Punishment, Rehabilitation and Reducing Crime
What Happens After Someone Is Punished?
When an offender is caught and punished, psychologists want to know whether the punishment actually stops them committing more crime. Recidivism is the term for reoffending, and it is the main way psychologists judge whether a punishment or treatment has worked. If reoffending rates stay high after a punishment, that punishment has failed to change behaviour.
Recidivism means reoffending after punishment. Psychologists compare recidivism rates to judge whether prison, community sentencing and restorative justice actually work.
Prison
Prison removes an offender from society for a fixed period, protecting the public and acting as a deterrent because losing freedom is unpleasant.
However, prison has weaknesses. Reoffending rates after prison are often high, partly because offenders can learn further criminal behaviour from other prisoners through social learning — sometimes called prison being a “school for crime”. Prison also does little to address the causes of offending, such as poor anger control, and can damage an offender’s chances of getting a job or maintaining family relationships after release.
Community Sentencing
Community sentencing allows an offender to serve their sentence while remaining in the community, often completing unpaid work or attending a treatment programme.
A strength is that offenders can keep their job, home and family relationships, which reduces the social causes of reoffending. It is also cheaper for the state than keeping someone in prison. A weakness is that some people see it as too lenient for serious crimes, and it does not protect the public in the same way that removing an offender from society does.
Restorative Justice
Restorative justice brings the offender and victim together so the offender can hear the impact of their crime and take responsibility for repairing the harm.
A strength is that facing the victim directly can build empathy and responsibility, which may reduce reoffending. It also gives victims a voice. A weakness is that it depends on the victim being willing to take part, and it may not be suitable for very serious or violent offences.
Each punishment trades off protection against rehabilitation. Prison protects the public but risks teaching further criminal behaviour. Community sentencing and restorative justice aim to address causes of offending but rely on the offender’s cooperation.
All three punishments share the same aim — to stop the offender committing further crime — but they take very different approaches. Prison relies on removing freedom and separating the offender from society. Community sentencing and restorative justice both keep the offender within society, trying to change behaviour rather than simply contain it.
The choice between them often depends on the seriousness of the crime. Courts tend to reserve prison for serious or repeat offences, while community sentencing and restorative justice are more common for less serious or first-time offences, where addressing the causes of crime is judged more useful than removing the offender from society.
Treatments to Reduce Criminal Behaviour
Alongside punishments, psychologists have designed treatments that aim to change behaviour directly rather than simply punish it. Token economy programmes use operant conditioning: offenders earn tokens, a secondary reinforcer, for behaving well, such as following prison rules or attending education sessions. These tokens can then be exchanged for privileges like extra visits or better food.
A strength of token economy programmes is that they are easy to set up and can quickly improve behaviour within the institution. A weakness is that the good behaviour may only last while the tokens are being given — once the offender leaves the institution and the rewards stop, the behaviour change may not continue.
The second treatment is anger management, which uses cognitive-behavioural techniques. Offenders are taught to notice what triggers their anger, recognise the physical signs of building anger, and use techniques such as relaxation or stepping away from a situation to control their response before it leads to aggressive or criminal behaviour.
A strength of anger management is that it tackles a root cause of some violent crime rather than just punishing the outcome. A weakness is that it depends on the offender being motivated to engage with the programme — it will not work on someone unwilling to change.
Token economy programmes are based on operant conditioning and secondary reinforcement. Anger management programmes are based on cognitive-behavioural techniques that target the thoughts and triggers behind aggressive behaviour.
Charlton et al. (2000) carried out a naturalistic observation of children’s playground behaviour on the island of St Helena, a remote community that had no television until 1995. Because television was introduced at a known point, researchers could observe children’s behaviour before and after broadcasting began, over a five-year period.
Researchers video-recorded children in the school playground and rated their behaviour using observation checklists, looking for both anti-social behaviour (such as pushing or fighting) and pro-social behaviour (such as sharing or helping). This let them test whether exposure to television, including programmes containing violence, increased anti-social behaviour, as social learning theory would predict.
The findings showed little change in anti-social behaviour after television arrived, and pro-social behaviour remained common throughout the study. Charlton et al. concluded that the strong community structure on St Helena, including close supervision by adults, may have limited any effect of television on behaviour. A strength of the study is its high ecological validity, since it observed real children in their natural playground setting over several years. A weakness is that, because it was a natural experiment, the researchers could not control all extraneous variables, and the tight-knit community of St Helena may mean the findings do not generalise to other, less close-knit societies.