Prison as Punishment: A Behavior-Analytic Evaluation

Running head: PRISON PUNISHMENT AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
PRISON PUNISHMENT AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

PRISON PUNISHMENT AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE1
Introduction
In this paper I will be discussing about the topics that had been covered in Criminal Justice.
Before joining the class I had certain assumptions about some topics which were proved to be
not completely right, I will also discuss those assumptions. In furtherance to this I will
discuss the topics that I felt were relevant. In this paper I will also discuss the theories
covered in the course which appealed to me the most and which I might use in my future
academic works.
Assumptions
Before this course I assumed that an individual is punished only because of the crime they
have committed. I was unaware of the racism or its effect in the Australian criminal justice
system. But over the course of this lecture I found out that there are multiple factors that
influence an offender’s punishment in the criminal justice system. Some factors that
influence the punishment level and rate include race, gender and ethnicity of a person. One of
the major influencer of criminal justice is the gender of the offender. Initially it was an
unquestionable category in the Australian penal system. However, since the 1970s the
debates were seen to arise about the gender bias within the penal system. The debates on the
gender of the offenders were articulated conventionally by the distinction between the sex or
gender of the offender while they are punished. Although not defined exactly why, but crime
has always been related with the concept of hegemonic masculinity (Carter 2018). Through
the perspective in criminology violence has always been associated with masculinity, even
though it has been observed that violence is committed against both women and men in the
same rate. Another factor that I have learned in the topic of masculinity in crime is that the
prison is considered as the site of struggle between masculinity and the hierarchy existing in

PRISON PUNISHMENT AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE2
masculinity. The hierarchy which exists in the prison system is reinforced by physical
violence. The prisoners and guards exert dominance by way of the concept of hegemonic
masculinity (Maycock and Hunt 2018). The role of women in the field of crime and criminal
justice had been largely ignored by the penal system. However, the supporters of the feminist
theories have highly criticized the male dominance over the criminal justice system. From the
1970s the feminist thinkers have considered the women to be the center of their research in
the penal system (Sloan 2018). The role of women in crime and criminal justice system has
been explored by way of various theoretical perspectives such as radicalism, liberalism, post-
modernism and Marxism.
Topic standing out for Me
The most stood out topic for me was the over representation of the aboriginals in the prison
system in Australia. The rate over representation of Australian aboriginals in the prison is
considered as highest in the world (Rudin 2016). This is an alarming concern as it often
portrays the racial discrimination that exist in the Australian criminal justice system (Tubex,
Blagg and Tulich 2018). As per the 2012 statistics the aboriginals represented a little over
27% of the total prison population in Australian criminal justice system. Almost 2000
aboriginals approximately in every 100000 adults are imprisoned in a standard manner
(Australia.gov.au 2020). This rate has been considered as being 15 times higher than non-
indigenous people whose imprisonment rate is 129 in every 100000 adult. The juveniles in
the indigenous communities are 28 times more likely to get detained than their non-
indigenous counterparts and the rate of imprisonment among the women from the indigenous
communities is 29% times higher than their non-indigenous counterparts. A major concern
raised in the topic is the growth of imprisonment of indigenous women in the criminal justice
system in Australia at an alarming rate. another thing that student in a topic for me was