Identify and discuss Beccaria’s three essentials of punishment.

What will be an ideal response?


Beccaria identified three necessary elements of punishment: certainty, severity, and swiftness. Students should identify certainty as the element Beccaria asserted was the most important for punishmnets to be effective. He also asserted that severity of punishment should not be too severe or not severe enough if it was to contribute to the effectiveness of punishment on criminality. In addition, the quicker the punishment following an offense, the better deterrent it is.

Criminal Justice

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Commenting on the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, Jerome Skolnick, and James Fyfe said that the attack was:

a. due to the inability of civilian review boards to control the police. b. a result of attitudes learned by officers on the job. c. unrepresentative of the Los Angeles police and unlikely to happen again. d. part of a trend of increasing police brutality over the past fifty years.

Criminal Justice

Which model evolved during the last few years to include identifying programs that examined external environment causes of crime?

a. medical b. crime control c. restorative d. reintegration

Criminal Justice

Correctional officers are usually unprepared to deal which of the following such offenders, whose population has increased since the 1960s?

A. HIV infected B. Geriatric C. Long term D. Mentally ill E. Juvenile

Criminal Justice

Which of the following is a term coined by Zimbardo to refer to a transformation of human character that causes good people to engage in evil actions?

a. Halo effect b. Lucifer effect c. Evil effect d. All of the above

Criminal Justice