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
Why does the NW have one of the most heavily concentrated sites of chemical production in Europe?
2 plants releasing 40% of all factory produced cancer causing chemicals into the air in the UK each year - Whyte: despite this their activities aren’t included in the crime and disorder partnership agendas
Feminism and control and prevention of crime: What do feminists focus on?
- Fear of crime especially patriarchal based violence
- Domestic and sexual violence
newborn feminist solutions to crime 2007
- Make more visible forms of victimisation that have been ignored e.g. DV
- Exposing violence mainly in the home
- Showing sexual violence is an issue of power not misogyny and sex
- Showing how a male dominated CJS holds stereotypes of women
- Identify how CJS contributes to further victimisation
- More specialised training of police DV and rape to encourage reporting and prosecution - more rape crisis centres
- Reduce crimes committed by women
Evaluation of Marxist and radical feminists
- point to huge social change with revolutionary action but would also support practical short term solutions
How could men be persuaded not to commit crime?
- Exposing the extent of male crimes against women
- taking steps to prevent men from committing re socialisation
- Tighter controls and tougher sanctions
How do post modernists see crime?
A social construction based on a narrow legal definition
How do post modernists see the law?
As an outdated meta narrative which doesn’t reflect growing diversity of society
What does Lea suggest that the CJS needs to do?
Recognise the diversity of social groups and become more sensitive and tolerant of ethnic and gender identities
What do post modernists believe that growing diversity leads to?
The need for more informal localised arrangements to prevent and control harm caused by crime and disorder which involves replacing centrally managed CJS processes by localised customised community policing, use of private security and informal controls through family, community, schools and work
How do post modernists see the cause of crime?
Complex
How do post modernists think we could reduce reoffending?
Justice needs to be more individualised - are there alternative prosecution which better suit the needs of those causing harm and reduce the risk of reoffending
Evaluation of post modernism and the control and prevention of crime
- Draws attention to diversity of society and the idea that a centralised CJS may not meet all needs and that law, policing and CJS need to be flexible to be effective
- Provides insights into developments like extensive surveillance e.g. CCTV
- Doesn’t recognise the importance of social inequality
- Doesn’t recognise that decentralised and informal arrangements are likely to benefit the most well-organised and affluent middle class groups
Definition of surveillance
The mentoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population or crime control
Surveillance in the 14th century
During the plague communities nominated one person to monitor and record the spread of plague to stop people infecting non-infected areas
Modern surveillance methods
- CCTV
- biometric scanning
- electronic tagging
- ANPR
- databases
Foucault - the birth of prison: sovereign power
Pre 1800 = monarch had absolute power over people and their bodies.
Control asserted by inflicting disfiguring visible punishment.
Punishment = brutal and public
Foucault - the birth of prison: disciplinary power
Dominant from 1800 onwards
Control of the mind and should and body through surveillance.
Punishment in prisons = highly monitored with the aim of rehabilitation.
Panopticon: each criminal had their own cell and unknown to them were watched by guards and so had to behave at all times - surveillance turns into self surveillance
What other institutions adopted self surveillance?
Mental asylums, barracks, factories, workhouses + schools
How does Foucault see disciplinary power?
Dispersed through society reaching every individual.
Foucault limitations
- Wrongly assumes that expressive aspects of punishment disappear in modern society.
- CCTV = a form of panopticism that doesn’t always prevent crime - Norris reviewed dozens of studies and concluded that whilst CCTV reduced crime it had no effect on other crimes and may have caused displacement.
Foucault strengths
- CCTV and surveillance isn’t always negative - some people feel safer.
- Not all crime is rational - Left Realist + feminist view of crime
Feels and Simon 3 main differences from Foucault disciplinary power
- Focus on groups
- Interested in prevention and rehabilitation
- Use of calculation of risk
Young ‘actuarial justice’
A damage limitation strategy
Lyon ‘ social sorting’
Treat people differently based upon their level of risk
Gary Marx ‘categorical suspicion’
People are placed under suspicion of wrongdoing because they belong to a particular group - 2010 West Midlands police sought to introduce a counter terrorism scheme to surround two mainly Muslim suburbs of Birmingham with about 150 ANPR cameras (some covert) placing the whole community under suspicion
How are profiles of typical offenders made?
