Penology

Introduction To Penology Dr. Ayman Elzeiny A. Definition :

The "penology" word is derived from "punishment or penalty" word . The energetic movement of human rights contributed to the adoption of the reforms penology as a science. Now, as the struggle against criminality uses not only penalties but also security measures and pure social methods, the denomination of penology became anachronistic. penology as a science could be divided into prevention science and treatment science. The prevention science operates before the commission of the crime, while the treatment science takes place after the occurrence of the crime to emend the criminal and avoid his recidivism. And also suggests the ideal methods of prevention and treatment, therefore it traces the ideal criminal policy. In conclu ion we mean by penology nowadays "a substitute which we call "science of struggle against criminality"that means the ideal methods of prevention and treatment as regards criminality ". o we shall explain at first the prevention and after that the treatment whether its method is legislative, judicial or executive.
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" . #rime Prevention ".!$ #oncept of #rime Prevention Terms such as"prevention," "control," and "deterrence" are frequently encountered in the literature of crime. owever, their meaning often varies from one text to another. !n this respect, penology is like most social sciences that is, there are few rigorous and universally accepted definitions. "ather, certain terms and concepts take on a general meaning, with more agreement on usage than on definition. "#rime prevention" is a term that is often used very broadly.!t has served to justify many diverse programs. Thu % proposals to censor children#s television, raise the minimum wage, or require school prayer all have proponents who argue that these measures will contribute to a reduction in crime and delinquency. &hile most of the basic constraints on criminal behavior are established by such institutions as the family, schools, media, and other forces that inculcate general cultural values, there are other institutions involved, more directly connected to the prevention of crime. The most apparent of these is the criminal justice system, with its concepts of deterrence and its mechanisms for apprehension of offenders, adjudication of their guilt or innocence, and the punishment and hopefully the rehabilitation of those found guilty of violating the law. $%&
''''''''''''''''''' $%&Andenaes, (ohannes , "The general preventive effects of punishment." )niversity of *ennsylvania +aw "eview ,).,.A ,%-.., pp/ -0-1-23. 1 4ailey, 5illiam 6. , "7eterrence and the death penalty for murders in )tah/ A time series analysis." (ournal of 6ontemporary +aw , %-82 , pp/ %19:.

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".'$#rime Prevention and crime #ontrol 6rime prevention and control are usually differentiated in that prevention is thought of as the effort to forestall or deter the commission of a crime while control refers to measures of dealing with the crime and the criminal after the act has been committed. Thu police patrol, job1training, and youth counseling can all be seen as preventive measures. In contra t, arrest, trial, and incarceration are aspects of control. (ome would argue, however, that police patrol is also an aspect of crime control, since an effective patrol instills a fear of arrest and punishment in the potential offender and thus discourages crime. !n a similar vein, treatment programs aimed at convicted offenders can be considered control measures because they occur after a crime has taken place. (o crime #ontrol refers to those activities $detection, apprehension, prosecution, adjudication, and post1 adjudicatory efforts& in which society primarily engages in response to criminal acts once they have occurred. on the other hand *revention of the crime" denotes a range of societal activities which are designed to inhibit the occurrence of criminal behavior by interrupting the social, psychological, and situational processes believed to encourage it, and by supporting those processes which are believed to encourage law1 abiding behavior.

