Crime and Deviance - Crime Prevention and Control

Question 1

What is surveillance?

Answer 1

How are we controlled -
- ISAs and RSAs - repressive state apparatus, ideological state apparatus
- Societal expectations and our ideologies / norms and values
- Police / state
- Bonds of attachment
- Religion, patriarchy, capitalism
- Heidensohn - control theory

Surveillance - monitoring, observing and gathering information with a view to regulate, manage or correct behaviour for the purpose of crime control and punishment
- CCTV - 5 million cameras in public spaces
- Body cam/dash cam
- Tagging
- GPS tracking
- Officials watching you
- ANPR
- Biometric scans

Question 2

Foucault and surveillance

Answer 2

Foucault: Postmodernist
- Claimed that professionals had entered into the domestic sphere and acted as surveillance, reporting on families and gathering data etc (mainly spoke about surveillance in the family)
- Surveillance is a form of social control and increases the power of the state

Liquid Surveillance:
- Bauman - All the ways you are monitored and tracked, which happen all around you all the time; data is flowing and information seeping into every part of your life

What is surveillance for?
- Keeping us safe - deterrent
- Protection of our public spaces
- Catching criminals after a crime has been committed
- To track and monitor people’s routines, habits, behaviours etc - police

Question 3

Are we a surveillance society?

Answer 3

Lyon - yes; our lives are transparent, and there is a lack of privacy
- But, we are also more accepting of this and take it as expected that government agencies will hold information about us
- We experience external (covert or overt) surveillance = CCTV cameras in public places as well as other means e.g. tracking websites visited or card payments made
- Also, we have internalised surveillance = we monitor ourselves (online presence) - young people have known nothing else

Question 4

Types of surveillance

Answer 4

1) Surveillant assemblages - masses of data is assembled to create a data double or a digital self - you can be known even if you have never been met in person
2) Sous surveillance - the public can watch and report on the powerful (e.g. filming police interactions with the public via mobile phones)
3) Synoptic surveillance - Matheison says we watch each other, or the media tracking and monitoring of our politicians
4) Self surveillance - we monitor and control our own behaviour for fear of being judged by others - social desirability

Question 5

Foucault - Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1979)

Answer 5

• Sovereign power - before 19th century monarchy had absolute power and it was brutal - this power is enforced through fear (public executions, beheadings) - an individual makes decisions
• Disciplinary power - from the 19th century, authorities take over punishment and it was more humane - this power is enforced through surveillance - institutions make decisions
• This has created a carceral culture, where other social institutions can use disciplinary power e.g. schools, social care and health care, as they survey and monitor society (society is a prison - constantly watched)
• Actuarial justice - Feely and Simon; surveillance is based on profiles generated by the mass data we have (not randomly stopped for searches at airports); technology is fundamental to our ability to do this, and it is aimed at preventing offending

Question 6

Foucault’s panopticon

Answer 6

• ‘All seeing’ - circular prison with cells on the outside and a watchtower containing prison officers, and they are able to see every cell at all times
• It is the idea that we self regulate because we believe we are being watched at all times
• Foucault says that this is how power operates as a whole - the thought of being caught and watched is powerful enough to make us comply

Criticisms -
- Foucault overemphasised the power of surveillance
- CCTV does not stop crime, but just leads to displacement
- Goffman - inmates in asylums resist control
- Surveillance is about preventing crime rather than rehabilitation
Surveillance is open to labelling and SFP - you survey who you suspect
- Newburn and Heyman - Kilburn Experiment; CCTV can protect civil liberties as well as erode them - 18 months of CCTV in custody suite in Kilburn, used by defence lawyers as well as prosecution and protects inmates from police brutality
- People now survey authorities (filming stop and search) and each other (dash cams) and now surveillance works together with other technology (e.g. CCTV with facial recognition) - expensive, too much data to process

Question 7

Criticisms of surveillance

Answer 7

• Displacement of crime to areas that are not being surveyed
• It cannot be done in homes, which leads to lots of domestic crime going unnoticed
• Focused on working class / street crime, and ignores corporate crime

