criminal justice system, prevention and punishment Flashcards
Crown Prosecution Service
give guidance on sentencing and charging
His Majesty’s Court Service
give verdict and sentencing
His Majesty’s Prison Service
hold people for custodial sentence
National Probation Service
helps ex-prisoners re-integrate back into society
Police
arrest, charge, gather evidence
NACRO
a crime reduction charity that helps ex-offenders and tries to prevent young people from getting into crime.
Victim Support
A charity that gives free, confidential help to victims of crime, witnesses, their family, friends and anyone else affected across England and Wales. They also campaign for the protection of victims and witnesses.
Legal Services Commission (LSC)
runs the legal aid scheme for people who need legal representation, but can’t afford it.
Youth Justice Board
oversees justice and offending in relation to those under the age of 18.
functionalism view on cjs
FUNCTIONALISM
Key thinker: Durkheim
The law and CJS reflects value consensus
The law and its enforcement reinforces the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
trad marxism view on cjs
Key thinker: Chambliss –
Serves the interest of the r/c
Selective. Only the working class are criminalised
Ideological role, via laws which seem to protect ordinary people (e.g. H&S legislation) leading to a false consciousness
femenism view on cjs
Key thinker: Smart -
Smart CJS is biased against women because they are seen as ‘doubly deviant’.
Pollak
Pollak – chivalry thesis, CJS is lenient
HOWEVER,
‘Liberation thesis’ = more women in CJS so less patriarchal.
labelling theory on cjs
Key thinker: Cicourel -
Courts and probation services reinforced the police bias and justice is negotiated.
Key thinker: Becker -
The CJS moral entrepreneurs.
CJS labels people then this can become a ‘master status’ and lead to deviant career.
formal social control
legislature: houses of parliament make laws which constrain our behaviour and give power to the CJS to punish those who do not follow them.
Police: formal powers to arrest and charge criminals
Prisons: keep criminals in custody
Army: an organisation with formal power to control members of society
Courts: have legal power to make decisions about how to control criminal behaviour
informal social control
religion: religious teachings often include a set of rules e.g. 10 commandments in Christianity, that control behaviour.
Media: shares the dominant ideology promoting value consensus and discouraging rule breaking
Friends and family/socialisation: learning and reinforcing of norms and values throughout our lives
Education: reinforcing values through secondary socialisation
Community groups/neighbourhood watch: keeping local people in line and following the rules
What prevents people from committing crime and deviance according to Durkheim?
Value consensus, boundary maintenance, shared values through socialisation
Hirschi’s social bonds theory puts forward a similar argument. What does Hirschi says prevents most people from committing crime?
Social bonds of belief, attachment, involvement, commitment. To prevent crime, we need to give people a sense of belonging in society and shared beliefs.
If Durkheim and Hirschi are correct, what should social policies focus on in order to keep crime and deviance to a minimum?
social clubs, community centres, British Values, improve employment rates, educational intervention
postmodern view
Postmodernists have also written about crime control and prevention in contemporary society.
They argue that the fragmentation of society has been reflected in a similar fragmentation of formally organised crime prevention. A growing emphasis is placed on private crime prevention and informal localised arrangements for controlling crime. E.g.
Increasing use of informal control agencies like private security firms controlling public spaces such as shopping centres.
Use of surveillance techniques to control everyone not just offenders. This is supported by Foucault who pointed out how surveillance is penetrating more and more into private aspects of our lives.
Increased control of entry to particular streets and housing communities – ‘gated communities’.
