Topic 3.3 - Examine the limitations of agencies in achieving social control

Question 1

Repeat offending

Recidivism rates

What shows that social control measures are not always effective?

Answer 1

Recidivism rates

Question 2

What is meant by ‘recidivism’?

Answer 2

Repeat offending

Question 3

What was the overall recidivism rate in 2019?

Answer 3

If we take all offenders who had been given a warning, fine, community sentence or suspended sentence in the previous 12 months, plus all the prisoners who were released from jail in that period, these people committed over half a million new offences - This is an overall recidivism rate of around 28%

Question 4

How many further offences do those who re-offend commit?

Answer 4

On average, those who re-offend commit a further four offences each

Question 5

What was the re-offending rate for offenders released from prison in 2017 for:

• All prisoners?
• Those who received a sentence of less than 12 months?

Answer 5

• 36%
• 64%

Question 6

What is the re-offending rate for juvenile offenders within a year:

• For all offenders?
• For those who are released from custody?

Answer 6

• 37%
• 63%

Question 7

The rising prison population

What has happened to the prison population today since 1993?

Answer 7

It has doubled

Question 8

State one reason for the increase in prison population.

Answer 8

Repeat offending is one reason for this increase. For example, those released from prison on licence will be recalled to serve the rest of their sentence if they commit a further offence during the licence period

Question 9

Give two examples of increases in prison sentences.

Answer 9

• In 2018, sentences for serious offences were on average over 26 months longer than in 2008
• The average minimum sentence for murder increased from 12.5 years in 2003 to 21.3 years in 2016

Question 10

Who re-offends?

Give four examples of groups who are more likely to re-offend.

Answer 10

• The more previous convictions someone already has, the more likely they are to re-offend. For example, in 2018 almost half (47.5%) of offenders who already had more than 10 convictions offended again
• Offenders who served a prison sentence are more likely to re-offend than those who received a warning, fine or community sentence
• Males are more likely to re-offend than females
• Offenders with drug or alcohol addictions, those who are homeless, those with few qualifications and those who are unemployed are more likely to re-offend

Question 11

What is meant by the ‘dark figure of re-offending’?

Answer 11

We should bear in mind that the above figures only refer to proven re-offending, in other words where the offender has been tried and found guilty. There is likely to be a dark figure of further offending for which they have not been caught and punished

Question 12

Theory

According to right realists, why does prison work?

Answer 12

Right realists argue that ‘prison works’. Offenders are rational actors and so the fear of being jailed acts as a deterrent to offending. However, the high rate of re-offending shows that this is not so - a fact that right realists fail to explain

Question 13

According to Marxists, why are unemployed offenders likely to re-offend?

Answer 13

Marxists argue that it is not surprising that unemployed offenders are more likely to re-offend, since they have little chance of meeting their needs if they have to survive solely on benefits

Question 14

Civil liberties and legal barriers

Human rights abuses

Why are there likely to be human rights abuses in authoritarian states?

Answer 14

In some authoritarian states (or ‘police states’), social control agencies such as the police have few restrictions on their power to force citizens to behave as the state wishes them to. In such states, critics of the government may find they are not free to express their opinions and that they risk being locked up indefinitely - or worse

Question 15

Briefly describe the human rights abuses in Turkey in 2018.

Answer 15

In 2018 the US Department of State’s annual report on human rights cited the following abuses in Turkey:

• Arbitrary killings
• Suspicious deaths in police custody
• Torture
• Arbitrary arrests
• Detention of tens of thousands, including opposition MPs, lawyers and journalists for peaceful legitimate speech
• Closure of media outlets and prosecutions for criticizing government policies
• Blocking websites
• Restrictions on freedom of movement and freedoms of assembly and association

Question 16

What are civil liberties?

Give seven examples of civil liberties.

Answer 16

• Freedom of speech - The right to say what you like, including freedom of the press and the media
• Freedom of assembly and freedom to associate with others, including the right to gather together to protest peacefully
• Freedom of movement - The right to go where you want, within the law
• Freedom from arbitrary arrest
• Freedom from detention without trial
• Freedom of religion and conscience
• The right to privacy, especially from the state

Question 17

Civil liberties infringements

Facial recognition

How does facial recognition work?

