Alternatives to Imprisonment

Zimbardo pointed out the drawbacks of prison life so what are the alternatives?

Probation

Over 200,000 offenders are supervised by the Probation Service. What are the four main kinds of community sentences that are delivered today?

• Rehabilitation orders in the community
• Punishment orders in the community; unpaid work in the community
• Combined orders
• Drug treatment and testing orders

Any probation order requires that the individual stays out of trouble, turn up for appointments, take part in any organised activities and not upset people or attend meetings under the influence of drugs/alcohol. The consequences of breaching a probation order can be severe with return to prison a possibility. However, we need to explore whether probation actually works. Mair and May (1997) endeavoured to find out by investigating the experience of offenders on probation orders.

Aim; To investigate the experience of offenders on probation orders

Procedure; 3299 offenders were chosen from 22 probation officers at random and these individuals were interviewed which focused on whether they were likely to reoffend and their lifestyles.

Results; 88% considered probation to be useful yet only 37% said probation would prevent them from reoffending. Probation officers were rated highly as someone to confide in.

Conclusions; Offenders consider probation to be useful but many saw probation as an easy sentence to avoid prison. Perhaps other factors should be taken into consideration such as unemployment, family pressures, financial worries, etc.                                                                               

Many offenders are unemployed with little or no qualifications so that the probation officer spends time dealing with these difficulties and may have a lot of people to see which could have a knock on effect to the quality of support that the offender receives.

Restorative Justice (RJ)

Sheila had been burgled and she was having difficulties overcoming the emotional impact that this crime had had on her. She hated to think that someone she didn’t know had been in her house and now she felt afraid to be at home alone. She received support from her family and friends but she didn’t feel that the legal system had adequately recognised her distress.

Why would restorative justice help Sheila?

• A- Restorative Justice would help Sheila by giving her the chance of explaining to the offender how his crime had affected her and to receive an apology.

Why would restorative justice help the offender?

• A - Restorative Justice would help the offender to take responsibility for his crime and may prevent him from reoffending when he sees the distress he caused. He could then try to repair the harm he had done by returning what he took, by apologising

What type of study did Sherman and Strang (2007) carry out?

• A - Worldwide meta-analysis

Why was this hard to carry out?

• A - This was hard because different countries have different legal systems and approach Restorative Justice in a different way

What studies did they eventually look at?

• A - They looked at 36 studies from US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia

What conclusions did they come to?

• A - They found that RJ was preferred over criminal justice by both victims and offenders, RJ cost less, RJ reduced the need for revenge and PTSD in victims and RJ  reduced reoffending rates in crimes that were violent or property related

Therefore, there is support for restorative justice working, especially with young offenders and even schools have used restorative Justice instead of other disciplinary methods. RJ is excellent for allowing the victim to gain closure and focuses on more emotional needs such as forgiveness and understanding and it is also much cheaper than prison. There are problems attached to RJ such as victims finding the whole experience traumatic and actually increasing the problem for them and for offenders, they also may find the experience so bad that it increases their depression and could even cause suicide in prison.

‘Looking Deathworthy’

The death penalty was abolished in 1969 in the UK.The last person to receive a death sentence but was released from prison was David Champan. 

Approximately 41% of African-Americans make up death row in the US

Eberhardt (2006) examined whether the death sentence is influenced by the degree to which defendants are seen as having a stereotypically black appearance.

Photographs from a database were shown to participants and they were asked to rate how stereotypically black each person was. All of the photographs were convicted offenders who were eligible for the death sentence but the participants were not aware of this.

Eberhardt (2006) found that the more stereotypically black participants judged a convict to look, the more likely he was to have received the death penalty. It also found that those who had been accused of killing a white victim were more likely to be sentence to death; the effect of black stereotypical appearance showed up just in cases involving white victims.

The data only came from one state so can’t be generalised to other states.

Research, however, has found that whites are twice as likely as African Americans to receive the death sentence so not everyone agrees with this data.