Introduction to Corrections

CORRECTION
- It is a branch of the Criminal Justice System concerned with the custody, supervision, and
rehabilitation of criminal offenders. It is that field of criminal justice administration that utilizes
the body of knowledge and practices of the government and the society,  in general, involving
the process of handling individuals who have been convicted of offenses for purposes of crime
management and administration as well as the rehabilitation and reformation of criminals.
-It is a generic term that includes all the government agencies, facilities, programs, procedures,
personnel, and techniques concerned with the investigation, intake, custody, confinement,
supervision or treatment of alleged offenders.
Correction as a Process
-Refers to the reorientation of the criminal offender to prevent him or her from repeating his
deviant or delinquent actions without the necessity of taking punitive actions but rather the
introduction of individual measures of reformation.
CORRECTIONAL ADMINISTRATION
- it refers to the study and practice of a systematic management of jails or prisons and other
institutions concerned with the custody, treatment, and rehabilitation of criminal offenders.
PENAL MANAGEMENT
- refers to the manner or practice of managing or controlling phases of confinement as in jails
or prisons.
PENOLOGY
- Study of punishment for a crime or criminal offenders. It includes the study of control and
prevention of crime through the punishment of criminal offenders.
-The term is derived from the Latin word “POENA” which means pain or suffering. Penology is
otherwise known as Penal science. It is actually a division of criminology that deals with prison
management and the treatment of offenders and concerned itself with the philosophy and
practice of the society in its effort to repress criminal activities.
Principal Aims of Penology:
1. To bring light to the ethical barriers of punishment, along with the motives and purposes of
society inflicting it.
2. To make a comparative study of penal laws and procedures through history between nations.
3. To evaluate the social consequences of the policies enforced at a given time.
Primary Schools on Penology
1. Classical School – the doctrine of psychological hedonism or freewill.
The Classical School of Criminology/Penology was proposed by the scholars, Cesare de
Beccaria/ Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. The main theory involved in this school is that,
"criminals are rational beings, therefore, make rational choices and choose to do criminal acts
because of maximum pleasure and minimum pain".
2. Neo-Classical School – children and lunatics must be free from punishment.
3. Positivist/Italian School – denied individual responsibility and reflected on positive
reactions to crime and criminality
The Positivist School of Criminology became popular during the Age of Reason or better known
as Enlightenment. This school rejects the thought that people are rational beings, that they
choose to do crimes, but instead proposes that crime is a result of external factors.
Punishment
PUNISHMENT is the redress that the state takes against an offending member of society that
usually involves pain and suffering. It is also the penalty imposed on an offender for a crime or
wrongdoing.
ANCIENT FORMS OF PUNISHMENT
1. DEATH PENALTY – affected by burning, stoning, crucifixion, electrocution, gas chamber,
beheading, and hanging, breaking at the wheels, pillory and other forms of medieval
executions.
2. PHYSICAL TORTURE – affected by maiming, mutilation, whipping and other inhumane or
barbaric forms of inflicting pain.
3. SOCIAL DEGRADATION – putting the offender into shame or humiliation.
4. BANISHMENT OR EXILE – the sending or putting away of an offender which was carried
out either by prohibition against coming into a specified territory such as an island to where the
offender has been removed.
5. Other similar forms of punishment like transportation and slavery.
METHOD USED IN PUNISHMENT
1. Gag
 - to put something (such as a piece of cloth) into or over a person's mouth in order to prevent
that person from speaking, calling for help, etc.
- used to shame and constrain “scold” who openly, habitually and abusively found fault, unjust,
criticized, or lied about others.
2. Bridle
 - it is an iron cage that fit over the head and had a front plate that was sharpened or covered
with spikes designed to fit into the mouth of the offender making movement of the tongue very
painful.
3. Ducking Stool
 – it has been used as a punishment as early as the 11th century. Those sentenced to be
“ducked” were placed on a chair and suspended over a body of water and plunged into it.
