Crime control, prevention and punishment Flashcards
The criminal justice system (CJS)
- refers to all different agencies and organisations involved in law, order, crime and punishment
- consists of agencies such as the police, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), courts, prisons etc
- overseen by Ministry of Justice and the Home Office, as well as the Youth Justice Board (names apply to England and Wales)
- the CJS is dominated by older, white MC people, with senior judges mostly white and male, from very privileged backgrounds
The role of the CJS in crime control and prevention
- deterrence - deterring people from committing crime (afraid of being caught)
- public protection - maintaining public order, stopping criminals for causing further harm
- retribution - punishing criminals so they get what they ‘deserve’
- rehabilitation - helping criminals to reform their characters
Changing approaches to criminal justice
- Garland (2001) suggests that in most of the 20th century the focus of the CJS was rehabilitating offenders, but since the 1970s there has been a growing emphasis on retributive justice, giving criminals what Newburn (2007) calls their ‘just deserts’
- shown by huge increase in imprisonment (more than doubled 1970-2014)
- more rhetoric from politicians about protecting the public and controlling offenders
- also growing uncertainty about the effectiveness of expensive punishments inc prison - CSEW shows most crime is unreported and Crawford and Evans (2012) note that the since the 1980s emphasis on retributive justice has shifted to prioritise preventing future crime
Changing approaches to criminal justice - culture of control: from left realism to right realism
- Garland sees these changes in criminal justice (more retributive since 70s) as reflected in sociological theory, as there was a shift from left-realist style theories focusing on injustice and inequality causing crime towards right-realist style approaches
- right realist approaches have more focus on the consequences of crime and emphasise the need for stricter socialisation, harsher punishment and reducing opportunities for crime etc
- Garland - there is now a ‘culture of control’ concerned with preventing and reducing the risks of people becoming victims
- new approach is accompanied by growing use of private security
Restorative justice definition
a process which brings together victims of crime and the offenders responsible, usually in face-to-face meetings, to help repair the harm done, restore the dignity and self-respect of victims, reduce their fear of crime and make offenders take responsibility for the consequences of their actions
Restorative justice - naming, shaming and facing the victims
- recently more attempts at diverting people (esp youth) away from formal sanctions of the CJS to avoid unnecessary criminalisation and the entry to ‘universities of crime’ (prisons and youth justice institutions)
- increasing use of restorative justice and community sentences (unpaid work) for minor offences
- Braithwaite (1999) - restorative justice is most effective when it involves ‘reintegrative shaming’, where offenders face their victims and are publicly ‘named and shamed’ so they realise the extent to which society disapproves of their actions, shame them into future conformity and make them take responsibility for the consequences of their actions
- Postmodernists - growing detachment of the CJS from centralised control to more informal localised arrangements as it starts to take account of people’s lifestyles and needs eg more localised and community based policing policies or the voluntary use of muslim Sharia courts, based on islamic rather than UK laws, and increasing use of private security
Role of punishment in crime control and prevention - Newburn (2007) suggests there are 5 main reasons for punishing criminals
1 - discouraging reoffending (rehabilitation) and deterring others from offending (deterrence)
2 - forcing them to make amends to victims to the harm they have caused (restorative justice)
3 - protecting society from dangerous people (Incapacitation - prevention through imprisonment or in some countries execution)
4 - reinforcing social values and bonds (functionalist view)
5 - punishing them because they deserve it (retribution)
Types of criminal punishment
- past punishments in the UK (mostly associated with middle ages): public hanging, drawing and quartering (hung, cut down whilst still alive, disembowelled and cut into quarters), burning alive, beheadings, mutilation, branding, torture, whipping, being in stocks
- these brutal punishments are still used in some societies eg amputations of hands, floggings and public executions still used in Saudi Arabia
- death penalty is still legal in 55 countries (2022)
- Amnesty International - at least 2000 death sentences imposed in 2023 (mostly in China, Iran and Saudi Arabia)
- contemporary Britain - more private and less brutal punishments like imprisonment, parole, probation, community service, fines, curfews etc
Explanation for changing form of punishments: Foucault (1991): From sovereign power to disciplinary power
- decline in public punishments and infliction of pain relates to changing structure of power in society
- brutal public punishments were not deter criminals but to display the power of the sovereign over criminals (inc their bodies)
- as supreme power of sovereigns decline, state power over criminals shifted to more disciplinary power, with criminals controlled and disciplined by surveillance
- Newburn (2007) - ‘occasional bursts of bodily punishment of offenders were replaced by a system of control and regulation at all times’
- Foucault illustrated his ideas through his design of a panoptican - prisoners permanently visible to a guard in a central tower but could not see the guard or each other - encourages self-surveillance and control as unaware if they’re being watched or not
Explanation for changing form of punishments: Rusche and Kirchheimer (marxist, 2003): Punishment, class domination and control
