SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL OVER INCAPACITATION, DETERRENCE AND REHABILITATION EFFECTS OF THE PUNISHMENT

Abstract

The debate about the role and purposes of the criminal sanctions related to crime reduction, starts from the norm, that is, from the legally prescribed goals in the national Criminal Codes. The aims of the criminal sanctions are to prevent both, the offender and other potential offenders from committing a crime in the future. In addition to those special and general preventive effects, the preventive role of the punishments can be also exercised through the effects of incarceration and incapacitation. However, the positive impacts of such punishment are in question which opens up many dilemmas and debates among scholars. In this regard, the first part of the paper makes a brief analysis of specific theoretical perspectives and research results related to the dilemma whether deterrence and rehabilitation exert any influence over crime reduction. The second part refer to the theses of Michel Foucault, cited in his book Discipline and Punish (1975), in which he argued that punishment is a mechanism for disciplining, observing and controlling the behaviour of those who are punished. In the end, we present a short review of the current reforms of the Macedonian criminal justice policy in order to explore whether our criminal justice system succeeds in reducing (or at least) controlling crime?