4. Stocks
 - used as outside jails to punish the idle prior to the construction of houses of correction in
England.
5. Pillories
 - dates back to the pre-Christian era. In England, they were commonly employed during the
Tudor period, but their peak use was during the 17th century.
6. Branding
 - for offenders to be identified and stigmatized. It was employed for making offenders, slaves
and prisoners of war recognizable.
7. Whipping/Flogging/Scourging
 - it is one of the oldest, most widely means of corporal punishment, dating back to ancient
Egyptian times.
8. Russian Knot
  - the most formidable punisher ever devised This instrument was a wooden-handled whip that
typically consisted of several rawhide thongs twisted together, terminating in a single strand
that projected about 18 inches beyond the body of the knot. The strands sometimes had hooks
or rings attached to the ends.
 
METHODS OF INFLICTING THE DEATH PENALTY
1. BEHEADING
 - is a method of capital punishment whereby a criminal’s head is sliced apart from the body,
utilizing an axe or sword.
2. BLOOD ATONEMENT
 - A Religious belief utilized in capital punishment in which a convict’s blood must be shed
during execution to “atone” before Christ for his sins.
3. BOILING TO DEATH
 - A Little-used method of capital punishment, utilized mainly to stun the victims before they
were hanged on the gallows. The first use of this technique may have come soon after 1531,
when it was made legal by King Henry VIII of England.
4. BREAKING ON THE WHEEL
 – A method of capital punishment marked by torzurous and agony-filled suffering on a wooden
wheel while the condemned is stretched and has his or her limbs broken (by the executioner)
with a metal rod or pole.
5. BURNING AT THE STAKE
 - A method of capital punishment in which the condemned is tied to a wooden stake,
surrounded by flammable material (usually faggots or sticks of wood) assembled into a pyre,
which is then lit a fire and allowed to burn until the victim is consumed.      
6. CRUCIFIXION
 - Utilized in biblical times as a mode of torture and capital punishment, the act of crucifixion
(“to crucify”) started mainly with the Roman system of justice.  Rome used it from the
beginning of the republic until the fourth century, though Roman citizens were exempt from the
punishment by law. 
7. DRAWING AND QUARTERING
 - A method of punishment, perhaps one of the most brutal, in which a prisoner was hanged
until near death, torn down from the gallows, had his four limbs tied to two or four hours, and
was then pulled apart as the horses ran off in different directions.  Another part of the ritual
was disembowelment.  After he was hanged, while still alive, the culprit was dragged from the
gallows, laid down on the ground, and his entrails were ripped from his body. Sometimes his
genitals were also chopped off.  Still alive after all this, the culprit was shown his entrails,
before they were thrown on a fire and burned. 
8. ELECTRIC CHAIR
 - A method of execution adopted in the United States in the last decade of the nineteenth
century and used strictly in that nation.  
9. GARROTE
 - A method of execution utilized almost exclusively in Austria as well as Spain before the latter
nation abolished capital punishment in 1996.  Many of the victims of the Spanish Inquisition
suffered either the garrote or burning at the stake. 
10. GAS CHAMBER
 - it is currently being phased out as “cruel and inhuman punishment.”  After World War I,
many people, disgusted with the brutality of electrocutions and hanging, sought a better, more
efficient method of executing prisoners
11. GIBBET - A method of displaying a condemned murderer’s body after execution, utilizing a
steel cage usually hung near the place of execution.  Halifax Gibbet. A method of execution,
called the English guillotine; it operated on the same principle as the French model, with a
larger base and pin instead of pulley to release the large blade. 
12. HANGING
 - A method of execution in which the condemned is hanged by the neck with a rope or other
cord from a gallows or, in the case of lynching, from a tree of lamppost.  Hanging has always
been considered a lowly form of punishment, a death reserved for cowards.
