Crime control, prevention and punishment

Question 1

The criminal justice system (CJS)

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

The role of the CJS in crime control and prevention

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

Changing approaches to criminal justice

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

Changing approaches to criminal justice - culture of control: from left realism to right realism

Answer 4

• 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

Question 5

Restorative justice definition

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Restorative justice - naming, shaming and facing the victims

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

Role of punishment in crime control and prevention - Newburn (2007) suggests there are 5 main reasons for punishing criminals

Answer 7

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)

Question 8

Types of criminal punishment

Answer 8

• 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

Question 9

Explanation for changing form of punishments: Foucault (1991): From sovereign power to disciplinary power

Answer 9

• 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

Question 10

Explanation for changing form of punishments: Rusche and Kirchheimer (marxist, 2003): Punishment, class domination and control

Answer 10

• 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

Question 11

Functionalist approaches to punishment: bolstering the collective conscience

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

Marxist approaches to punishment: maintaining the position of the powerful

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

Weberian explanations of punishment: the rationalisation of punishment

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

Does imprisonment prevent crime?

Answer 14

• 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

Question 15

Surveillance and crime control and prevention - Foucault (1991)

Answer 15

• 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

Question 16

Evaluation of Foucault’s idea of surveillance society

Answer 16

+ shows increasing power of surveillance and how it increases power of the state, regarding this as oppressive and limiting opposition in an unequal society
- surveillance is so pervasive that is likely people have become unaware of it (esp online)
- people may avoid surveillance
- some surveillance is useful eg monitoring hospital patients
- evidence suggests that people living in areas with high crime welcome the introduction of increased surveillance

Question 17

Realist theories and crime prevention

Answer 17

• regard themselves as ‘real’ as they primarily focus on practical policies to prevent the crimes that matter most to people and impact their daily life
• some overlap in policies, but left and right realism have different emphasis
• left realism emphasises the social causes of crime
• right realism emphasises situational crime prevention

Question 18

Left realism: social crime prevention and being tough on the causes of crime

Answer 18

• recognises that both offenders and victims of crimes that worry people most are found in the most disadvantaged areas, with the highest marginality and social exclusion
• emphasises the need to tackle material and cultural deprivation (poverty, unemployment, poor housing, education etc) which generate anger and may lead to crime
• Kinsley et al (1986) - police need to improve clear-up rates (crimes solved) and spend more time investigating to deter offenders and restore confidence among the public, as the lack of confidence in the police leads to lower reporting rates so the police have to resort to military style policing
• Lewis et al (2011) - resentment of a perceived lack of respect for police and the experience of innocent people being repeatedly stopped and searched which contributed to 2011 London riots

Question 19

Criticisms of left realist approaches to crime prevention

Answer 19

• they are ‘soft’ on crime, as they focus too much on the social causes of crime and downplay the role of the offender in causing crime
• explanations are inadequate as the majority of those living in deprived areas do not commit crime
• they deflect attention away from more practical crime prevention measures, like the tighter social control and situational crime prevention advocated by Right Realists
• they ignore white-collar and corporate crimes
• neighbourhood policing and increasing community integration of police could be seen a an extension of control and surveillance by the state

Question 19

Left realist ideas on how to prevent crime

Answer 19

• building community cohesion and strong communities, enabling the development of more informal controls over behaviour, and to work out local solutions to local crime problems
• multi-agency working, such as Community Safety Partnerships, where a variety of agencies (inc police, local council, health and social services) work together with local people to tackle crime, rather than just relying on the police and the CJS
• more democratic and community control of policing, so it becomes responsive to local needs, concerns and priorities with more time spent by police on investigating local crimes
• the police needs to be more tolerant of those with different lifestyles or from non-white ethnic groups
• public confidence in the police will encourage reporting and provide leads, allowing the police to better protect the main victims of crime (working class people)
• tacking social deprivation and other risk factors for crime by improving community facilities (youth leisure activities etc) to divert potential offenders away from crime
• intensive parenting support, getting parents and young offenders together to work out solutions, and early interventions through strategies like Sure Start Children’s Centres to help get children off to a better start in life

Question 20

Right realist approaches to crime prevention: situational crime prevention and being tough on the criminals

Answer 20

• tend to focus on individuals and the specific location of crime rather than wider social factors
• reject broad social and structural theories on crime as unproven and impractical, and they argue policies should focus on what is practical and achievable, and what works
• emphasising that individuals choose crime and must be persuaded not to do so, by reducing opportunities for crime and increasing the chances of being caught
• approaches are underpinned by 4 interlinked theories: the ‘broken windows’ thesis, routine activity theory and rational choice and opportunity theories

Question 21

Right realist approaches to crime: Environmental crime prevention and the ‘broken windows theory’

