Sociological Perspectives on Punishment

Last Updated on September 16, 2026 by Karl Thompson

One way of controlling and reducing crime is to punish offenders.

A punishment is a penalty imposed on an individual or organisation when they are found guilty of a criminal offence.

The main types of punishment in England and Wales are discharges, fines, community sentences and prison, and in 2025 around three-quarters of offenders sentenced were fined.

All of these sentences can carry ancillary orders alongside them. These are requirements that the offender must do certain things, or abstain from doing certain things, often for a period of time. For example an offender may get a fine for dangerous driving and be required to attend a better driving course and a ban for 12 months.

Judges hand out punishments according to the law and sentencing guidelines. Punishments should be proportionate, with harsher penalties for more serious offences and persistent offenders, for example.

In the United Kingdom and most other developed countries it is only the state which is legally allowed to punish offenders.

Punishment is taught as part of crime control, surveillance and punishment in the crime and deviance module, examined on AQA Paper 3.

Why punish offenders?

Two main justifications exist for punishment: crime reduction and retribution. These methods link to different penal policies.

Punishment and crime reduction

One justification for punishing offenders is that it prevents future crimes. This can be done through:

Deterrence – Punishing the individual discourages them from future offending – and others through making an example of them. This relates to Durkheim’s Functionalist Theory that crime and punishment reinforce social regulation, where a prison sentence for a crime committed reaffirms the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.
Incapacitation – Removing the capacity for offenders to reoffend through long term prison sentences, cutting off hands, chemical castration or the death penalty.
Rehabilitation – The aim is to change offenders’ behaviour through education so they can earn an ‘honest living’ on release.

Punishment and Retribution

One purpose of punishment is for the offender to repay the individual or community they have wronged. This is about giving the victim and wider society a sense of justice, a sense that the criminal is paying appropriately for their crime.

This approach to punishment isn’t so much about reducing crime, it is more expressive, more emotional. It is based on our fundamental sense of morality and fairness.

At its most basic level retribution can just mean revenge: an eye for an eye, which could involve physical harm being done to convicted criminals in some cases. This form of punishment was more common in traditional societies when it was more common for victims to decide punishments.

In modern justice systems retribution takes the form of proportionate punishment – the punishment should fit the crime – and it is judges who decide what that punishment is, not victims. Paying back the community through unpaid work is better understood as reparation than as retribution.

Whether any of these aims is actually achieved by prison is the subject of does prison work?

Sociological Perspectives applied to punishment

Below we explore some of the sociological perspectives on punishment. In summary the different perspectives argue the following:

Functionalism – punishment reinforces shared values and the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.
Right realism – sees incapacitation as the main way of reducing crime (think Zero Tolerance Policing).
Left realism – prefers rehabilitation through community initiatives.
Marxism argues incapacitation in prison is selective, focussing on working class criminals. It is really about preventing revolution.

Interactionism focuses on how ineffective institutions are at rehabilitation.
Postmodernist Michel Foucault examines how states have moved from punishing the body to disciplining and reforming the individual.
David Garland builds on Foucault’s work. He argues that the state has given up on rehabilitation and turned to control and ‘mass imprisonment’.

Functionalism: Durkheim on punishment

For Durkheim, the main function of punishment is not to deter or reform the offender. In The Division of Labour in Society (1893) he argues that punishment expresses the collective conscience – society’s shared values – and reaffirms them. When an offender is publicly punished, law-abiding people are reminded where the boundaries of acceptable behaviour lie, and their sense of belonging together is strengthened.

Durkheim also argued that the type of punishment changes as societies develop. In traditional societies with strong shared values, law is repressive: punishment is harsh, emotional and aimed at making the offender suffer. In modern, more complex societies, law becomes increasingly restitutive: the aim is to restore things to how they were, for example through compensation.

Applied to prison, functionalists would point to the positive functions prison might perform in society. Prison could act as a deterrent, reinforcing social regulation, and it should also help to maintain equilibrium in society – making up for the failings of other institutions such as the family and the education system, and restoring order by incapacitating those who break the law.

Evaluation. Marxists would ask whose values punishment is really reinforcing. The biggest problem for Durkheim’s prediction is that punishment in societies such as the UK and USA has become more severe since the 1970s, not less, which is Garland’s point below. And if prison mostly resocialises people into criminal norms, it is hard to argue that it restores equilibrium.

