Notes

Retribution
- Deserved Punishment
Deterrence
- Based on the idea that criminals think before they act
- Two Types:
○ General - Focuses on deterring society.
○ Specific - Focuses on deterring specific individuals
Incapacitation
- Crime may be prevented if criminals are physically restrained
○ Prison
○ Capital Punishment
- Selective Incapacitation: aimed at repeat offenders
Rehabilitation
- Focuses on returning criminal offenders to society through treatment
New Approach to Punishment
- Restoration
○ Offenders are encouraged to return victims to the state they in were prior to the crime.
Criminal Sanctions
- Incarceration - Most visible
○ Three types of sentences result in incarceration:
§ Indeterminate: specifies a max and min length of time to be served
§ Determinate: certain length that must be served
§ Mandatory: minimum period that cannot be deviated
- "Truth in Sentencing"
○ The requirement that offenders serve a substantial portion of their sentence
- Intermediate Sanctions
○ More restrictive that probation, but less restrictive than prison.
- Probation
○ The most frequently used sanction in the criminal justice system
§ Almost 60% of adults in the system are under probation supervision
- Death Penalty
○ All other Western democracies have abolished the death penalty.
Key Supreme Court Decisions
- Furman v. Georgia (1972)
○ The death penalty, as administered, constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
- Coker v. Georgia (1977)
○ The U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws that imposed the death penalty for the crime of rape.
○ ***In both cases, black jurors ruled more leniently towards black defendants than white jurors did
Position Paper/Oral Argument
- AGAINST the Death Penalty