Security threats Toolkit

Story: Tougher cybercrime sentences demanded

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The important aspect to be kept in mind.

The punishment is a means of social control. It is given to the offenders with the aim to check them from committing crimes again. It deters not only the actual offenders but also others from doing the same kind of acts in future. All punishments take place within a society’s ordinary legal and penal systems. In the past, several reasons have been given for the justification of punishment. One of these reasons is retributive. Another reason, historically associated with utilitarianism, is that punishment serve to deter others from offending i.e., deterrence. A third reason is partly that punishment or a practice of treatment, secures the fewer offences will be committed in the future, but not through deterrence. This could be as reformative aspect, recommending the moral regeneration of individuals as an end itself and also a means to the prevention of crime. These three reasons, each with variants and complexities, have been known as theories of the justification of punishment.

There cannot be a uniform application of law to all individuals. This is so because the criminal law sometimes has to adhere to the concept of “Individualisation”. That means individualisation of punishment and treatment. A juvenile cannot be equated with a hard core and habitual criminal. Similarly, the act of “hacking” may be committed for both the purposes of “fun only” and for obtaining “illegal gain”. The former is not as rigorously punishable as the latter because the later involve the “culpable intention” as well. Thus, unless the law of UK makes the accused “Strictly liable”, the “mens rea” aspect will keep on playing its individualistic treatment role.

The present opinion of severe punishment is pointing towards the deterrent aspect of the criminology that requires an “individualist treatment” in the hands of the courts applying the proposed law.

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