Criminal Justice System - Role of Prisons | A-Level Sociology

welcome to this tutorial sociology topic video on the role of the criminal justice system focusing on the role of prisons prison is one of the more common forms of punishment for criminal behavior in the uk and over time the use of imprisonment has increased in june 2020 the prison population of the uk was less than 80 000

however this is in part due to a sharp decline in the last 12 months due to covered restrictions and currently around 76 000 males and 3 000 females are serving custodial sentences sociologists have long argued about the purpose of the prison some sociologists would argue that imprisonment serves a range of functions for society

first of all it acts as a deterrent to future criminality by giving harsh sentences for crimes secondly it incapacitates the offender and it keeps the public safe from harm from these offenders thirdly it provides rehabilitation opportunities for the offender to rejoin society and finally it punishes offenders for their crimes committed there are differing perspectives on the

role of punishment and prisons for example functionalists see that prison has a benefit to society whereas marxist would argue that imprisonment is a means of controlling a dissenting section of society in previous videos we've looked at the work of michel foucault and looking at how the role of the prison creates self-discipline and we also need to look at garland who

talks about mass incarceration particularly in the usa when examining the function's perspective we look at the work of emil durkheim durkheim argued there were two forms of punishment in society retributive punishment punishment that took a form of vengeance for the crimes committed and this can be seen in crimes such as the death penalty or what