In practice most people do not make such theoretical distinctions, and in common parlance any measures taken to deter the commission of an offense are usually considered crime prevention. The prevention;control, before; after dichotomy is useful, however, in focusing attention on philosophical approaches to the crime problem. An emphasis on prevention aims at significantly reducing, even eradicating, crime. 6ontrol, on the other hand, concedes that a certain amount of crime will always occur and emphasi<es measures to keep it within bounds. The practical effect of this distinction will be apparent when we discuss anticrime policies. ". )$ *odel of Prevention and #ontrol :$ All y tem of prevention and control are implicitly or explicitly based on theories of causation. Adherents of the classical school of criminology subscribe to the belief that offenders knowingly choose to engage in wrongful acts and that therefore the best means of preventing crime is to make punishments for criminal behavior greater than anticipated rewards. 5hile few contemporary policy1makers totally accept such tenets, classical philosophy still underlies our criminal law in what might be termed the punitive or rational1legal model of prevention and control. The function of arrest, prosecution, and punishment can of course be carried out by the criminal justice system only after the commission of a crime has occurred, when general and specific $or special& deterrence are called into play.
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". ).! T,E P-NITI.E */DE0 : The impo ition of criminal penaltie on convicted offenders is the essence of the punitive model. The basic rationale is that punishment of convicted offenders "teaches them a lesson" while it serves as a deterrent to others . The former is known as specific deterrence, the latter as general deterrence. At one time it was widely accepted that punishment must be severe in order to have the desired effect of deterrence. Therefore, in some societies, such as eighteenth1century =ngland, hanging was common for even the pettiest offenses. An alternative notion is that severity of punishment is less important than its certainty. >ne problem arises from the differential impact of sanctions on individuals. To some people the mere fact of an arrest, even without prosecution or further punishment, would constitute such a severe disgrace in their own minds or public reputations that they would never chance its happening. To others a jail term may mean little unless it is of considerable duration. 7ifferences of opinion are rife in criminological and political circles over the effect of punishment on inhibition of criminal behavior, reaching the point of sharpest debate over the death penalty. $%&
''''''''''''''''''''' $%& ?ibbs, (ack *. ,"6rime, punishment and deterrence." ,outhwest ,ocial ,cience @uarterly , %-.2 , pp/ A%A1A3:. 1 ?reen, 7onald =., "*ast behavior as a measure of actual future behavior/ An unre1 solved issue in perceptual deterrence research." (ournal of 6riminal +aw and 6riminology, %-2- , pp/ 82%12:0. 1 ?reen, ?ary ,. , "?eneral deterrence and television cable crime/ A field experiment in social control." 6riminology , %-2A , pp / .9-1.0A. 1 +ewis, 7onald =. , The general deterrent effect of longer sentences." 4ritish (ournal of 6riminology , %-2. , pp/ 081 .9.

A view that has received considerable attention is a modified version of the punitive model. Adherents argue that apprehended criminals must be incarcerated in order to "incapacitate" them1a technical term that covers all methods of making a person incapable of committing another criminal act, methods that may include execution, exile, detention, physical mutilation, and incarceration. ". ).' T,E #/22E#TI/NA0 */DE0 : E3planation of crime causation other than the classical one suggest alternative rationales for prevention and control. The tenet of positivism have given rise to what might be termed the socio1psychological or correctional concept of crime prevention. This holds that criminal offenders are motivated by either individual personality defects or societal imperfections or by both. The mean u ed for the prevention of crime will largely depend on which aspect of causation is embraced. Bor example, the notion that criminal behavior is primarily a result of individual maladjustment suggests that attempts be made to identify potential offenders through their personality patterns, and that they be offered treatment before engaging in crime or after conviction to discourage further illegal activity. #oun eling% behavior modification, transactional analysis, drug treatment, psychotherapy, and other methods have been tried for effecting change in prospective or actual offenders. !n this approach,
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correctional concepts can serve as both preventive and control measures because they can be administered before or after the commission of a crime. If the etiology of crime is believed to be rooted in the social organi<ation, or lack of it, the correctional model proposes that the remedy is to "treat" society itself. This may involve programs to eliminate poverty and racial discrimination or create a sense of community. !t might also mean basic structural changes in the economic and political system. ,ome schools of thought, for example, contend that only a socialist state can adequately meet the problem of crime. The correctional model i 5a ed on the proposition that the formation of criminal desire should be prevented before offenses are perpetrated, or, if this is not successful, that such desire should be eradicated from convicted offenders. The implementation of correctional efforts on a broad scale can be most costly. The varied approaches may be directed toward individuals or whole societies. ,owever% correctional approaches differ widely from one another in their policy implications. Those who believe that crime is a function of individual maladjustment do not differ from those who support punitive concepts in their approval of the arrest of offenders. !ndeed, some support the use of legal authority to compel individuals to be "treated." This is not the case with those who view crime as a failure of society.
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If criminal are victims of society, it follows $for some people& that they should not be punished and cannot be treated, since it is society that is the culprit. The proponents of societal guilt occasionally contend that the logical extension of this viewpoint is to arrest virtually no conventional index crime offenders, although most shrink from the full implications of this position. "ather, they combine the responsibility of society for its inequities with the necessity of social defense against their consequences/ that is, one must work toward radical change in society, while at the same time protecting its members from being victimi<ed by its victims $i.e., potential or actual offenders&. In the !768 considerable doubt was cast on the notion that the correctional system can rehabilitate offenders. !ndeed, the system was characteri<ed as providing only human warehouses where no rehabilitation can take place. *roposals for reform range from abandonment of the idea of rehabilitation in favor of a return to punitive functions $with mandatory prison sentences& to closing of penal facilities in favor of an alternative system of treatment. !t is generally agreed, however, that some form of incarceration must continue in all societies, if for no other reason than that incapacitation, at least temporarily, protects society from dangerous offenders .$%&
''''''''''''''''''''' $%& Cc7owall, 7avid, Alan +i<otte, and 4rian 5iersema , "?eneral deterrence through civilian gun ownership." 6riminology, %--% , pp/ A0%1AA-. 1 Cinor, 5illiam C., and (oseph arry , "7eterrent and experiential effects in per1 ceptual deterrence research/ A replication and extension." (ournal of "esearch in 6rime and 7elinquency, %-29 , pp / %-:19:3.