Answer 21

• Wilson and Kelling (1982)
• idea that if a broken window - a symbol of social disorder of all kinds and a lack of community concern - is not repaired, then others are likely to be broken and further neglect and crime will follow
• Wilson - if ‘incivilities’ (eg anti-social behaviour) are not kept to the minimum, there will be a gradual deterioration of neighbourhoods and an increase in crime, getting gradually bigger and more serious
• to prevent petty crimes it is necessary to keep environments in a good physical condition and the police should have a policy of zero tolerance towards all crime and disorder

Question 22

Right realist approaches to crime: Routine activity theory

Answer 22

associated with the work of Felson and Clarke (1998) and suggests that a crime occurs as a part of everyday routines when the following 3 conditions are present:
1. a suitable target for a potential offender (person, place or object)
2. no ‘capable guardian’ (like police, CCTV, neighbours) to protect the target
3. a potential offender who thinks the first 2 conditions are met and then makes a rational choice whether or not to commit the crime

Question 23

Right realist approaches to crime: Rational choice and opportunity theories

Answer 23

• associated with Cornish and Clarke (1986)
• focus on the decision-making process of the potential offender
• argue that offenders act rationally and weigh up the costs and benefits of committing crime
• to deter offenders, it is necessary to reduce the opportunities for crime and increased the costs of offending

Question 24

Right realism: the ‘broken windows’ thesis, routine activity theory and rational choice and opportunity theory have led right realists to adopt 2 main approaches to crime prevention:

Answer 24

Situational crime prevention and
Increased social control

Question 25

Right realist approaches to crime prevention: Situational crime prevention (SCP): Reducing opportunities for crime

Answer 25

• Clarke (1992) - situational crime prevention is concerned with preventing crime in particular locations rather than catching offenders and aims to make crime a less attractive choice rather than eliminating crime through an improvement of society and the threat of punishment
• achieved by ‘designing out crime’ and ‘target hardening’ measures
• use of what Pease (2002) called ‘bars, bolts and barriers’ (post-coding goods, anti-climb paint, CCTV, locks, alarms etc)
• also use of ‘hostile architecture’ (graffiti-resistant sloping surfaces on public benches to deter sleeping and skateboarding, anti-homeless spikes etc)
• these measures aim to reduce opportunities for crime
• Cornish and Clarke (2003) - this can be further reinforced for putting up notices warning people of surveillance and of the rules operating in the are, removing excuses and encouraging people to regulate behaviour or face consequences

Question 26

Right realist approaches to crime prevention: Criticisms of situational crime prevention

Answer 26

• removes the focus from other forms of crime prevention, such as looking at wider economic and social policies
• doesn’t pay sufficient attention to catching criminals or punishments to deter offenders
• Crawford and Evans (2012) - SCP in an unequal society can increase inequality, with the richest living in target-hardened fortresses of gated communities, with the poor unable to afford the security measures, making the poor increasingly likely to be victimised
• displacement theory - suggests that SCP does not prevent crime overall, but only in some locations, displacing it to other areas as potential offenders are diverted to committing crime elsewhere (eg Crawford and Evans - against poorer people in less protected areas)
• however Felson and Clarke (1998) - SCP can still have positive effects, as offenders may believe that the same measures are in place in all areas
• Bowes et al (2011) - confirmed that SCP led to a ‘diffusion of benefits’ with neighbouring districts also seeing crime reductions, as potential offenders prefer familiar environments so do not simply ‘move around the corner’ to unfamiliar places

Question 27

Right realist approaches to crime prevention: Increased social control

Answer 27

• linked to Hirschi’s control theory
• suggests that it is possible to prevent crime by identifying those from ‘at risk’ backgrounds eg young people from deprived communities
• focuses on tighter family and community control and socialisation to promote conformity and isolate deviant individuals, strengthening social bonds

Question 28

Right realist approaches to crime prevention: Policies coming from the idea of increased social control

Answer 28

• making parents take more responsibility for the supervision of their children and socialising them more effectively - those who don’t may be issued with Parenting Orders (given to parents of persistent young offenders who fail to properly supervise their children), compelling them to attend parenting classes or counselling
• schemes like neighbourhood watch building community controls through informal surveillance
• cracking down on anti-social behaviour through measures like Criminal Behaviour Orders or Dispersal orders
• supervision of offenders (electronic tagging, curfew orders etc)
• adopting zero-tolerance policing measures (in keeping with ‘Broken windows’ theory) and taking steps against all crimes
• heavier policing and more arrests, particularly targeted on high-crime areas to deter potential offending
• fast-track punishment of offenders, with more imprisonment and harsher sentences