Right Realism on punishment

Right realists see offenders as making rational choices. If the costs of crime are high enough – a strong chance of being caught and a real punishment – fewer people will choose to offend. Prison also works by incapacitation: someone who is locked up cannot burgle your house.

This was the thinking behind Michael Howard’s declaration in 1993 that ‘prison works’, a line which successive governments followed as the prison population grew. The evidence on whether it does is covered in does prison work?

Left Realism on Punishment

Left realists believe that prison alone is an ineffective method of reducing crime. They believe it needs to be combined with the practice of restorative justice, which involves the offender actively doing something to make up for the harm done as a result of their crime. This may involve measures such as reparation (paying back), mediation (offender meeting victim), reintegrative ‘shaming’ (facing offenders with the consequences of their actions) and family conferencing, which seeks to bring offender, victim and members of the community into some form of dialogue and ‘healing’ process. All this is very unlike the anonymous processing and exclusionist shaming of the courts and prison sentences.

Despite the evidence in its favour, few victims are offered it: the Crime Survey for England and Wales found that only 5.5% of victims were offered the chance to take part in 2019/20, down from 8.7% in 2012/13 (ONS 2021, reported in Marder et al., 2025). The theory and evidence are covered in full in what is restorative justice and does it work?

Marxist theories of punishment

According to the Marxist sociologist David Gordon (1973), punishment performs ideological functions. Prison benefits the capitalist system in three major ways:

The imprisonment of selected members of the lower classes neutralises opposition to the system, keeping potential revolutionaries from forming together and taking political action.

The imprisonment of many members of the underclass also sweeps out of sight the ‘worst jetsam of capitalist society’ such that we cannot see it.
By punishing individuals and making them responsible for their actions, defining these individuals as ‘social failures’, we ignore the failings of the system that lead to the conditions of inequality and poverty which lead to crime. Our attention is diverted away from the immorality and greed of the elite classes.

A fourth point can be added: the focus of the police, courts and media on working class street crime diverts attention from the crimes of the powerful.

Focusing on England and Wales, the prison population doubled between 1992 and 2012 and averaged around 87,300 in 2024, the highest level since records began in 1900 (House of Commons Library, 2026).

There is evidence to support the Marxist view that it is mainly the marginalised who end up in jail. Looking at stats on prisoners we find that…

10% of men and 30% of women have had a previous psychiatric admission to hospital before they come into prison.

48% of all prisoners are at, or below, the level expected of an 11 year old in reading, 65% in numeracy and 82% in writing.
71% of children in custody have been involved with, or in the care of, social services before entering custody.
People from minority ethnic groups made up around 27% of the prison population in June 2025, compared with 18% of the general population (House of Commons Library, 2026).

Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) add international support: more unequal countries tend to have higher rates of imprisonment.

Evaluation. Left realists criticise Marxists for absolving criminals from blame – most people in jail have committed real offences, and their victims are most likely to be working class themselves.

Note: while right realists would claim that locking more people up is a causal factor in the crime rate going down over the last two decades, this claim is challenged. This correlation may be a coincidence – other factors (such as abortion and the rise of ICT meaning more people stay indoors) may also play a role.

Interactionism: the Mortification of the Self

Interactionists argue that once a person is labelled as deviant, it is extremely difficult to remove that label. The deviant person becomes stigmatised as a criminal or deviant and is likely to be considered, and treated, as untrustworthy by others. The deviant individual is then likely to accept the label that has been attached, seeing himself or herself as deviant, and act in a way that fulfils the expectations of that label.

Even if the labelled individual does not commit any further deviant acts than the one that caused them to be labelled, getting rid of that label can be very hard and time-consuming. For example, it is usually very difficult for a convicted criminal to find employment after release from prison because of their label as ex-criminal.

Total Institutions and The Mortification of the Self

Erving Goffman (1961) argued that places such as mental asylums, concentration camps and prisons function as ‘total institutions’. These are places which are closed off to the outside world and where inmates’ lives come under the complete control of the institution.

