Zusammenfassung der Ressource
RS: Crime and Punishment
- Crime: Crime is the breaking of a law established by a
government for which there is punishment
- Crime
- Causes
- Economic: -lack of financial
resources can lead to poverty
-lack of educational oppurtunities
- Social environment: - Prevalence of drugs - inequality
- lack of support for families
- Family: -Dysfunctional family conditions
-substance abuse in the family
- Effects
- Repairing damage
- Loss of lives
- Can cause PTSD, depression and anxiety
- Can disrupt family life
- Feeling unsafe
- Christian responses to crime
- May agree with social, economic and family causes
- Moral failings because of the original sin
- May also believe they are being influenced by
the devil/satan
- Christian views on crime
- "Love God and your neighbour"
- "Do not steal"
- "Do not lie"
- "Blessed are the peacemakers"
- When might Christians challenge this?
- If it did not uphold the rights of workers,
women or the disabled
- Aims of punishment
- Retribution
- Revenge for what has been done against the
law and society or the individual
- "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth"
- Deterrence
- Warning others to discourage them
from committing crimes
- "If you do wrong, be afraid"
- Reformation
- Crime prevention, rehabilitation,
education and substance abuse
treatment
- "Do not kill"
- Protection
- Protecting society by stopping the individual criminals
from being able to commit crimes against people
- "Love thy neighbour"
- Types of punishment
- Imprisonment
- For: -Prison stops people from committing more
crimes and so protects society -long prison sentences
can act as a detterent
- Against: -Overcrowding -majority of prisoners re-offend
-Prisons can use legal drugs
- Fines: speeding, littering, parking tickets
- For: -detterence -money can be
used to help society
- Against: -For the rich it isn't as serious
-the poor could struggle
- Probation/Suspension
- For: -Gives the offender a normal life
-offender is provided with support
- Against: - Soft punishment which doesn't
cause discomfort -Doesn't send a message
- Community service: refers to forced work
for the community. Public act of repartition
- For: -Requires the offender to do something for
the community -Most effective
- Against: -Safe option which doesn't cause discomfort -nothing to fear
- Capital punishment
- The execution of a criminal by the government
- 2006, 1591 people executed in 26 countries
2007, 1252 people were executed in 24 countries
- 69 countries are still legal
- 137 countries have
made it legal
- For: Permanently removes the worst criminals, Cheaper than
imprisonment, Detterance, 'fits the crime',
- Against: Contradicts human rights, can be torturously painful,
countries with this punishment have higher murder rates
- Christian views
- Only in rare cases: -the bible does not recourse the death penalty if it is
the only possible solution, -"Do not kill", -It "feeds the cycle of violence"
- God has authorized the death penalty: -The Old Testament
lists crimes punishable by death -it is a 'biblical position'
- Elizabeth Fry
- Who: She was a Quaker who decided to reform prisons
- Why: Maybe her Quaker influence also maybe because of the horrors he saw at the prisons
she visited. An American preacher called William Savery may of also been an influence
- What: Prison Reformer
- When: 12th October 1845
- How: She started a school and taught women and children there and also
read from the bible and bought clean clothes for the prisoners