- see punishments as a part of the system of social control and class domination in unequal societies
- changing forms of punishment (from brutal public physical cruelty to the contemporary use of prisoners as cheap labour) serve the changing economic interests of the ruling class
- scale of brutality generally rose when labour was plentiful and decline when there was a shortage
Functionalist approaches to punishment: bolstering the collective conscience
- functionalists like Durkheim argue that societies are based on shared beliefs and values which form a collective conscience through moral bonds, regulating behaviour
- laws are an expression of the collective conscience and retribution provides an outlet for public anger and disapproval, reasserts moral boundaries, re-establishes social order, reaffirms and strengthens collective values, reinforces social regulation and control and contributes to building social solidarity and cohesion
- Durkheim’s approach has been criticised for assuming that the law reflects a value consensus and for ignoring inequalities
- punishments like prison may not re-establish social order, but threaten it and make things worse as they often prove to be insititutions for the manufacture of crime
Marxist approaches to punishment: maintaining the position of the powerful
- marxists argue that laws are an expression of ruling class ideology
- Althusser (1971) - punishment is part of the repressive state apparatus
- Rusche and Kirchheimer - law and punishment are mechanisms of social control in the WC and reinforce ruling-class power in unequal societies
- this inequality is reflected in the unequal distribution of punishment and the criminalisation of some acts
- punishments by the CJS are disproportionately given to the unemployed, poor, homeless, mentally ill, minorities and especially black men
- Newburn (2007) - ‘it is rare for the wealthy, the power and the influential to find themselves the focus of prosecution and punishment’
- the marxist approach may be criticised for seeing all punishments are directed to the WC and some would argue that the WC fill prisons because the offences they commit are most harmful, and, as left realists highlight, their victims are commonly also disadvantaged
Weberian explanations of punishment: the rationalisation of punishment
- Weber - modern societies have undergone a process of rationalisation, based around laws, rules and regulations
- only the state now has the power to punish offenders
- rationalisation of the punishment of offenders, based on what Weber calls legal-rational authority, meaning that punishment is based on impersonal rules and regulations rather than the arbitrary treatment from the sovereign power in the past
- in democracies, laws and punishments are decided by elected governments, making them seem legitimate and reasonable
- the CJS is now a huge and complex hierarchal bureaucratic organisation with a range of professional groups (police, prisons, CPS etc) dealing with offenders in a tightly managed and impersonal way
- criticisms of Weber emphasise the issues about whether rules are really fair and the extent to which officials follow rules - cases of miscarriage of justice
Does imprisonment prevent crime?
- prison (or Young Offender Institutions, Secure Training Centres or Secure Children’s Homes for those aged 10-21) is the most serious sanction in the CJS
- right realists view prison as a key way to deter crime - in the past 100 years the prison population has quadrupled (rose 30% 2001-11)
- research by the Downing Street Strategy Unit in 2003 showed a 22% increase in prison population since 1997 only reduced crime 5% at a time when overall crime dropped 30%
- in 2023 the prison population reached an all time high
- Ministry of Justice research shows around half of prisoners reoffend in under a year following release (70% for juveniles), with each prisoner committing on average 4 offences
- Boorman and Hopkins (2012) - around half of a prison survey’s sample had committed at least one proven offence within one year, and 68% within 2 years after release from prison
- this means that prison does not prevent reoffending
- Boorman and Hopkins - reoffending former prisoners had chaotic childhoods (abuse, violence, care homes etc), many were unemployed, had accommodation issues or history of mental illness
- Goffman (1991, interactionist) - prisons have their own subcultures which provide training grounds for criminals and confirm the criminal label, making it what Becker calls a ‘master status’, with the ex-con master status making reintegration following release very difficult
Surveillance and crime control and prevention - Foucault (1991)
- suggested surveillance was a means of monitoring, controlling and changing behaviour of criminals
- saw surveillance as a form of disciplinary power, as fear and uncertainty about surveillance encourages self-surveillance and control
- sees surveillance extending across society, making contemporary society a ‘surveillance society’ in the ‘age of panopticism’ in which everyone is surveilled
- use of surveillance ‘technologies of power’ or ‘disciplinary technologies’ has become a means for state control
- Lyon (2009) - surveillance has been enhanced through information and communication technologies, with ordinary people’s data being of interest, and everyday life becoming less private as surveillance is inescapable and routine
- CCTV, face-recognition and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) monitor the movements of all people reducing the risk of crime and allowing the state to track potential offenders
- Foucault - each public place is like a panoptican
- government agencies now have huge amounts of data
- Clarion Security - over 7 mill CCTV cameras in UK (1 per 11 people)
- google collects personal data, as does things like clubcards, apple, facebook
- Foucault - we live in a carceral (prison-like) culture as society is one big panoptican