Question 29

Criticisms of Right Realist crime prevention policies

Answer 29

• zero-tolerance policing and a strong police presence may involve a wasteful over-emphasis on minor and trivial offences, diverting resources away from more serious offences
• labelling theorists suggest that zero-tolerance policing can lead to labelling those who commit minor offences, and potentially making some people feel targeted and victimised by police (as Lewis et al (2011) found in the London riots)
• they ignore white-collar and corporate crimes, which can have serious consequences for victims
• they don’t address wider social causes of crime (which left realists do)
• assume that offenders act rationally in choosing crime and derive benefits for it, which doesn’t account for non-utilitarian crime like vandalism, drugs, hate crime etc - better explained by Lyng’s edgework

Question 30

Feminism and the control and prevention of crime - Newburn (2007) suggests feminist solutions to the problem of crime involve

Answer 30

• making forms of victimisation which have previously been ignored (domestic violence, harassment etc) more visible
• exposing the extent to which violence against women is primarly an issue of men’s violence and is mostly in the home
• recognising that sexual violence by men against women is primarily an issue of male power and sometimes misogyny, not of sex
• showing how a male-dominated and patriarchal CJS hold stereotyped views of women and fail to properly respond to crimes against them
• identifying features of the CJS that lead to further victimisation of women - eg Walklate (2004) - CJS may contribute to further victimisation of women in rape trials, with their reputation and respectability questioned and scrutinised, and often their evidence is not regarded as believable

Question 31

Feminism and the control and prevention of crime: Crimes committed against women

Answer 31

• liberal feminists particularly emphasise improving the circumstances that might encourage more women to report crimes against them (eg domestic abuse, rape)
• the under-reporting of such offences is partly due the unsympathetic approach of the police and the CJS
• Newburn - police need more specialist training to deal with offences like rape and domestic abuse
• feminists suggest these issues need to be tackled so that more crimes are reported and prosecuted, helping to reduce the number of these crimes that happen
• other policies include things like better street lighting, self-defence classes and rape alarms to boost women’s confidence and reduce fears of crime

Question 32

Feminism and the control and prevention of crime: Crimes committed by women

Answer 32

• to reduce crimes committed by women (mostly related to poverty, debt, drugs etc), there needs to be more supportive welfare policies and better-paid jobs to avoid women being pushed to crime
• marxist feminist solutions focus on how inequality under capitalism impacts women, driving them to commit ‘female’ crimes such as prostitution and shoplifting, suggesting that reducing female crime requires means tackling social inequality
• radical feminists tend to emphasise the crimes committed against women by men in patriarchal society but also that women may turn to crime as a result of the responsibilities placed on them (housework etc), and therefore emphasise policies like rape crisis centres, highlighting harassment and sexual abuse, and having men undergo re-socialisation so they don’t treat women as sexual objects

Question 33

Evaluation of feminist perspectives on crime control

Answer 33

• marxist and radical solutions emphasise huge social change and revolutionary action against patriarchy and capitalism, but they would also support the more practical measures, as outline by Newburn (exposing extent of crimes against women and stereotyping)
• by exposing the extent of crime against women and preventing men from committing them (by resocialisation, tighter controls and tougher sanctions) men may be persuaded against committing crimes against women

Question 34

Postmodernism and the control and prevention of crime

Answer 34

• they regard crime as a social construction based on a narrow legal definition, and the law as an outdated metanarrative and an expression of a particular view of how people should behave
• Lea (1998) - postmodernist approach to crime reduction involves a need for the CJS to recognise diversity and respect different social identities and lifestyle choices (eg police being more sensitive of ethnic and gender identities)
• Lea - postmodernists stress the fragmentation of social structures and growing choice and diversity leads them to emphasise more informal localised arrangements for preventing and controlling harm - usually involving the replacement of the centrally managed CJS by localised customised community policing, private security firms etc, accompanied by the growing control of entry to certain areas (eg only residents allowed to enter)
• postmodernists emphasise that crime is caused by complex individual motives so to reduce offending and harm, justice needs to be more individualised, reflecting the needs of the individual offender and the wider public interest - involves exploring alternative sentencing which recognise individual circumstances (mental health, welfare, economic conditions, homelessness etc)

Question 35

Evaluation of the postmodernist approach to the control and prevention of crime

Answer 35

+ draws attention to diversity of identities and lifestyle choices, and the idea that a centralised CJS may not meet all needs
+ provides insights into the way contemporary developments (CCTV, private security, localised policing, control of entry to some areas etc) can reduce harms caused by crime and disorder, including fear
- doesn’t recognise importance or impact of social inequality, paying little attention to the poorest social groups who can’t afford to establish identities through consumerism
- doesn’t recognise that decentralised and more informal arrangements to crime control are likely to benefit the MC (well-organised, articulate and affluent) who have the power and resources to have their needs attended to
- doesn’t consider the implications of the growing use of private policing and surveillance on individual liberties and human rights
- fails to recognise that there may be a fairer more equal distribution of justice for all through a centrally managed CJS so everyone has (in theory) an equal opportunity for protection from harm and for the same rules to be applied equally to all