Derecho

THE SEVERITY REVOLUTION


The severity revolution is how the criminal justice has changed along the years turning into a more harsher way of punishment from the 60´s till today, specially in USA but also in many other countries.

Punishment in the USA has undergone changes over the years, it has gone through different processes and has ranged from conservative to liberal perpectivesthroughout its history. Not only it has happened in USA but also in other countries, although the later have taken different paths not only because of deterrance, rehabilitation, incapacitation or retribution but also in the extent of punitive laws due to cultural, historical, political, etc, reasons.

In the german case, the punishment is less, comparing to other countries like the United States,because they have more rights than usual, they emphasize dignity, they have employment insurance and they even get paid vacation time if they work in prison.
Allthough in France it was quite similar to Germany sometimes seemed contradictory, there was a strong debate whether, incarceration itself was a human rights violation but at the same time the were given more rights and improved theincarceration, some people were getting harsher sentences because they commit worst or more crimes than the rest.
In Japan they have this unique way of extreme social control which is not in other countries and because of that, there is not a lot of crime, it´s a mix between lenience and severity. The japanese criminal justice give a minor punishment to the offenders who show remorse and very harshpunishments for the people that are unwilling to change.

I believe that while american criminal law used to focus in individuals and the way to transform them, analysing or doing therapy of each individual offender; now, the criminal justices is turning into the view of having the prisoners managed and controled in groups classified by risk (Feeley and Simon, 1992).
The society doesn´t wantthem to change, because they think that the criminals are always going to be the same, they want them to be locked because that gives them the sense of protection.


The death penalty
In the revolution that we are concerned, the most representative change that has happened is related with the death penalty in the sense that, as having been abolished in the 60’s, achieves a new stage in the 70’sthat transforms the course of criminal justice in America and that makes the difference with Europe.
In the past, capital punishment was the most important way to punish and it was a lot more diverse than now for example the electric chair, hanging or the gas chamber. Also it was an audience oriented punishment. As the first prisons started to exist the death penalty declined because of the ideaof rehabilitation and in the 70s it came back because the society started to think the worst about the criminals and the best way to control them was incapacitation. I consider the deatch penalty the big difference and most representative of the overall change because it means going back to the past not just meaning we are harsher, but also the government is using retribution. The society´s viewabout the offender is seen as a risk rather than someone that can be treated or cured.
The states are not executing as much as they used to in early years because the ritual is not that satisfying for a retribution and they are trying to do find a more painless execution like it might be lethal injection.

Rise of the victim
I think that in this new era the new role of victims plays a majorrole. This movement began to emerge more strongly in the 90’s due to pressure groups and varios events that shocked the country and produced a fear that needed to be offset by some law s like the so-called Jessica’s law, which was created following the case of a girl -with that name- who was raped and murdered by John Couey, a sex offender that had been declared convicted before but now was...