prisoners and fellow staff. Inmates allege routine abuse of powers by officers, and privately a police officer suggests prison officers are central to the distribution of drugs among prisoners.

Criminal charges are outstanding against officers from Wormwood Scrubs and police are investigating allegations of assault against four officers from Portland young offenders institution (YOI).

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Attitudes towards correcting violence are confused. Parents who preface a ‘correctional’ blow to a child with the words: ‘I’ll teach you to hit your little sister’, may have little inkling of the supreme irony of those words. There are lessons here for a nation’s attitudes towards correction. (Wells, in Stanko, 1994:69)

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Victims of violence

British Crime Survey: young people are more at risk than older

people women are more at risk from someone they

know police detection rates remain at an all-time

low of 24% Victim Support receive over 1 million referrals

per year.

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Tony Martin (Guardian 18 April 2000)

Anthony Scrivener QC, defending, said "He didn't want people to burgle his house. He was in a situation where he had to make some desperate decisions."

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Recent avenues of studies in victimology have included:

How various components of the criminal justice system treat victims;

The impact of victimization; and The effectiveness of certain interventions with

crime victims.

Victim Support

http://www.victimsupport.com/

http://natiasso03.uuhost.uk.uu.net/about.htm