Answer 17

Works by matching the faces of people walking past special cameras to images of people on watch lists. Everyone in range is scanned and their biometric data is snatched without their consent

Question 18

What do LIBERTY think about facial recognition?

Answer 18

Invades the public’s right to privacy by having their data stored on watch lists

Question 19

What is LIBERTY calling for concerning facial recognition?

Answer 19

LIBERTY is calling for it to be banned altogether

Question 20

Due process

Give an example of a civil liberty that is an aspect of the due process model.

Answer 20

Freedom from arbitrary arrest (where the police can arrest anyone they wish) and freedom from detention without trial (where someone can be held in custody indefinitely without being brought before a court) are both important protections for the individual against the state’s abuse of its power. Clearly, the legal processes involved in due process are a barrier to the state exercising control over its citizens without good cause

Question 21

Access to resources and support

Resources and support inside prison

Explain four reasons why prisons can fail to rehabilitate offenders.

Answer 21

Short sentences - Do not give enough time to do the extensive work needed to address deep-seated problems, such as drug dependency, illiteracy and anger management. The problem is worsened by the fact that there are limited places on such courses

Inadequate resources for education and training - The 2020 report of the chief inspector of prisons said that half the prisons inspected had too few programmes of useful activity and fewer than two-fifths were delivering ‘good’ or ‘reasonably good’ activities

A 15% cut in the number of prison officers - Means that there are fewer officers to supervise prisoners undertaking activities that would help their rehabilitation. Staff shortages mean that prisoners are often locked up by 6 pm, denying them access to recreational and educational facilities such as use of the prison library

Release on temporary licence (ROTL) - Is intended to allow trusted prisoners out to attend training, employment and job interviews, yet very few are able to take advantage of this scheme due to shortages of staff to supervise it

Question 22

Resources and support in the community

Give three examples of difficulties faced by newly released prisoners.

Answer 22

Lack of money - Prisoners earn very little from working in prison and receive only a £46 discharge grant on their release

Lack of a job - Only 1/4 of prisoners have a job to go to on their release

Homelessness - According to Nacro, 1/9 prisoners has no settled accommodation to go to upon release. Prisoners lose entitlement to housing benefit if they are expected to spend more than 13 weeks in prison. This means that they will usually lose any tendency they had

Question 23

The ‘End Friday releases’ campaign

Explain the problems for offenders of being released on a Friday.

Answer 23

Over 1/3 of all releases from prison happen on a Friday, and charities and pressure groups such as Nacro and the Howard League have supported a campaign to end Friday releases from prison. Being discharged on a Friday can mean a race against the clock to access services such as accommodation, drug medication and benefits before the weekend shutdown. This can result in people having to sleep rough and survive on their discharge grant until services re-open on Monday. This leaves them vulnerable to re-offending - in some cases, simply to get a roof over their heads for the night. Unsurprisingly, some ex-prisoners quickly breach the conditions of their release and are recalled to prison as a result

Question 24

Community sentences

Give three reasons why a significant majority of offenders who are given community sentences re-offend. However, community sentences are more successful in reducing recidivism. For example, only 34% re-offend within 12 months of starting their sentence, compared with 64% among those serving sentences of less than 12 months

Answer 24

Inadequate support for complex needs - Such as drug addiction, mental health problems and homelessness. There are often too few places on specialist programmes to address such needs

Inadequate supervision by probation services - There have been criticisms that the service is too lax in allowing offenders to miss supervision appointments

Failures by the privatised community rehabilitation companies - These companies have been criticised for failing to meet their targets and for poor supervision of offenders. As a result, the CRC’s contracts were ended in 2020

Question 25

Finance

The police

What has been the effect of cuts in funding on police numbers?

Answer 25

Between 2010 and 2018, the overall police budget was cut by 19%. The cuts led to a fall of 20,000 in police numbers in the same period and there is a national shortage of detectives

Question 26

What has been the other impact of decreases in police funding?