13. LETHAL INJECTION                                                                        
 - After a prisoner is strapped down in a gurney, he is wheeled into the death chamber, in some
cases the compartment where the electric chair or the gas chamber used to be situated.  After
the execution order is read, an intravenous needle is inserted into a vein, preferably in the arm,
but if necessary- as often is the case with former drug users-in other veins.  The tube
connected to the needle is hooked up to a small machine containing three vials of solution. 
These chemicals are sodium pentothal (the trade name for thiopental), a barbiturate that
renders the condemned unconscious; pancuronium bromide (brand name: Pavulon), which
induces neuro-muscular paralysis; and potassium chloride (chemical name: KCI), which,
in the prescribed dose, that stops the heart muscle. To ease the injection of the chemicals, a
solution of sodium chloride, ordinary saline solution, is introduced.
14. MAZZATELLO
- a method of capital punishment, utilized to a small degree in Italy during the era of the Papal
States, which lasted from 756 to 1870 C.E. Crime historian Jay Robert Nash reports that the
name of the process comes from the Italian word for the mallet, or poleax, used in the
punishment. 
15. STONING TO DEATH
- a method of capital punishment, where a victim was chosen trapped in a corner, and pelted
with heavy rocks and stones until his or her skull was crushed.  This punishment was specified
in the Mosaic Code, the laws of the Jews promulgated in the name of Moses.
Early Forms of Prison Discipline
EARLY FORMS OF PRISON DISCIPLINE
1. Hard Labor – productive works
2. Deprivation – deprivation of everything except the essentials of existence.
3. Monotony – giving the same food that is “off” diet, or requiring the prisoners to perform
drab or boring daily routine.
4. Uniformity – “we treat the prisoner alike”, “the fault of one is the fault off all”.
5. Mass Movement – mass giving in cellblocks, mass eating, mass recreation, mass bathing.
6. Degradation – uttering insulting words or prisoners to degrade or break the confidence of
prisoners.
7. Corporal Punishment – imposing brutal punishment or employing physical force to
intimidate a delinquent inmate.
8. Isolation or Solitary Confinement – non-communication, limited news, “the lone wolf”.
Contemporary Forms of Punishment
1. IMPRISONMENT
 – putting the offender in prison for the purpose of protecting the public against criminal
activities and at the same time rehabilitating the prisoners by requiring them to undergo
institutional treatment programs.
2. PAROLE
 – a conditional release of a prisoner after serving part of his/her sentence in prison for the
purpose of gradually re-introducing him/her to free life under the guidance and supervision of a
parole officer.
3. PROBATION
 – a disposition whereby a defendant after conviction of an offence, the penalty of which does
not exceed six years imprisonment, is released subject to the conditions imposed by the
releasing court and under the supervision of a probation officer.
4. FINE
 – an amount given as compensation for a criminal act.
5. DESTIERRO
 – the penalty of banishing a person from the place where he committed a crime, prohibiting
him to get near or enter the 25-kilometer perimeter.
Justification of Punishment
The following are some justifications of punishment:
1. RETRIBUTION
 –  the punishment should be provided by the state whose sanction is violated, to afford the
society of the individual the opportunity of imposing upon the offender suitable punishment as
might be enforced. Offenders should be punished because they deserved it.
- (Just Deserts) defined as “deserved punishment for evil done,” is a relatively primitive
reaction. It is not difficult to understand why this justification for the use of punishment (just
deserts) has received a high level of public support throughout history.
Two subscales were designed to capture retribution as revenge: suffering and getting
even. Retribution as just deserts, on the other hand, has been defined as a desire to restore
justice by allowing the offender to compensate to society proportionally to the harm he has
done.
Some of the religious and philosophical justification used to support retribution
follows:
1. It fulfils a religious mission through retaliation. There are biblical sanctions for
the punishment of transgressors, so society is doing God’s work by carrying out
His punishment.
2. It removes the tension in society caused by the criminal act, creating harmony through
retaliation.
3. It washes the guilt of the criminal away through suffering and express society’s disapproval
of the behaviour.
