Topic 4 - Crime, Control And Prevention Flashcards
What is the CJS one of?
The major public services in this country
What are the core agencies of the CJS?
- Police
- CPS
- The courts
- Youth justice board
- National offender management service
What are some services and initiatives within the CJS run by?
Voluntary groups e.g. victim support and NACRO
What are the 3 departments responsible for the CJS and its agencies?
- The ministry of justice
- The home office
- The attorney general
The ministry of justice
- oversees the magistrates courts, the crown court, the appeals courts, the legal services commission and the national offender management service
- manages justice processes from end to end
- responsible for criminal law and sentencing policy, for legal aid, reducing re-offending and prisons and probation
The home office
- oversees the police
- protects the public from terror, crime and anti-social behaviour - helps build security, justice and respect that enables people to prosper in a free and tolerant society
- responsible for crime and crime reduction, policing, security and counter-terrorism
The attorney general
- oversees CPS, serious fraud office and revenue and customs prosecution office
- assisted by the solicitor general is the chief legal adviser to the government - responsible for ensuring law is upheld
- certain public interest functions e.g. taking action to appeal unduly lenient sentences and bringing proceedings under the Contempt of Court Act
What is the purpose of the CJS?
To deliver justice for all by convicting and punishing guilty and helping them to stop offending while protecting the innocent
What is the CJS responsible for?
- Detecting crime and bringing it to justice
- carrying out orders of court e.g. collecting fines
- supervising the community and custodial punishment
What is the problem with the CJS?
Dominated by older- middle class - crown courts senior judges are predominantly white males from privileged backgrounds therefore those dispersing justice to the most disadvantaged are amongst the most advantaged in society
What are the key goals of the CJS?
- to improve effectiveness and efficiency of the CJS in bringing offences to justice
- increase public confidence in the fairness and effectiveness of the CJS
- increase victim satisfaction with police, victim and witness satisfaction with the CJS
- consistently collect, analyse and use good quality ethnicity data to identify and address race disproportionately in the CJS
- increase the recovery of criminal assets to ensure crime doesn’t pay
What does restorative justice mean?
Naming, shaming and facing the victim
Where is restorative justice greater used?
Less serious offences where the offender undertakes unpaid work
Braithwaite- restorative justice
Restorative justice is more effective when it involves ‘reintegrative shaming’ where offenders face their victims and also are publicly named and shamed so that they realise society disapproves of their actions and so they can be shamed into conforming and taking responsibility for their actions
Post modernists - growth of localised arrangements
Post modernists identify a growing detachment of the CJS from centralised control to more informal localised arrangements as it starts to consider peoples different lifestyles and needs
Growth of localised arrangements - Sharia courts
Voluntary use of Sharia courts based on Islamic rather than British law to deal with disputes shows growing informality and localism of criminal justice
Growing use of private security example
Liverpool One is a privately owned and controlled area
Right Realists thoughts on crime and crime prevention
People choose to commit crime because the benefits outweigh the cost of crime therefore society needs to increase cost of crime
Garland - increased social control
- There is now a ‘culture of control’ concerned with controlling, preventing and reducing risks of people becoming victims of crime.
- Linked to Hirschi’s control theory: strong social bonds integrating people into communities encourages individuals to choose conformity over deviance and crime - the focus is on tighter control and socialisation by strengthening social institutions and isolating deviant individuals through community pressure
Policies flowing from increased social control:
- Making parents take more responsibility for the supervision of their children and socialising them more effectively into conformist behaviour - those who don’t issued with Parenting orders - September 2024 mother didn’t take her son to court and was in Ibiza issue a 6 month parenting course.
- Schemes like neighbourhood watch helping to build community controls over crime.
- Cracking down on anti-social behaviour through ‘naming and shaming’ measures like ASBOs.
Clarke - situational crime prevention
Describes situational crime prevention as a preventative approach that relies on reducing opportunities for crime
What are situational crime preventions?
- directed at specific crimes e.g. dispersal orders in West Kirby after GCSE exams to prevent anti social behaviour
- involve managing the environment of the crime
- aim to increase effort of committing crime and reducing rewards
Examples of target hardening
Post-coding goods, anti-climb paint, CCTV, locks, premises and car alarms
What does target hardening do?
Reduces the opportunities for crime in particular locations and poses greater risks for offenders and encourages them not to commit capital offence
What is SCP concerned with?