Question 8

The structure and function of the criminal justice system

Answer 8

• Police
• Crown Prosecution Service
• Courts
• Prison
• Probation
• Home office
• MOJ (Ministry of Justice)

Functions:
To prevent future crime and to punish crime which has already happened
- Aims:
1) Deterrence - crime still happens, prison numbers rising
2) Protection - partially effective
3) Retribution
4) Rehabilitation
- It is not always effective, and they are not always fair (populated by privileged, white men)
- Huge employer

Question 9

How has punishment changed over time - Garland

Answer 9

• Punishment is a very politicised issue
• Penal welfarism has moved to mass incarceration and now transcarceration - prison numbers are worsening and there is no way to get them out; no plan to limit recidivism
• USA - 3% of adult population in prison (37% black Americans - 13% of total population) 3x higher than European imprisonment rates; 30-40% of prison population is unemployed
• Next steps; Diversion - early intervention diverts people away from crime (community initiatives, welfare, community service, probation not prison (Left Realism)) - only put in the people that need to be put in
• Now - culture of control has been established - care more about punishment and prevention than rehabilitation of prisoners

Question 10

What does punishment do?

Answer 10

Reduction - reducing future crime
- Deterrent - short, sharp shock
- Rehabilitation - education and training
- Incapacitation (chemical castration, execution or prison)

Retribution - pay back for past crime
- Revenge
- Expresses societies outrage
- Incapacitation (chemical castration, execution or prison)

Question 11

Theoretical perspectives on punishment

Answer 11

• Functionalism - punishments are needed for boundary maintenance, reaffirm social solidarity and assert collective conscience
• Marxism - ruling class ideology, RSA, enables rich to maintain control over poor, can prevent revolution, and diverts our attention from structural inequality
• Rusche and Kirchheimer - Capitalism uses punishment depending on what type of economy (don’t execute if workers are needed, can’t fine if there is no money, under capitalism = prison is main punishment as you can recall workers when they are needed) and once the aristocracy could punish the poor, factory owners can punish workers but now there is a bureaucratic, impersonal system which does this
• Left and Right realism - left realism values intervention and prevention, and right realism prefers a stronger stance on prison and deterrent

Question 12

Prison evolution - role

Answer 12

• Pre 18th century - prison was used to hold people before they were punished
• Enlightenment - prison is punishment per se (use reformation - hard labour / religious instruction)
• Modern era - prison is punishment but no inhumane treatment, prisoners are treated well, and rehabilitation is the focus
• However; recidivism rates are very high; prison is not always effective
• New Labour - populist punitiveness - but, overcrowding and cost
• UK - 147/100,000 in prison, highest rate in Western Europe and 95% of population is male

Question 13

Situational Crime Prevention

Answer 13

• Target hardening and intervention at the point where crime occurs
  CCTV, barriers, locks, gates, bollards, anti-climb paint, anti-homeless architecture, security guards
• Felson - NYC Port Authority Bus Terminal; increased CCTV and lighting and found crime lessened
• Right realism - pre-emptive approach to stop crime before it happens, results in target hardening which is where it is made harder for a crime to be committed in that place and increases the chance of getting caught
• More CCTV, neighbourhood watch, more police on streets, quicker punishments
  Issues - discrimination and displacement, and wealthier groups are more able to make use of situational crime prevention
• Pease - bars, bolts and barriers - reducing opportunities for crime, reducing rewards and increasing risk - techniques such as street lighting increases have been shown to reduce crime

Evaluation -
- Not useful for white collar crime or domestic violence
- Garland - it ignores the causes of crime and takes no account for inequalities and relative deprivation in society
- Little evidence to prove crime is based on rational choice - what about emotional crimes or subcultural elements of risk taking according to Katz and Lyon
- Crawford and Evans - fortress society is created in which there is a reduction in civil liberties and harms the most vulnerable
- Displacement of crime to another area according to Hakim and Renert (Spatial, Temporal (time), Tactical (method), Target-based (different person) and functional (diff crime)
- However, it has led to a reduction of car crime and it is effective

