One of the more popular areas of study in recent times is public opinion research, in the context of prisons, punishment, and other penal practices. Some of the most notable Canadian literature on this topic was published during the Harper era government, which further transitioned Canada into an increasingly neoliberal society. The gap that can be identified from this literature is that the relationship between politicians and members of the public is the central focus, despite the public not being a monolith of morality, and the obvious reality that there are many social actors who have a stake in punishment and penal practices in Canada. This research analyzed punishment discourses in Canada using the transfer of Terri-Lynne McClintic in 2018 from a medium security penitentiary, to a medium-minimum security Indigenous healing lodge as its case study. Didier Fassin’s moral economy was used to frame this research, combined with a set of three analytical tools; Evelien Tonken’s citizenship regime, Arlie Russel Hochschild’s framing rules and feeling rules, and Jonathan Haidt’s moral emotion families. These concepts were used to make sense of the complex emotions and values that circulate within a moral economy. In order to examine Canada’s moral economy of punishment, 13 news media sources, 4 online comment threads, and 6 Hansard Transcripts were collected and analysed. This research demonstrates how the moral economy of punishment that citizens participate in is actively influenced by neoliberal governance and economics.

This licentiate thesis consists of three essays which all concern the ethics of imprisonment and what constitutes an ethically defensible treatment of criminal offenders. Paper 1 defends the claim that prisoners have a right to privacy. I argue that the right to privacy is important because of its connection to moral agency. For that reasons is the protection of inmates’ right to privacy also warranted by different established philosophical theories about the justification of legal punishment. I discuss the practical implications of this argument. Ultimately I argue the invasion of privacy should be minimized to the greatest extent possible without compromising other important values and rights to safety and security. In defending this position, I argue that respect for inmates’ privacy should be part of the objective of creating and upholding a secure environment to better effect in the long run. Paper 2 discusses whether the collateral harm of imprisonment to the close family members and children of prison inmates may give rise to special moral obligations towards them. Several collateral harms, including decreased psychological wellbeing, financial costs, loss of economic opportunities, and intrusion and control over their private lives, are identified. Two competing perspectives in moral philosophy are applied in order to assess whether the harms are permissible. The first is consequentialist and the second is deontological, and it is argued that both of them fails and therefore it is hard to defend the position that allowing for these harms would be morally permissible, even for the sake of the overall aims of incarceration. Instead, it is argued that these harms imply that imprisonment should only be used as a last resort. Where it is necessary, imprisonment should give rise to special moral obligations towards families of prisoners. Using the notion of residual obligation, these obligations are defended, categorized and clarified. Paper 3 evaluates electronic monitoring (EM) from an ethical perspective and discusses whether it could be a promising alternative to imprisonment as a criminal sanction for a series of criminal offenses. EM evaluated from an ethical perspective as six initial ethical challenges are addressed and discussed. It is argued that since EM is developing as a technology and a punitive means, it is urgent to discuss its ethical implications and incorporate moral values into its design and development. / <p>QC 20140519</p>

In Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, Margaret Atwood examines different forms of debt and their various interrelations. Her work invites, but does not provide, an account or philosophy of debt or its deep implication in Christian beliefs such as sin, satisfaction, and atonement. This paper aims to bring to light insights into the link between debt and some aspects of Christian belief, especially the ideas of sin and satisfaction. It draws upon another unlikely source-the Ethics and political treatises of Spinoza. Spinoza’s view at least implies that the idea that sin (understood as the voluntary actions of a free agent) creates a ‘debt’ that is ‘paid’ by punishment is a potentially dangerous ‘fiction.' Spinoza intuits that the subsumption of the idea of debt into notions of retribution, vengeance, satisfaction, or atonement, are driven by ‘superstition,' envy, and hatred, and through imitating others’ hateful ideas of oneself. The idea of ‘debt’ is an artefact of civil authority that can only assume affective, normative purchase through internalizing fear of the implicit threat of punishment inherent in law. I will seek, finally, to suggest an implicit critique in Spinoza of the imaginative subsumption of debt into the space of religio.

Thesis advisor: Susan M. Shell / In On the right to punish and grant clemency, Immanuel Kant attempts to resolve a potential paradox in social contract theory. The government is the political authority tasked with execution of the rule of law. On the one hand, the execution of the rule of law is consensual and meant to serve the individual citizen. On the other hand, the execution of the rule of law requires punishment (a nonconsensual action). A consensual condition requires a nonconsensual component. This thesis analyzes Kant’s attempt to resolve this issue through his use of a retributivist framework of punishment. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Strategies that provide access to alternative non-drug rewards are among the most effective at reducing substance use in individuals with substance use disorders, but relapse often occurs when alternative rewards are removed. Relapse induced by the loss of alternative rewards is called resurgence, and represents a challenge to otherwise effective strategies for reducing drug use. An animal model has been useful for studying resurgence, but the extant model has two limitations. First, humans usually refer to the negative consequences of drug use as the reason they stop taking drugs, but the extant model uses drug unavailability to reduce drug seeking. Second, individuals with substance use disorders display behaviors that can be summarized as uncontrolled drug seeking, but the extant model does not simulate uncontrolled drug seeking. Chapter 2 addressed the first concern by studying resurgence of previously-punished cocaine seeking. Chapter 3 addressed the second concern by using procedures shown to simulate uncontrolled drug seeking in rats to study resurgence of previously-punished cocaine seeking. Chapter 2 showed that resurgence of cocaine seeking can occur following suppression by punishment, and Chapter 3 showed that resurgence may be unaffected following procedures shown to increase relapse in other models. The models developed herein should contribute to future research into resurgence by better simulating the conditions under which individuals with substance use disorders experience relapse.

