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Effectiveness of Legal Sanctions

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Effectiveness of Legal Sanctions
Effectiveness of sanctions in our society today

In today’s society we impose sanctions on individuals who break laws of the community. There are many types of sanctions such as; fines, intensive correction, community based, youth training and drug treatment orders, home detention, suspended sentences and imprisonment. Imposing sanctions among offenders is highly successful in our society today as they may deter the individual/ general community from committing/re-committing a crime, to protect the society, to punish the offender, in many cases to rehabilitate the offender and to show that the crime is unacceptable.

Imprisonment is a criminal sanction which removes the offender from society by detainment in a prison. Imprisonment is effective in terms of punishment and protection of the society. Imprisonment can also be seen as a deterrence which discourages the individual/general community from re-offending / committing a crime. Many prisoners once released from prison stay on the right path and never go back to prison. This is what one hopes for when imposing the imprisonment sanction. However some prisoners, once released cannot live normal lives. In prisons there is a high amount of violence and sexual assaults, so when people are released the fear going back, therefore they cannot live normal lives. Furthermore prisoners are grouped with other prisoners and they may learn new tricks of the trade. Also it can be argued that deterrence failing in prisons. There is a high rate of individuals re-offending when released from prison. An astonishing 33% of prisoners return to prison within two years of their release. Yet even with on of the major aims of imprisonment failing, deterrence, I still believe that imprisonment is an effective sanction is it is protecting our society because the prisoner is out of the way, therefore the society is safe.

An intensive correction order is another type of sanction in our society. It is a sanction involving the

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