foucault on surveillance
argues that the nature of social control (which he calls ‘discipline’) has changed from public punishments to the body to more subtle types of punishment. He used the analogy of a ‘panopticon’ (meaning ‘all-seeing place’) which was a prison design allowing guards to watch prisoners in their own cells at all times, without the guards being seen
Deterrence as a form of punishment
punishing individuals deters them from reoffending and serves as a deterrent to others in society
Rehabilitation as a form of punishment
punishment can be used to reform and change offender behaviour and attitudes
Incapacitation as a form of punishment
punishment is used to remove the offender’s ability to offend again
retribution as a form of punishment
This means ‘paying back’ society. It justifies punishing crimes that have been committed rather than preventing future crimes. It is based on the idea that offenders deserve to punished for breaking moral codes of society, therefore society is entitled to take their revenge
functionalist view on punishment
Durkheim, the functionalist, argued that punishment is a very important part of maintaining boundaries in society. Therefore, punishment should be visible, to remind members of society what happens if those boundaries are crossed. This also increases social solidarity and gives people an opportunity, when a crime occurs, to express their views on the crime and share these, thus reinforcing social solidarity. Durkheim thought that a little crime in society therefore played a positive role in reinforcing social solidarity and maintaining value consensus. Durkheim argued that in modern society, the function of punishment nowadays is to be restitutive: to maintain the social solidarity of society and reinforce shared values. In the past the function of punishment was to be retributive. This is because in modern society, there is extensive specialisation and this means that social solidarity is based on interdependence between individuals.
marxist view on punishment
Marxists are critical of punishments used by the CJS, as they believe that the function of punishment is to maintain the existing social order, which is corrupt and unfair. As part of the repressive state apparatus punishments are used to protect ruling class property and values from the lower classes. For example, 18th century punishments such as hangings were part of a ‘rule of terror’ by the land owning aristocracy. Imprisonment reflects capitalist values
*Capitalism puts a price on the worker’s time, prisoners ‘do time’ to ‘pay’ for their crimes.
*The prison and the capitalist factory have similar structures, with both enforcing strict disciplinary styles, subordination and a loss of liberty and power.
*Rusche and Kirchheimer see punishments as part of the system of social control and class domination in unequal societies: they see changing forms of punishment over time, ranging from public spectacles of physical cruelty, to exile/hard labour, to the contemporary use of prisoners as cheap labour in prisons, arising from the changing economic interests of the dominant class.
*I.e. the scale of brutality of punishments seems to rise when economies are strong/labour plentiful, and declines when there’s a labour shortage so that prisoners can concentrate on/be fit for hard labour.
right realest/ new right view on punishment
Right realists argue that one of the reasons crime increased in the latter half of the 20th century was that punishment and particularly prison was regarded by criminals as too soft: it was no longer a deterrent. Therefore New Right sociologists like Van Der Haag argue that the CJS needs to be harsher (more punitive and retributive) in terms of both the length of prison sentences and the actual experience of imprisonment. He recommends a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ approach, where offenders are jailed for life after three offences, no matter how trivial those offences are. He also recommended that parents who could not control their children should be sent to prison. The best examples of this sort of approach are to be found in the USA – many US states have capital punishment and prisoners have to do ‘hard labour’, e.g. breaking rocks or working in the fields as part of their prison programme. This retributive approach is based on the approach that ‘prison works’ because fear of it increases the cost of crime in terms of losing one’s freedom (rational choice theory – Clarke). It is also suggested that prison works because it takes criminals off the streets.
left realest views on punishment
Left realists, differ and argue that punishment is also connected with rehabilitation and reducing the risk of the person reoffending through tackling the causes for them offending in the first place, usually material and cultural deprivation. This means for example, re-educating offenders, working with them to ensure that they find a place within the community once they have come out of prison to avoid them ending up reoffending, reducing their sense of marginalisation and social exclusion. Left realist approaches to punishment include alternatives to incarceration such as community service orders.
labelling theory on punishment
Cohen argues that the growth of community controls has cast a ‘net of control’ over more people.
He therefore agrees with Foucault that social control has spread through society to more agencies of social control than in the past.
But in many cases the community controls frequently fast track young people into the criminal justice system. For examples, ASBOs used by the police have not diverted young people away from the criminal justice system, but have actually increased their chances of entering custodial (prison) sentences.
Mathews on punishment not being fair and effective
Matthews notes that prisons often act as ‘universities of crime’, educating prisoners about more serious crime.
garlands view on punishment not being fair and effective
Garland argues that we are living in a time of ‘mass incarceration’ of particular social groups e.g. young black men. Yet prison isn’t particularly effective rehabilitation because 2/3 of prisoners reoffend. Garland believes that governments nowadays are more concerned with ‘managing’ crime than preventing it.