According to Goffman, becoming an inmate in a total institution involves a process of “mortification of the self” – inmates are subjected to degrading and humiliating treatments designed to remove any trace of individual identity. For instance, personal clothing and items are confiscated, inmates are strip searched, their heads are shaved, and they are issued an ID number. The point of such treatment is to mark a clear separation between the inmates’ former selves and their institutional selves. Inmates are constantly under surveillance and they have no privacy. Minute behaviour is observed and assessed, and if necessary, sanctioned.

As a result of having every aspect of their daily lives controlled, inmates effectively lose the ability to construct their own identities and function independently. Rather than making sick people well, asylums make them more insane, and rather than rehabilitating, prisons actually make prisoners more criminal. In the extreme, people become institutionalised and unable to reintegrate into society once released.

A Postmodern Theory of Punishment: Michel Foucault

In his classic text Discipline and Punish (1975; English translation 1977), Michel Foucault points out that punishment has changed from being very direct, immediate and physical – involving torture and sometimes death – to being more focused on incarceration and rehabilitation. However, although punishment today may be less severe than in the past, the state has expanded its control over its citizens in more subtle ways and ‘invades’ our private lives much more than it ever used to. This is especially true when you look at the way criminals are treated today. While prisoners are unlikely to be subjected to torture or death they are subjected to an ever increasing array of what Foucault calls ‘technologies of surveillance’. Prisoners are kept under surveillance programmes and are expected to reform their behaviour.

Prison is the most obvious example of this – with prisoners under (potential) constant surveillance, while those who avoid prison might have to subject themselves to being tagged, visit probation officers, or turn up to ‘rehabilitation classes’ (such as drug counselling or anger management) all of which involve surveillance and behavioural modification.

Foucault sees the growth of prison as a means of punishment as reflecting the move from sovereign power to disciplinary power. Sovereign power involves direct physical coercion to get people to obey the laws, and under this system punishments are carried out on people’s physical bodies – punishment is harsh – it is a spectacle.

Today, however, political and economic systems are maintained through ‘disciplinary power’ – power is exercised through surveillance – people change their behaviour because they know they are being watched. Prison seems more humane than physical punishment but in reality it is much more invasive as a means of social control.

The full account of sovereign and disciplinary power, the panopticon and self-surveillance is in Foucault: surveillance and crime control. What follows is the part of Foucault’s argument that is specifically about punishment.

Punishing the soul, not the body

For Foucault, the target of punishment shifts from the offender’s body to what he calls the ‘soul’ – their mind, character and habits. Modern punishment is not just about what the offender did, but about who they are. A whole set of experts – psychiatrists, probation officers, social workers – now assess the offender’s character and risk, and the aim of the prison is to change them.

The prison does this by producing what Foucault calls docile bodies: timetables, routines, inspections and records train prisoners into obedience.

Why prison ‘fails’ – and why that is useful

Foucault notes that prison has never been very good at reforming offenders; high reoffending has been a criticism of prison almost since it was invented. His explanation is that this failure is useful. Prison produces a known, recorded group of ‘delinquents’ who can be watched and managed, and it justifies extending surveillance beyond the prison walls. Disciplinary techniques first developed in prisons spread through schools, factories, hospitals and the army, creating what Foucault calls a carceral society.

Evaluation. Garland (1990) argues that Foucault reduces punishment to power and control, and ignores its moral and emotional side – the public’s desire to see wrongdoers punished, which Durkheim emphasised. Foucault’s account is also about France and a particular historical period, and critics question how well it generalises.

David Garland – The Punitive State and The Culture of Control

David Garland argues that there has been a relatively recent shift in attitudes towards punishment, set out in The Culture of Control (2001).

He argues that for much of the twentieth century – from around the 1890s to the 1970s – the state practised ‘penal welfarism’, in which the criminal justice system did not just try to catch and punish offenders, but also tried to rehabilitate them, so that they could be reintegrated into society.

However, in late modern society individual freedoms have increased, while social bonds have weakened, life is more uncertain and less predictable, and (despite the fact that crime has been falling) the public are more worried about crime than ever.

As a result, the state has now abandoned ‘penal welfarism’. It is much less concerned with rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners; its primary concern is now convincing the public that it is taking a tough approach on crime and reassuring communities that something is being done about crime.