Using official statistics
Matthiessen
Foucault account only shows part of the story - panopticon allows few to watch the many, modern media enables everyone to see the few ‘synopticon’ - everyone watches everyone
Thompson
Powerful groups fear media surveillance which acts as a form of social control over their actions
Mann sousveillance
Citizens can now act as the controller
McChaill
This bottom up scrutiny can’t reverse established hierarchies of surveillance
Haggerty and Ericsson
Surveillance technologies now involve the manipulation of virtual objects in cyberspace
What are two main justifications of punishment?
- Reduction
- Retribution
Reduction:
1. Deterrence example
2. Rehabilitation example
3. Incapacitation example
- Thatcher’s short sharp shock 1980s.
- Education and training.
- Remove offenders capacity to reoffend e.g. prison, execution and chemical castration.
Retribution
- An expressive view of punishment which expresses societies outrage.
- Since 1970s there has been a growing emphasis on retributive justice - Newburn: just deserts - leading to imprisonment doubling in the UK between 1970 - 2014
What is punishment primarily?
Expressive
What do Functionalists believe the purpose/ function of punishment is?
Through rituals such as public trial and punishment societies shared values are reaffirmed and its members come to feel a sense of moral unity - similar to boundary maintenance.
What are the 2 types of justice Durkheim identifies?
- Retribution justice
- Restitution justice
What is Durkheim’s retribution justice?
In traditional societies solidarity between individuals is based on their similarity to each other producing a strong collective conscience. When this collective conscience is offended by people committing crimes, punishment is severe and cruel and its motivation is purely expressive.
What is Durkheim’s restituive justice?
In modern society solidarity is based on interdependence between individuals. Crime damages this interdependence. Therefore this needs to be repaired through compensation.
Restitutive justice aims to make restitution to restore things to how they were before the offence. Its motivation is to restore societies equilibrium.
Does punishment in society still have an expressive element?
Yes because it still expresses collective emotions.
What is the function/ purpose of punishment for Marxists?
Maintain existing order - a means of defending ruling class property against lower classes.
E.g. 1700’s punishment of hanging and transportation for theft and poaching.
What do Marxists believe the form of punishment reflects?
The economic base of society.
Marxists: Rusche and Kirchheimer
Under capitalism imprisonment becomes the dominate form of punishment.
Marxists: Melissa and Pavarini
See imprisonment as reflecting capitalist relations to productions:
- Prisons no capitalist factory have similar disciplinary style involving subordination and rigid timetables.
- Capitalism puts a price on the workers time so prisoners ‘do time’ to ‘pay for their crimes’.
What does the Weberian approach believe society has become more of? And what does this mean?
Society has become more rational based upon laws rule and regulations which means punishment is based on impersonal rules and regulations and administered by complex bureaucracies of officials rather than that of sovereign power of monarchs.
What is the main criticism of the Weberian view?
The extent to which officials follow the rules.
Many cases of miscarriages of justices where judges have discriminated unfairly and where individual law enforcement officers have considerable discretion in interpreting rules.
Guildford 4: Wrongly accused of burning a pub down - convictions were quashed 15 years after they were sentenced.
Has prison proven to be an effective form of rehabilitation?
No - 2/3 of offenders reoffend
What has there been a move towards since 1980s for criminals?
‘Popular punitiveness’ where politicians have sought electoral popularity by calling for tougher sentences.
What has happened due to tougher sentencing?
Prison population has almost doubled between 1993-2016 to 85,000.
What are the consequences of the prison population growing so significantly?
Overcrowding
Poor sanitation
Poor food
Poor clothing
Limited work and educational opportunities
Is the prison population largely male or female?
Male - 5% female
How does Garland see the USA and to a lesser extent the UK moving into?
Moving into an era of mass incarceration in the USA - 1972 - 20,000 inmates in state and federal prison - today 1.5 million like Rikers Island and 700,000 local jails.
What % of the populations is under supervision of the CJC in some way?
3%
Ideological function - Downes
US prison systems soak up 30-40% of the unemployed making capitalism look successful.
How does Garland see the politicisation of crime control?
As raising prison numbers.
How does Simon see part of America?