Preventing crime in particular locations
Rational Choice theory
- offenders are acting rationally, weighing up benefits and risks when they see an opportunity for crime before choosing whether or not to commit an offence
- Clarke - most theories don’t offer realistic solutions to crime therefore we must reduce opportunity
- Felton e.g. Port Authority Bus Terminal NYC - toilets designed as a settling for luggage thefts, rough sleeping, drug taking and homosexual liaisons - reshaping the layout to ‘design crime out’ - replacing large sinks the homeless were bathing in with small hand basins reducing crime and deviance
Routine activity theory
Crime occurs as a part of everyday routines when there are 3 conditions present:
1. Suitable target for the offender e.g. a person
2. No ‘capable guardian’ e.g. CCTV
3. Potential offender present who think the first two condition are met and chooses whether or not to commit the crime
What is a criticism of SCP (situational crime prevention)?
They don’t reduce crime just displace it.
Chaiken eat al - crackdown on subway robberies in New York merely displaced them to the streets above
SCP evaluation
- Reduces certain types of crime
- Most measures lead to displacement
- Focuses on opportunistic petty crime ignoring crimes like state crimes
- Assumes criminal actions are rational - unlikely for violent crimes to be committed sober
- Ignores the root causes of crimes such as poverty or poor socialisation - makes it difficult to develop long term strategies
Who influenced environmental crime prevention?
James Wilson
What does Wilson argue that crime is caused by?
‘Incivilities’ or anti-social behaviour e.g. vandalism
What does Wilson suggest will happen if anti-social behaviour is tolerated?
Areas will determinate and a sense of anything goes develops
Wilson - broken window
if signs of disorder such as a broken window are left broken or graffiti is not removed this encourages further similar acts of deviance and sends out a clear message to criminals and deviants that no one cares and encourages more of the same behaviours
When does Wilson suggest disorder is likely to occur?
If there is little sense of a community or neighbourhood - means both formal and informal social controls are weak
What does Wilson think will happen if disorder continues in communities?
- members of the community feel powerless
- older members may be afraid to leave their homes
- respectable people may move away
- more anti-social elements may replace them
-police may feel anti-social behaviour isn’t there responsibility
What does Wilson suggest will happen without remedial action?
The situation worsens tipping the neighbourhood into a spiral of decline
Wilsons number of environmental solutions:
- Environmental improvement strategy - any broken window must be repaired immediately
- Zero tolerance policing - instead of reacting police should be proactive tackling the slightest sign of disorder
Success of environmental solutions - NYC clean cars programme
- Subway cars with graffiti removed > graffiti was largely removed from subways
- NYC crackdown on ‘squeegee merchants’ discovered many had outstanding warrants for violent property crimes
- between 1993-6 significant drop in crime in NYC including 50% drop in homicides
Limitations of environmental solutions
- NYPD benefitted from 7,000 extra officers - decline in major US cities including those who didn’t adopt the new policy.
- From 1994 new jobs were created.
- decline in the availability of crack cocaine
- Fall in murder rate owned more to improved medical emergency services than policing.
- Main emphasis on the role of police not community
Left Realists on crime
Focus on organisation of society and the inequality, disadvantage and poverty resulting from this creating an environment which crime might be the norm of
What do Left Realists say about offenders and victims?
Found in those with highest levels of marginality and social exclusion - emphasise the need to tackle material and cultural deprivation that are risk factors for crime particularly among young people
What do Left Realists argue about urban crime?
It’s a rational response to lack of legitimate opportunities and powerlessness deprived groups feel
What do social and community crime prevention place emphasis on?
The potential offender and their social context.
Aim: to remove conditions that predispose individuals to crime in the first place
What does lack of confidence in the police mean?
Police have to resort to military style policing e.g. CCTV, stop and search
Lewis et al
Resentment of a perceived lack of respect from the police and of the experience of innocent people being repeatedly stopped and searched was one of the major factors behind the 2011 English riots
Case study: perry pre school project
Where - Michigan
Who for - disadvantaged black children aged 3-4
What happened - offered 2 years intellectual enrichment programme including weekly home visits
Impact - longitudinal study followed students progress - by 40 significantly fewer lifetime arrests for violent crime, property crime and drugs, more graduated high school and were in employment - for every $ spent $17 were saved on welfare prison and other costs
What do crime prevention methods focus on?
Low level crimes ignoring those of the powerful
Whyte survey of 26 crime and disorder area partnerships in the NW to discover what crimes they were targeting
The top 3:
1. Viechle crime
2. Burglary
3. Drug related crime