Garland argues that we have now moved into a new era in which a ‘punitive state’ enforces a ‘culture of control’. There are three main ways in which the state now seeks to control crime and punish offenders:

The state increasingly identifies potential groups who are at risk of offending at a young age and takes early interventions. This links to the actuarialism (risk management) strategy.
The state locks increasing numbers of people up. Garland (2001) calls this ‘mass imprisonment’, a term usually associated with the USA.

Politicians increasingly use the issue of crime control, and ‘being tough on crime’, as a means to win elections – in effect, crime control has become a political tool which politicians use to win power, rather than being about reducing crime.

The era of mass incarceration? June 2023 stats.

Evaluations of Garland

This is an important contribution in that it draws our attention towards the political nature of crime control – and it helps to explain the rising prison population even though crime has been decreasing for decades.

A related idea is transcarceration (Lowman, Menzies and Palys, 1987): certain people move between various state institutions – from care, to prison, to mental hospital – throughout their whole lives, effectively being under constant surveillance by the state.

This is a rather cynical theory – Garland seems to be saying that politicians today simply use their ‘tough on crime’ approach to get votes and maintain power, rather than trying to do anything which will really address the underlying causes of crime. That underestimates the politicians who have tried to reduce prison numbers: the Sentencing Act 2026, for example, creates a presumption that prison sentences of 12 months or less will be suspended.

Michel Foucault would probably argue that this theory is too simplistic in terms of its understanding of political power – it diverts our attention away from other agencies of social control in preventing/constructing deviance through surveillance.

Others link the growth of imprisonment more directly to neoliberalism: Wacquant (2009) argues that as welfare was cut back, prison became the way the state managed the poor.

✓ Strengths of sociological perspectives on punishment	✗ Limitations
Durkheim explains why the public demands punishment even when it does not reduce crime.	Durkheim predicted punishment would become less repressive; since the 1970s it has become harsher in the UK and USA.
Marxism is supported by the over-representation of poor and marginalised groups in prison.	Left realists argue Marxists ignore the real harm offenders cause, mostly to working class victims.
Goffman explains why prison can make reoffending more likely rather than less.	Goffman’s total institution is an extreme type; many prisons now run education and resettlement programmes.
Foucault explains why prison survives despite ‘failing’ on reoffending.	Garland argues Foucault ignores the moral and emotional side of punishment.
Garland explains why prison numbers rose while crime fell.	Garland may underestimate recent attempts to cut prison numbers, such as the Sentencing Act 2026.

Essay plan: evaluate sociological perspectives on prison as a form of punishment

This is a plan for a 30-mark essay in the crime and deviance section of Paper 3. Each numbered point is a paragraph.

1. Functionalists would point to the positive functions prison might perform in society. Prison could act as a deterrent, reinforcing social regulation, and it should also work to maintain equilibrium and balance in society – making up for the failings of other institutions such as the family and the education system, and restoring order through incapacitating those who break the law.

Ultimately, however, one might criticise the effectiveness of prison. Around two-thirds (67.1%) of adults released from prison sentences of less than 12 months are proven to reoffend within a year (Ministry of Justice, 2026), so prison isn’t really effective in restoring equilibrium. What prison does much of the time is resocialise people into criminal norms; in the extreme, people become institutionalised and unable to reintegrate into society once released (Goffman).

2. Marxists argue that by relying on prison, we ignore the failings of the system that lead to the conditions of inequality and poverty which lead to crime. Use Gordon’s three functions above, plus the fourth point about diverting attention from the crimes of the powerful. Supporting evidence for the Marxist view comes from the fact that there are higher rates of imprisonment in more unequal countries (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009).

Left realists criticise Marxists for absolving criminals from blame – people in jail mostly deserve to be there and their victims are most likely to be working class themselves.

3. Michel Foucault sees the growth of prison as a means of punishment as reflecting the move from sovereign power to disciplinary power. In traditional societies power was exercised on people’s physical bodies – punishment was harsh, it was a spectacle. Today power is exercised through surveillance: the state no longer beats criminals, it subjects them to increased surveillance, and the theory is that people change their behaviour because they know they are being monitored constantly. Prison seems more humane than physical punishment but in reality it is much more invasive as a means of social control.

One criticism of Foucault is that he fails to recognise that many prisoners do not change their behaviour even though they are being watched! (Although, as above, Foucault would say that this failure is part of the point.)