Question 14

Environmental Crime Prevention

Answer 14

• Making an area less attractive for criminals and clamping down on it quickly
• Right Realism - Wilson and Kelling; broken windows policy; getting ride of the low level disorder leads to zero tolerance towards social disorder and more police on the street, policing policy to deal with crime no matter how petty to prevent bigger crimes
  NYC clean program - clean up all graffiti and vandalism immediately and this becomes an environmental improvement strategy - remove the opportunity
• However, this is expensive and ASBO behaviour is just simply repeated once removed and the focus on little crimes leads to ignorance of high level crime

Evaluation -
- Investment is more effective than zero tolerance
- Unaffordable to employ enough police to do this (short term fix)
- Different governments and reduction to budgets affects this approach

Question 15

Social and Community crime prevention

Answer 15

• Intervening with individuals at risk of becoming criminals and offering alternatives to crime
• Left Realist approach - looks at the social cause of crime and prevent crime by improving the community
• Perry Preschool Project - Weikart; Troubled Families Programme between 2012-2015
• Create a sense of community to counteract feelings of marginalisation, through intervention and community projects

Question 16

How effective is prison?

Answer 16

• Prison began as the stage between arrest and punishment, but through the enlightenment and the modern era it has become the punishment
• No inhumane treatment within prisons
• Recidivism issues - the likelihood of reoffending behaviour has become a political issue
• New Labour - popular punitiveness - sentencing is a popular form of punishment for people, and wins votes; but this ignores issues of the overcrowding and costs of prison
• Overcrowding - people who should be alone are not able to left that way, sentences are shortened

Question 17

Process of reformation

Answer 17

Recidivism can be reduced by supporting offenders as they reintegrate to the community

Problems faced by prisoners when they reenter society:
- Lack of skills / training
- Mental health issues
- Substance misuse
- Prejudice / discrimination towards offenders
- Lack of employment
- Back to the same area again (gang crimes etc)

Statistics:
- Only one in four people had a job to go to on release from prison (27%)
- One in five employees (19%) said they excluded or were likely to exclude ex-offenders from the recruitment process
- However, 78 UK employers have signed up to Ban the Box - giving ex-offenders a fair chance to compete for jobs by removing the criminal record tick box from initial application forms
- Prison Reform Trust and Prison Education Trust
- Creating bonds of attachment - less likely to reoffend
- Norwegian prisons - more humanity, more reintegration and more normality, and they have low recidivism rates, with the aim to encourage trust and support to build better futures

Question 18

Functionalism on crime prevention

Answer 18

• Functionalists point to the positive functions prison might perform in society –Prison could act as a deterrent – thus reinforcing social regulation; and it should also work to maintain balance in society – making up for the failings of other institutions such as the family and the education system – restoring order through incapacitating those who break the law.
• Ultimately however, one might criticise the effectiveness of prison – given that there is a 60% reoffending rate it isn’t really effective in restoring equilibrium in the first place – what prison does most of the time is re-socialise people into criminal norms, in the extreme people become institutionalised and unable to reintegrate into society once released.

Question 19

Marxism on crime prevention

Answer 19

• 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.
• Furthermore, the imprisonment of selected members of the lower classes neutralises opposition to the system; 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; and we may also add a fourth benefit, that all of the police, court and media focus on working class street crime means that our attention is diverted away from the immorality and greed of the elite classes.
• Supporting evidence for the Marxist view comes from the fact that there are higher rates of imprisonment in more unequal countries.

Question 20

Realism on crime prevention

Answer 20

• 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.
• Since the 1980s there has been a significant increase in the use of imprisonment in the United Kingdom – numbers have roughly doubled since 1990 with the total prison population now standing at about 84000 and we have one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the western world.
• 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.
• Critics of the ‘overuse of prison’ argue that we should employ alternatives – by using curfews, community service and treatment orders – because these have a lower reoffending rate – mainly because they do not remove an offender from society.
• 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 (those who are relatively deprived, marginalised and in subcultures - LR