". ).) T,E *E#,ANI(TI# */DE0: A third approach to crime prevention involves measures to reduce the opportunity for crime to occur. Bor example, placing strong locks on apartment doors may discourage all but the most skilled burglarD use of exact1fare systems in public transportation often seems to reduce the robbery rate. >pportunity reduction has been called mechanical or mechanistic prevention be1 cause it seeks to redesign the environment $not because it necessarily involves any mechanical device&. The mechani tic model differ from other types of prevention because it emphasi<es the victim or object of crime rather than the offender, and does not primarily involve punishment or rehabilitation. 6ertain aspects of the mechanistic approach do, however% depend on altering offender perceptions. These are measures designed to increase the risks in committing crime. Bor example, the rationale for the installation of bright street lighting is that it will make street crime more visible and therefore more likely to be interrupted, either directly by police or by citi<ens who may summon them. Thus the preventive aspects of the mechanistic model interact with the control aspects of the punitive model, since it would not be worthwhile to increase the risks of apprehension if there were no possibility of punishment. The mechani tic or mechanical model concentrate on the victims of crime, the persons and objects injured or threatened, and the material property
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vulnerable to theft or actually stolen. !t seeks to foreclose criminal opportunities. !t overlaps with the punitive in that both seek to increase the risks and ha<ards of crime and thus discourage the criminal. The mechanical approach, however, poses a problem in that it fails to come to terms with the dedicated offender. ,ince not all opportunities can be foreclosed at all times, the criminal may simply move from one target to another. ". ).+ T,E P/0I#: /; I*P0I#ATI/N(: The *odel &eighed and #on idered >ver the past few decades, the essence of crime prevention and indeed of the overall system of criminal justice has been a combination of punitive and correctional concepts. The dominant theme of the system is that criminals must be caught and processed, but those who are convicted should be rehabilitated rather than punished. Therefore, when a criminal is sent to prison, the proponents both of punishment and of rehabilitation can feel some satisfaction, the former because the offender is getting his due and the latter because the maladjusted individual is receiving treatment. In the real world, both ordinary citi<ens and, policy1 makers are constantly accepting or rejecting various strands of criminological theory ,even though they may not be aware of it. Political candidate who promise mandatory prison sentences for drug dealers are espousing the tenets of classical criminology, urging a punitive model of crime prevention.
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That i % they are arguing that the behavior of drug dealers is essentially rational and can therefore be prevented by making the penalty sufficiently severe. In ome #riminologi t point of view prisons must be closed and inmates transferred to community treatment centers are affirming their faith in the correctional model, as developed in theories of positivism. A community group that petitions the city to install street lights is in effect supporting the mechanical model of crime prevention, since its members evidently believe that the lights will reduce the opportunity for crime and therefore the likelihood of its occurring. Then there are those who contend that priorities must be reordered1that, for example, the most serious public danger is posed by white1collar and corporate offenders who commit crimes with far1 reaching effects but are rarely caught, tried, or punished, and if punished generally receive lenient treatment. /ne pro5lem in determining crime prevention policies is the fact that in speaking of crime some 6riminologists are using a single term to describe what we have seen is a considerably complex array of heterogeneous human behavior. =ven index crime covers a wide range of activities, and conventional street crime covers such disparate acts as juvenile automobile theft for joyriding purposes to burglary, which does not literally occur on the street.

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A a re ult, there has emerged among criminologists a movement to deal with the various types of crime in a narrower and more specific context. These crime1 specific analysts seek to study a particular offense, such as burglary or robbery $or, even more precisely, street mugging&,in all its dimensions, including the offender, victim , environmental factors, and legal processing, in the hope of arriving at more realistic policy recommendations. !n a similar vein, one can study a specific geographical area and the forms, nature, and impact of crime as it occurs in that locality. ,uch studies are based on the concept that references to crime and criminals are too broad and discussion .
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''''''''''''''''''''''' ?regory Eilboorg, C.7., The *sychology of the 6riminal Act and *unishment, ?reenwood *ress, Few Gork, %-.2 , p. -8. 1 =rnest van den aag, *unishing 6riminals ,Few Gork/ 4asic 4ooks, !nc., *ublishers, %-8A , pp. %01%A.

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