Notes

Penology is a multi-disciplinary subject that aims for the study and evaluation of the application of penal laws onto the wrongdoers. It broadly explains the justification, characteristics, and effectiveness of punishment in its various forms. In other words, it is a systematic study of different facets of punishment and its impact on crimes, criminals, and society. As a matter of fact, penology owes its origin to Cesare Beccaria, the classical school of criminology. This Italian criminologist argued that justification of punishment must be to deter potential criminals, and not merely to punish the offender. Later, it was during the end of the 19th century that different theories of punishment were propounded focusing on the aims and objectives of the punishment.

Scope
The scope of penology is vast and hence it becomes difficult to define the same. Penology is almost seen in every aspect and type of punishment for the crimes and offences. To limit the scope we have to study basically all the aspects of penology, where all the things are explained in their wider senses.

Modern penologists lay greater emphasis on the rationalism of punishment. The penal policy should be more reformation oriented rather than coercive penal sanctions. As Lewis Gillin (1871-1958) rightly observed:

“The criminal is the product of his biological inheritance conditioned in his development by the experiences of life to which he has been exposed from early infancy up to the commission of a crime. By studying the offender in every possible way, the modern penology promises to throw light on his conditioning and arrive at a diagnosis of the factors entering into each individual case. From the standpoint of penology, it attempts to adapt the treatment of each offender in accordance with the diagnosis obtained by the scientific study of the criminal.”

Adopting a similar approach to penology, the Supreme Court in Santa Singh v. State of Punjab [1], observed that “penology regards crime and criminal as equally material when the sentence has to be awarded. It turns the focus not only on the gravity or nature of the crime but also on the criminal and seeks to personalize the punishment so that the reformist component is also many operatives as the deterrent element. A proper sentence is an amalgam of many factors such as nature of the offence, circumstances, previous record of the offender, his age, education, employment and family background, the possibility of social adjustment and reformation, etc.”

Relationship between penology and victimology
It must retreat that criminology is one of the branches of criminal science which is concerned with the social study of crimes and criminal behaviour. It aims at discovering the causes of crimes and effective measures to combat it

Penology deals with care, custody, treatment, prevention, and control of crimes as also the various modes of sentencing and rehabilitation of criminals.

The primary concern of victimology is to seek justice for victims of crime who are faced with multiple problems. It deals with the rights and claims of victims of crime and their dependents. The focus is on mitigating the sufferings of crime victims and providing them with compensatory and other reliefs.

The policies which are postulated by these three branches i.e., criminology, penology, and victimology are implemented through the agency of criminal law. Broadly, all these taken together constitute the subject-matter of criminal science.

Approach of penology
Like in criminology, penology may also be approached from various points of views. These may be denoted as Administrative Penology, Scientific Penology, Academic Penology, and Analytical Penology.

Administrative Penology
The administrative personnel employed for custodial functions in prisons ought to be capable persons conscientious of their responsibility to the society. They must be well-educated and imparted entry-level training before taking the job. Services old psychologists, social workers, and media persons should be availed for assisting the prison authorities in carrying out their correctional programmers. Prison guards and jail supervisors owe a special duty to keep the inmates under control and special vigil on prisoners who have no loyalty to the prison.

Scientific Penology
Individualization of prisoners should be the object of privatization and the effectiveness of rehabilitative techniques is essentially dependent on relaxing the custodial and disciplinary conditions keeping in view the personality needs of each inmate. The services of therapeutic specialists may be used for scientific corrective treatment of inmates in prison. The prison environment should be corrective rather than punitive.

Academic Penology
Academic penology is basically descriptive in character, and its main purpose is being the dissemination of penological knowledge. It limits itself with the theoretical knowledge of penology.

Analytical Penology
It aims at ascertaining as objectively as possible, the adequacy of existing penal policies and methods and suggests measures for improving the system. Thus, it makes a critical analysis of penal measures and offers solutions for the efficient administration of penal justice.

The basic principle underlying the modern penology is that the sentences awarded ought to be proportionate to the gravity of the offence. In operating the sentencing system, the law should adopt the corrective machinery or deterrence based on the factual matrix of the case. The nature of the crime, the manner in which it was planned and committed, the motive of the commission of a crime, the conduct of the accused, the nature of the weapons used, and all other attending circumstances are relevant facts which should be taken into consideration before sentencing the accused. The court must not keep in view the rights of the victim to the crime but also the society at large while considering this imposition of an appropriate sentence. Awarding inadequate sentences out of uncalled for sympathy for the accused would do more harm to the justice system and undermine the public confidence in the efficacy of the penal system.