The Protection of Society Through Swift Punishments, Essay Example

The protection of society through swift, harsh punishments for offenders is the veritable essence of the crime control perspective. Following the calculus of a particular kind of utilitarian, consequentialist ethics, the crime control perspective focuses on the all-consuming importance of the end of protecting society from crime, and is far less concerned with the means of getting there. The overall benefit to society of controlling crime is believed to outweigh the harm of sentencing an offender too harshly, or otherwise violating the rights of offenders.

Moreover, since suspects are considered guilty until proven innocent, the crime control perspective certainly runs higher risks of falsely convicting innocent suspects. Authoritarian, the crime control approach places a great deal of faith in the authority and integrity of police officers, and the courts are generally expected to follow the line set by the law enforcement community. The Patriot Act is a powerful example of this approach in action, inasmuch as it gives law enforcement officials greatly expanded powers to conduct surveillance, and even broadens the definition of terrorism. And in response to the crime wave of the 1970s and 1980s, America veered towards this approach with harsher sentences, as well as the construction of more and more prisons.

In sentencing Michael Pickens, an advocate of the crime control perspective would be concerned with punishing him as swiftly and thoroughly as possible, in order to protect society from his activities. The idea here would be to not only guard against recidivism on Pickens’s part through deterrence, but also to deter other, potential offenders. There would be no concern for the roots of Pickens’s behavior, or simply ‘correcting’ him, and there would be relatively little concern for his rights. The goal would be punishment of an offender in order to reduce the overall occurrence of crime.

In all probability, this would mean a lengthy prison sentence for Michael Pickens. He scammed tremendous numbers of people, and he and his fellow conspirators made a profit of some $400,000. The prison sentence would be long, and there would probably be quite hefty fines as well. The punishment would be quite harsh, and it would probably be as severe as possible, particularly given the considerable scope and scale of Pickens’s crimes.

To be completely honest, I find this approach by far the most disagreeable, and even downright detestable, of the six approaches considered here. It is authoritarian and draconian, having no concern for the rights and well-being of the individual as such, only for the supposed greater good of society. Even this argument falls flat when one considers that such a roughshod, patently dictatorial approach will falsely convict many more innocent people. One must wonder, too, whether it really makes sense to punish the guilty as harshly as possible: might not there be occasions for a certain leniency? Ought we not to consider means as well as ends? Moreover, it creates, or contributes to, a culture of punishment and stigmatization rather than a culture of liberty: a culture wherein transgressions against the social fabric are treated in a harshly-punitive way, rather than with the fairness and true justice so necessary to ensure the well-being and vitality of a truly free and democratic society.