4. The growth of imprisonment and right realism. The prison population of England and Wales roughly doubled between 1992 and 2012 and averaged around 87,300 in 2024, the highest level since 1900. England and Wales imprisons 145 people per 100,000 of the population, more than France (111) or Germany (67) (House of Commons Library, 2026, using World Prison Brief figures).

This increase has gone hand in hand with the implementation of right realist policies that emphasise rational choice theory as the cause of crime and zero tolerance as the solution to crime. The state claims that tougher penalties are one of the major causes of declining crime rates.

5. Garland points out that crime has fallen in many countries over recent decades, including in those that do not imprison as many people as the UK. He argues that in the USA we now live in an era of mass imprisonment, and many of those imprisoned become caught in a cycle of transcarceration – moving between different agencies of state control and never fully reintegrating into society.

Garland explains the punitive turn through the insecurities of late modern society, which make it easier for the state to justify harsher penalties. Wacquant (2009) links it more directly to neoliberalism: as welfare was cut, prison became the way the state managed the poor.

6. Critics of the ‘overuse of prison’ argue that we should employ alternatives – curfews, community service and treatment orders – because these have a lower reoffending rate, mainly because they do not remove an offender from society. Ministry of Justice research comparing similar offenders found that short prison sentences led to higher reoffending than community orders or suspended sentences (Eaton and Mews, 2019). See does prison work? for the detail.

It is also worth noting that the characteristics of the prison population are very different to the characteristics of the population as a whole. People who are over-represented include ethnic minority groups, men, the underclass and the young – although the prison population is ageing, with 18% of prisoners aged 50 or over in 2025. It is also worth noting that many female prisoners are likely to have suffered physical and emotional abuse, and many claim they are in jail because of pressure to commit criminal acts coming from their male partners.

7. To conclude, given the high reoffending rate – and thus the failure of prison to rehabilitate offenders – critical perspectives such as Garland’s remind us not to fall into the simplistic analysis of functionalism and right realism, which see prison as an effective means of social control.

The critical approaches of Marxism, Foucault and Garland are probably the most useful here, as they remind us that the rise of neoliberalism since the 1970s and right realist policy since the 1990s were followed by rising prison populations in neoliberal countries such as the UK and the USA – even though crime was falling.

How punishment comes up in AQA Paper 3

Punishment belongs to the crime control, surveillance and punishment part of the crime and deviance section of Paper 3.

In the short-answer questions, you might be asked to outline functions or aims of punishment. The four aims above – deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and retribution – are the safest starting point, each with a brief example.

In a 30-mark essay, use the plan above. The marks for evaluation come from setting the perspectives against each other and against the evidence on prison, not from listing them.

In the 10-mark question with an item, an item about prison or sentencing will usually point you towards two perspectives; remember that both points must come from the item. See the exams and past papers page for how the 10-mark questions work.

A level sociology revision bundle for sale

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Crime and Deviance Revision Bundle – which contains the following:

12 exam practice questions including short answer, 10 mark and essay question exemplars.

32 pages of revision notes covering the entire A-level sociology crime and deviance specification.
Seven colour mind maps covering sociological perspectives on crime and deviance.

Written specifically for the AQA sociology A-level specification.

Sources and further reading

Durkheim, E. (1893) The Division of Labour in Society.
Eaton, G. and Mews, A. (2019) The impact of short custodial sentences, community orders and suspended sentence orders on reoffending. Ministry of Justice. PDF

Foucault, M. (1975; English translation 1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan.
Garland, D. (1990) Punishment and Modern Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Garland, D. (2001) The Culture of Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Garland, D. (ed.) (2001) Mass Imprisonment: Social Causes and Consequences. London: Sage.
Goffman, E. (1961) Asylums.
Gordon, D. (1973) ‘Capitalism, class and crime in America’.
House of Commons Library (2026) Prison population statistics, CBP04334. PDF
Lowman, J., Menzies, R. and Palys, T. (eds) (1987) Transcarceration: Essays in the Sociology of Social Control.

Wacquant, L. (2009) Punishing the Poor. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit Level. London: Allen Lane.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the Crime and Deviance option for A-level sociology, examined on AQA Paper 3 (7192/3).

For what the sentences themselves are, see how are criminals punished in England and Wales? For the evidence on whether prison achieves its aims, see does prison work? For the main alternative, see restorative justice.

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