With the ideology of apartheid came oppression and punitiveness in the classroom, whereby children were disciplined through the administration of corporal punishment. The advent of democracy initiated the abolishment of corporal punishment in policy, but failed to do so in practice. In spite of the legislation prohibiting the use of corporal punishment, there were still many reports about its use due to there not being efficient alternatives to corporal punishment. This study explored the aftermath of corporal punishment, specifically focused on the perceptions about the administration of discipline from the vantage point of both learners and educators in LSEN schools. A mixed methods approach was used with learners between the ages of 16 and 19 as well as educators who had been employed for over 6 months. The findings suggest that working at a LSEN school is challenging for educators, and that a consistent school structure is lacking. They therefore adapt their methods of discipline to suit the situation, consequently perpetuating the lack of structure. It was also discovered that the learner-educator relationship facilitates discipline. LSEN schools would benefit from revisiting their management style, in order to facilitate the administration of discipline.

Master of Education - Educational Psychology / In the last decade, corporal punishment in South African schools was banned. This is in keeping with international trends of recognising of the rights of the child and the South African Constitution. Despite the legal ban, newspapers and limited research reveal that corporal punishment practices are sill occurring in schools. Government has made efforts to curb the continuing use of corporal punishment. This research explores teachers’ attitudes towards the ban of corporal punishment as well as the alternate discipline strategies teachers are using to discipline their learners. The research methods adopted were quantitative questionnaires and qualitative written responses. Results of this study suggest that teachers still view corporal punishment as having a place in education. Teachers are concerned amongst others about their personal safety and feel the administering of corporal punishment will ensure their safety. Teachers’ do report that they have found alternatives that do work, however, they still feel that the training that is provided is not able to meet their needs in the classroom situation.

The present research investigates relationships between group marginalization and hostility. In particular, I focus on the experiences of small, contained groups that are intentionally rejected by multiple out-group others. An integrative framework is proposed that attempts to explain how group processes influence (a) coping with threatened psychological needs following marginalization, (b) affective states, (c) cognitions regarding the marginalization and its source, and ultimately (d) hostile behavior. Study 1 describes a unique paradigm that effectively manipulates interpersonal rejection. Study 2 then implements this paradigm to empirically test relationships between the components of the integrative framework and examine differences among included and rejected individuals and groups. Results reveal partial support for the framework, particularly in regard to the impact of group marginalization on psychological needs and hostile affect, cognitions, and behaviors. Implications for natural groups such as terrorist cells, school cliques, and gangs are considered.

There has been controversy surrounding high-profile Canadian court cases due to stakeholders asserting that justice was not delivered in the offenders’ sentencing. Cases such as R v. Bernardo (including R. v. Homolka), R v. Pickton and R v. Li have drawn criticism from stakeholders, such as the victims’ families and the public, for perceived lax and disproportionate sentencing. I aim to make sense of and determine why this is their perception of these cases and offer a way to understand these cases’ judicial decisions. Reading these cases through the lens of philosophical punishment theories will (1) determine the underlying compatible legal theory guiding these sentences that are perceived as lax and disproportionate, (2) explain the reasoning behind these sentences, and (3) help us understand why the public and the victims’ families perceive these sentences as lax and disproportionate. In this thesis, I will argue that Canada’s criminal justice system could be understood as incorporating various punishment theories for criminal offender sentencing, such as strict retribution, utilitarianism, and paternalism as a form of rehabilitation. I will focus my research on three punishment theories that I believe have been significant in guiding the law’s application in the Canadian legal system and the modern history of Western law: Immanuel Kant’s strict retributive punishment theory, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian punishment theory, and Herbert Morris’ paternalistic punishment theory. I will argue that by identifying the underlying punishment theories, we can identify where the judicial decision is perceived as flawed by the public and the victims’ families and how to understand the effect of these theories in future judicial decisions. Based on my findings, I will sketch an alternative Kantian punishment theory that can be a theoretical lens through which we can evaluate proportionality in sentencing by providing a victim-centred approach to punishment. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / There has been controversy surrounding high-profile Canadian court cases due to the victims’ families and the public perceiving the offenders’ sentencing as lax and disproportionate to their crimes’ severity. I aim to make sense of and determine why this is their perception of these cases and offer a way to understand these cases’ judicial decisions. Reading these cases through the lens of philosophical punishment theories will (1) determine the underlying compatible legal theory guiding these sentences that are perceived as lax and disproportionate, (2) explain the reasoning behind these sentences, and (3) help us understand why the public and the victims’ families perceive these sentences as lax and disproportionate. Based on my findings, I will sketch an alternative Kantian punishment theory that can be a theoretical lens through which we can evaluate proportionality in sentencing by providing a victim-centred approach to punishment.

No description available.