Answer 26

There is evidence that police forces are dropping investigations into crimes, including sexual offences, violent attacks and arson. For example, the Metropolitan Police dropped 2.9 times as many cases on the day they were reported in 2018 as they did in 2013. The force said this was necessary to balance the books

Question 27

Why might police forces be tempted to drop serious cases?

Answer 27

Police forces may be particularly tempted to drop serious cases because they take much longer to investigate. For example, rape cases take an average of 129 days to solve compared with two days for theft or criminal damage

Question 28

Prisons

What happened to the prisons budget along with staff levels between 2010 and 2018?

Answer 28

Prisons budget fell by 16% and staff levels by 15%

Question 29

How are prisons described by critics?

Answer 29

As being in crisis, with rising levels of assaults, self-harm and suicides

Question 30

What are the impacts of overcrowding and staff cuts in prison?

Answer 30

Prisoners lack opportunities for activities that would help them rehabilitate, such as education, training and work experience. Recidivism rates are around 60% within a year of release for those serving short sentences

Question 31

What evidence is there of privatisation contributing to the crisis in prisons?

Answer 31

In 2016, the worst UK prison riot in 25 years took place at HMP Birmingham, a prison privately run by G4S. The official report concluded that staff had become worn down by chronic staffing shortages and that prisoners ‘were in effect policing themselves’. As a result, in 2020 the government took HMP Birmingham back into public control

Question 32

The probation service

What did the annual report in 2019 by chief inspector of probation, Glenys Stacey, highlight?

Answer 32

A range of problems, including staff shortages, failures by the private CRC’s, and a lack of confidence in the service by judges, victims, the public and offenders

Question 33

What has happened since in 2020? What did the new chief inspector warn in 2020?

Answer 33

The probation service was taken back into public control. However, the new chief inspector Justin Russell warned in 2020 that it “must be properly funded, vacancies for probation officers must be filled and staff properly trained”

Question 34

The Crown Prosecution Service

What happened to the CPS’s budget between 2010 and 2018? What happened to the staff levels as a result?

Answer 34

The budget was cut by 1/4 and the CPS lost 1/3 of its staff

Question 35

What crimes did the head of the CPS say that the police were failing to investigate in 2018?

Answer 35

Rape, fraud and modern slavery

Question 36

What has the CPS also been accused of doing to charges?

Answer 36

Downgrading them so it can prosecute cases in magistrates’ courts, because this is quicker and therefore cheaper than taking them to Crown Court. This also means that offenders get off with lighter sentences than they deserve, because magistrates’ sentencing powers are more limited

Question 37

Local and national policies

National government policies

Give an example of a national government policy that has affected the work of the police.

Answer 37

In April 2019, the Home Secretary announced that he was making it easier for police officers to stop and search anyone for an offensive weapon without first having reasonable suspicion that they are carrying one. This power is available to police throughout the country under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

Question 38

What is the aim of the national serious violence strategy?

Answer 38

This aims to involve other agencies such as youth services, the NHS, social services and education. For example, children excluded from school may be at risk of being groomed by gangs to deliver drug deals, which are a major factor in violence offences

Question 39

Local policies

Give an example of a local policy that a police force might adopt.

Answer 39

In areas where knife crime is particularly high, police may respond with extra measures such as increased stop and searches

Question 40

What do weapon amnesties involve?

Answer 40

Police forces take in illegal weapons which have been surrendered by people without arresting them

Question 41

What did a two-week guns amnesty in London in 2017 lead to?

Answer 41

350 firearms and 40,000 rounds of ammunition being handed in

Question 42

What is the purpose of holding amnesties?

Answer 42

To reduce the criminal use of weapons in the local area

Question 43

When may amnesties be used by police forces?

Answer 43

When new laws are introduced which will make it an offence to possess a weapon that was not previously banned

Question 44

CPS priorities

What was the CPS’s priority in 2017?