4.  It makes victims whole again by making the offender suffer as they did.
·         Distinction between Just Deserts and Retribution
Just Deserts can be viewed as the modern reformulation of the retributive views. Its primary
emphasis is on what offender’s fairly merit for their crimes. Its central organizing principle is
proportionality–the severity of the penalty should be proportional to the gravity of the offense.
 
2. EXPIATION OR ATONEMENT
 – it is punishment in the form of group vengeance where the purpose is to appease the
offended public or group.
 blotting out or removal of sin; hence, the renewal of communion with God. The supreme act
of expiation is Christ's death on the cross, the meaning of which is illuminated by a number
of Old Testament themes.
An example of atonement is when a man has been unfaithful to his wife, and after
confessing he sincerely apologizes, cuts all ties with his lover, enters couples counseling, and
does whatever he can to make it up to his wife and regain her trus
3. DETERRENCE
 – punishment gives lesson to the offender by showing to others what would happen to them if
they violate the law. Punishment is imposed to warn potential offenders that they can not
afford to do what the offender has done.
the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the
consequences.
may include fines, prison sentences, or both, and the severity of the punishment typically
determines the effectiveness of the deterrence
Types of Deterrence
a. Specific Deterrence - occurs when offenders do not recidivate because they do not want
to face further sanctions.
b. General Deterrence - occurs when other potential offenders do not engage in criminal
activity because they want to avoid penalties that others have received.
4. INCAPACITATION AND PROTECTION
– the public will be protected if the offender has been held in conditions where he cannot harm
others especially the public. Punishment is effected by placing offenders in prison so that
society will be ensured from further criminal depredations of criminals.
 Incapacitation reduces crime by literally preventing someone from committing crime in
society through direct control during the incarceration experience—or, more bluntly, “[a] thug in
prison can't mug your sister.”2 This directness is the main attraction of incapacitation.
Incapacitation strategies have taken the three approaches;
a. Collective incapacitation – all individuals convicted of a certain offense (e.g., robbery)
receive the same sentence (e.g., 5 years).
b. Selective incapacitation – base sentences on predictions that certain offenders will
commit serious offenses at higher rates than others convicted of the same types of crimes.
These predictions are based primarily on the offender’s prior record, age, and juvenile and adult
drug use.
c. Criminal career incapacitation – involves the identification of classes of criminals who
typically have active high rates of crime.
5. REFORMATION OR REHABILITATION
 – it is the establishment of the usefulness and responsibility of the offender. Society’s interest
can be better served by helping the prisoner to law abiding citizen and productive upon his
return to the community by requiring him to undergo intensive programs of rehabilitation in
prison.
·         housing.
·         employment.
·         education and training.
·         independent living skills.
·         mental health.
·         alcohol and other drugs.
·         family and community connectedness.
Penalty
What is PENALTY?                         
PENALTY is defined as the suffering inflicted by the state against an offending member for the
transgression of law.
JURIDICAL CONDITIONS OF PENALTY
1. Productive of suffering – without however affecting the integrity of the human
personality.
2. Commensurate with the offense – different crimes must be punished with different
penalties (Art. 25, RPC).
3. Personal – the guilty one must be the one to be punished, no proxy.
4. Legal – the consequence must be in accordance with the law.
5. Equal – equal for all persons.
6. Certain – no one must escape its effects.
7. Correctional – changes the attitude of offenders and become law-abiding citizens.
 
PENALTIES AS TO GRAVITY
1. Death Penalty – Capital punishment
2. Reclusion Perpetua – life imprisonment, a term of 20-40 yrs imprisonment
3. Reclusion Temporal – 12 yrs and 1 day to 20 years imprisonment
4. Prison Mayor – 6yrs and 1 day to 12 years
5. Prison Correctional – 6 months and 1 day to 6 years
6. Arresto Mayor – 1 month and 1 day to 6 months
7. Arresto Menor – 1 day to 30 days
8. Bond to Keep the Peace – discretionary on the part of the court.
END OF PRELIM