AC3.4 Flashcards
Police: social control
- Main agencies for detection, investigation and prevention
- Their work results in a huge volume of cases bring brought to trial
- Police have specialist departments, units and sections
Police: Specialist policing
- HM revenue and customs deals with tax evasion
- Department of work and pensions deals with benefit fraud
- Boarder force deals with immigration
- British transport police
- Civil Nuclear Constabulary to protect nuclear installations
Offences of public concern
Made progress in prioritizing some of the offences of concern, however, reports show shortcomings in the police’s performance on domestic abuse:
* arrest rate has fallen
* not using bail conditions to protect victims
* staff shortages are causing delays, putting victims at risk
* body worn video cameras aren’t always used to gather evidence
Inefficiency
Inefficiency and incompetence being evidenced in the police force
* Macpherson Report noted the failures of the police in the murder of Stephen Lawrence
Police: current trend
More crimes, fewer solved
* Offences 4.5m - 5.7m (2016-2018)
* Knife crime 24k - 40k (2014-2018)
* Firearms offences: 4.9k - 6.6k (2014-2018)
Police: dropped cases
The police dropped 2.6 times as many cases on the day they were reported in 2017 as they did in 2016
Total of 34k in a year
2014-2016: screen out a third of the 2.2m crimes reported
Police: financial circumstances
- From 2010, the government made major cuts in the polices budgets
- Causing more cases to be dropped
- Some cases will e prioritized over others
Police: accuracy of stats
- Police are becoming less effective
- Police have gotten better at recording crimes, lower dark figure, higher crime rate
- CSEW shows that crime rate has been falling for several years until 2017.
Criticisms of police performance
- Racism and bias (Stephen Lawrence)
- Media (playing up crimes for entertainment, moral panics)
CPS: role
- Independent prosecutor
- Prosecuted 80k cases in CC and 450k in MC in 2018
- 84.1% of defendant that are prosecuted are convicted
CPS: Media reports
- Dropping ‘weak’ rape cases
- Taking away weak cases rises conviction rates
- Limits victims access to justice
- Links to evidential test
CPS: budget cuts
- Suffered 25% budget cut
- Lost a third of its staff
- Can take hours to analyze one piece for evidence (600 hours on one phone)
CPS: Evidence disclosure
- Rape cases have collapsed with police’s failure to find evidence
- Liam Allen case
CPS: Failure to build case
- Failure to build an adequate case can lead to prosecution collapsing
- Damilola Taylor case
CPS: Other criticisms
- Too close to the police
- Too bureaucratic, inefficient and slow in proceedings
- Failure to communicate with relevant parties
Judiciary: bias
- 71% of judges are male, half being over 50
- Minorities are under-represented.
- Gender bias: Judge James Pickles: pedophile on probation, single mother sent to prison with 10 week old baby for 6 months
Judiciary: out of touch
- Portrayed as out of touch by the media
- Actually just remaining impartial
Judiciary: lenient
- Unduly lenient sentencing scheme allows sentences to be reviewed
- Court of Appeal can increase the sentences if needed
- There are minimal sentences which get reviewed
Prisons
- Punishing offenders and rehabilitating them
- Exercise social control within prions for offenders to follow prison rules
Prisons: limitations on social control
- Staff cuts
- Overcrowding
- Not addressing rehabilitation needs
- Drug epidemic
- Security
- Safety (incidents have increased)
- Riots and disorder
Prisons: safety
- 8.4k assaults on staff
- 22k assaults on prisoners
- 69 suicides
- 47k self harm incidents
Prisons: riots
HMP Birmingham in 2016
Probation
- Mixed results in achieving social control
- CRCs are privatized probation services
Prisons: reoffending
- 37.5% of all ex-convicts reoffend
- ex-prisoners with many previous convictions, half reoffended
- 64.1% short sentences reoffended
- 40% of juveniles
Probation: CRC failures
- Housing needs not met (54% supervised)
- Supervised by telephone only
- Meetings held in open-planned office with white noise
- Inadequate protection for victims
- Companies cutting staff to save money led to CRCs having higher caseloads.
Probation: Bias
- Conservative government favors privatization
- Believe they’re more efficient and cost-effective
Probation: eval
- Failure by CRCs
- NPS more successful
Probation: NPS
- more successful than CRCs but still has its limitations
NPS: limitations
- shortage of probation officers
- Work standards being compromised
- Lack of leadership
- Dated and shabby conditions
- No specialist service locally
Charities and pressure groups
- Charities: provide services to specific groups of people
- Pressure groups: Campaign for changes to government policies
Charities: strong commitment
- Reduce offending and re-offending
- Strong commitment to one group
- Strongly motivated to help their group