Answer 44

Tackling and prosecuting hate crime

Question 45

How many cases of hate crime did they tackle in 2017?

Answer 45

10,000 cases were persecuted with 86% of defendants being found guilty of one or more crimes and in 79% of the cases the judge increased the offenders sentence because they agreed that the crime was a hate crime

Question 46

Crime committed by those with moral imperatives

What is meant by a ‘moral imperative’?

Answer 46

It is an overriding sense of what is right - a sense that is so strong it compels a person to act to uphold it, even if it means breaking the law

Question 47

How and why did the following people break the law?

• Clive Ponting
• Kay Gilderdale
• Rosie James and Rachel Wenham
• Alan Blythe

Answer 47

• Broke the law by passing secret information to an MP about the sinking of the Argentinian ship the General Belgrano during the Falklands War. He argued that he had done so in the public interest
• Broke the law by assisting the suicide of her daughter, who had been seriously ill for 17 years
• Committed criminal damage to a nuclear submarine to try and prevent it leaving the port, arguing that they were preventing a war crime
• Was charged with cultivating cannabis with intent to supply. He did so in order to provide it to his terminally ill wife to relieve her pain

Question 48

What do all these cases have in common?

Answer 48

In all above cases, the defendants were either acquitted, found guilty of a lesser charge or had charges dropped when the jury could not agree on the verdict

Question 49

The Suffragettes

What did the Suffragettes campaign for in the early 20th century?

Answer 49

The Women’s right to vote in parliamentary elections

Question 50

In what ways did the Suffragettes break the law?

Answer 50

Set fire to post boxes, smashed the windows of public buildings, cut telegraph wires and attacked a portrait of the Duke of Wellington with an axe

Question 51

What did the Suffragettes do when convicted?

Answer 51

Refused to pay fines

Question 52

What moral imperative motivated the Suffragettes to commit crime?

Answer 52

To force Parliament to change the law and end the injustice that women were denied the right to vote

Question 53

What did the government issue in response? What did this law do?

Answer 53

In 1913, the government responded by passing the Prisoners Act, commonly known as the Cat and Mouse Act because, like a cat playing with a mouse, it allowed hunger strikers to be temporarily released but then re-imprisoned them once they had recovered their health. As more and more Suffragettes refused food in prison, the authorities began force-feeding hunger strikes through a nostril or stomach tube, in many cases causing permanent health problems

Question 54

What was the partial victory achieved by the Suffragettes?

Answer 54

In 1918 the vote was given to women aged over 30. Finally, in 1928 the voting age was equalized at 21 for both sexes

Question 55

The Stansted 15

What is the potential sentence for the crime with which the Stansted 15 were charged?

Answer 55

The 15 were convicted of ‘endangering an aerodrome’, which carries a potential life sentence.

Question 56

What sentences did the Stansted 15 receive?

Answer 56

All 15 had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2021

Question 57

What happened to the individuals that the Stansted 15 were campaigning for?

Answer 57

Some were later proved to have been victims of human trafficking, and one had been raped and forced into sex work. Eleven of those due to be deported were later given leave to remain in the UK. The Stansted 15 case came in the wake of Windrush scandal, in which people who had spent most of their lives in the UK were illegally deported to the Caribbean by the Home Office

Question 58

Theory

According to Durkheim why is deviance, such as that of the Suffragettes, important?

Answer 58

Functionalists such as Durkheim argue that without deviance, new social values could not emerge, no change would be possible and society would stagnate. For example, the Suffragettes’ law-breaking drew attention to the injustice of denying women the vote and promoted equality between the sexes as a basic value of UK society

Question 59

Environment

Give some examples of environments that can impact re-offending rates of released prisoners.

Answer 59

• Lack of employment and prisoners returning to their old circles leads to re-offending
• Prisoners are less likely to re-offend if they live with family - only 61% of them do so
• Prisoners are less likely to re-offend if they receive family visits - only 32% do so
• Less than 50% of prisons received a positive rating from inspectors about their rehabilitative work

So the environment inside prisoners, and on release, can limit the effect of agencies