‘War on drugs’ - due to widespread drug use there is an almost limitless supply of arrestable and imprisonable offenders
What is transcarceration?
The idea that individuals become locked in a cycle of control shifting between different carceral agencies during their lifetimes.
How do some sociologists see transcarceration?
As a result of the blurring of boundaries between criminal justice and welfare agencies e.g. health housing and social services have increasingly been given a crime role working with police sharing data on the same individuals.
What does Cohen argue the growth of community control has cast?
‘Net of control’ over more people - Following Foucault ideas Cohen argues the increased range of sanction enables control to penetrate deeper into society.
What is the UN definition of victims?
Those who have suffered through acts or omissions that violate the laws of the state.
How does Christies see victims?
Socially constructed - the stereotype of the ideal victim is favoured by the media and public is weak innocent and blameless
Positivist victimology - Miers
- Aims to identify factors that produce patterns in victimisation.
- Interpersonal crimes of violence.
- ID victims who have contributed t their own victimisation.
Radical victimology - Based on conflict theories e.g. Marxists and Feminists - focus on 2 elements
- Victimisation as a form of structural powerlessness - structural factors place groups at greater risk of victimisation.
- State’s power to apply or deny the label of victim. Victim is a social construct through the CJS the state applies the label of victim on some not others.
Positivist victimology - Hans Von Hentig
Victim proneness:
The implication that victims in some way invite victimisation identified 13 characteristics of victims e.g. females, elderly.
Positivist victimology - Wolfgang
588 homicides in Philadelphia 26% involved victim precipitation (victim triggered events) which led to homicide e.g. first use of violence
Radical victimology - Toombs and Whyte
- safety crimes = employers violations of laws lead to death or injury of workers - often explained away as the fault of the ‘accident prone’ e.g. Bottomely and Clayton fell off a 14 story platform which had faulty brakes - seen to be an accident.
- As with many rape cases this denies the victim official victim status and blames them for their fate.
- ‘failure to label’ or ‘delabeling’ hides the extent of victimisation and denies victims redress. Hides crimes of the powerful e.g. Post office scandal.
- In the hierarchy of victimisation the powerless are most likely to be victimised yet least likely to have this acknowledged by the state.
Limitations of victimology
- Ignores wider structural factors influencing victimisation e.g. poverty.
- Easily lead to ‘victim blaming’ - Amir claim that 1/5 rapes are victim precipitated is no different from saying the victim asked for it.
- Ignores situations where the victim is unaware of their victimisation e.g. crimes against the environment where harm is done but no laws are broken.
- Downplays the role of the law, police and other CJS agencies in tackling crimes effectively - Al Fayed allegations weren’t handled well.
- Ignores the issues of victim precipitation proneness that positive victimology identifies.
Strengths of victimology
- Disregards the role of victims in bringing victimisation on themselves through their own choices.
- Draws attention to how ‘victim status’ is constructed by power and how it benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless.
- Shows the importance of victim offender relationship - in many homicides it is a matter of chance which partly becomes the victim.
Patterns of victimisation: class
- Crime rates highest in areas of high unemployment and poverty where there was high physical disorder, widespread vandalism, graffiti etc.
- 2006 survey of 300 homeless people found they were 12x more likely to experience violence.
- Middle class - greatest fear of crime.
- Upper class - Most likely to report.
Patterns of victimisation: age
- Young at the greatest risk of being victims.
- Infants under 1 most at risk of being murdered.
- Teenagers most vulnerable to assault, theft and abuse in the home, elderly at risk in nursing homes.
Patterns of victimisation: ethnicity
- Minorities more at risk in general - 23 homicides 2007-10.
- Race related crimes - 2014/15 106,000 race related hate crimes.
- Feel under protected and over policed.
Patterns of victimisation: gender
- Males at greatest risk from violent attacks.
- 70% homicides victims are male.
- Women are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse - 1/4 women, 1/6 men.
- In DV cases 89% violence by men against women = sexual violence.
- 90% rape victims are women.
Patterns of victimisation: Repeat victimisation
- If you have been a victim of crime you are very likely to be one again.
- British crime survey - 60% population never been a victim of crime whereas 4% are victims of 44% of crime in that period.
