This week's sessions complemented last week's, looking at the next few steps along the crime control 'conveyor belt' (or the due process obstacle course): the police decision to arrest & the Crown Prosecution Service's decision to prosecute (or not).
It is surprising to realise that the police's current arsenal of arrest powers are a modern invention. Before 1984, the standard way to be charged with a crime was to be issued with a 'summons' to court; arrests would only be made if suspects were seen to be dangerous or at risk of fleeing. Even after PACE was passed in 1984, there was a presumption that people would only be arrested for the more serious crimes ('arrestable offences'). Since 2005 all offences have been 'arrestable'; arrest is now firmly established as a relatively early part of the process of bringing a charge.
When the police have decided on a charge, it is the Crown Prosecution Service - another relative newcomer - which decides whether it should be brought. There are two tests: evidential ("is the evidence good enough to make a conviction more likely than not?") and public interest ("if the evidence is good enough, is prosecuting this offence in the public interest?") The 'public interest' test involves many different considerations, some of which can weigh against each other or cancel each other out. Imagine that the papers are reporting on a man who killed a police officer 50 years ago, went on the run and has now returned to this country, elderly and severely ill. 'Public interest' factors count in favour of prosecuting crimes of violence; against prosecuting crimes which took place a long time ago; in favour of prosecuting crimes against public servants; against prosecuting if the offender is vulnerable; in favour of prosecuting if failing to do so will affect public confidence... and so on. The seminar exercise gave you hands-on experience of weighing up these sorts of conflicting considerations; I hope you found it useful.
Friday, 2 December 2011
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Week 9
This week we left the realms of theory and started looking at the actual criminal justice system (CJS for short), beginning with the police.
A point I've stressed on this unit is that the CJS isn't a perfect, coherent, logically designed system: it consists of a lot of separate agencies, each of which has grown and changed over time. This week's seminar exercise focuses on the broad range of goals the police are charged with achieving and the very different approaches they need to adopt in order to do so. The focus in the lecture was on how the police - and the police's relationship with government and society - has changed over time.
The key issues in the history of the police are power and accountability. Police forces, and chief constables in particular, have always wanted the power to do the job as they see fit, without being made accountable either to local authorities or to central government. Neither local authorities nor the Home Office have ever been keen on this idea; as a result, between the 1960s and the 1990s a three-way power struggle developed over who should be in charge of the police. The tug-of-war was resolved in 1994: it was established that chief constables would have free rein over operational matters, and that local authorities would not have any effective oversight; the police were to be governed through targets, guidelines and contracts, defined by the Home Office and implemented locally. This basic structure remained unchanged under both John Major and New Labour. Local democratic control was more or less non-existent; the police were pressured to do something about low-level disorder and anti-social behaviour, on the grounds that this was what "the people" wanted, but the pressure came from above, not from below.
The Coalition aims to change all of this: out goes the bureaucratic apparatus through which all those contracts and targets have been administered; out goes constabulary independence in favour of Home Office oversight over chief constables: and in come locally-elected Police and Crime Commissioners, with democratically-validated authority over the local chief constable. How this will work out we can't yet say, although it seems highly likely that penal populism will figure heavily in the platforms of the first wave of Police and Crime Commissioners, and that chief constables will push back against anyone trying to tell them what to do.
A point I've stressed on this unit is that the CJS isn't a perfect, coherent, logically designed system: it consists of a lot of separate agencies, each of which has grown and changed over time. This week's seminar exercise focuses on the broad range of goals the police are charged with achieving and the very different approaches they need to adopt in order to do so. The focus in the lecture was on how the police - and the police's relationship with government and society - has changed over time.
The key issues in the history of the police are power and accountability. Police forces, and chief constables in particular, have always wanted the power to do the job as they see fit, without being made accountable either to local authorities or to central government. Neither local authorities nor the Home Office have ever been keen on this idea; as a result, between the 1960s and the 1990s a three-way power struggle developed over who should be in charge of the police. The tug-of-war was resolved in 1994: it was established that chief constables would have free rein over operational matters, and that local authorities would not have any effective oversight; the police were to be governed through targets, guidelines and contracts, defined by the Home Office and implemented locally. This basic structure remained unchanged under both John Major and New Labour. Local democratic control was more or less non-existent; the police were pressured to do something about low-level disorder and anti-social behaviour, on the grounds that this was what "the people" wanted, but the pressure came from above, not from below.
The Coalition aims to change all of this: out goes the bureaucratic apparatus through which all those contracts and targets have been administered; out goes constabulary independence in favour of Home Office oversight over chief constables: and in come locally-elected Police and Crime Commissioners, with democratically-validated authority over the local chief constable. How this will work out we can't yet say, although it seems highly likely that penal populism will figure heavily in the platforms of the first wave of Police and Crime Commissioners, and that chief constables will push back against anyone trying to tell them what to do.
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Week 8
This week's lecture looked at sentencing, or at least scratched the surface of this huge topic.
There are three very different ways of looking at sentencing policy; in fact, you can't really make sense of sentencing unless you look at all three of them, which is why I tried to get them all into the lecture. Philosophically, you can ask what sentencing is for: what are the courts trying to achieve by passing a particular sentence, and what should they be trying to achieve? How you answer this question depends on what kind of purpose you think sentencing should serve: is the main point of the sentence the punitive effect it has on the offender, or the beneficial effect it has on society? Retributive theories of sentencing argue that sentencing is all about punishment, but that the punishment should be scaled precisely to the offence; in practice, retributivists tend to be in favour of making sentences less harsh. Utilitarian theories argue that sentencing is carried out for the good of society, which may involve locking up some offenders for life or imposing excessively harsh punishments so as to deter potential offenders. Utilitarian theories are invoked to justify everything from restorative justice to indefinite prison sentences.
Practically, you can ask what sentences work. Utilitarian theorists, in particular, justify particular types of sentence on the grounds that they will cut crime. Research can be and has been carried out into whether this approach to sentencing actually works, and the results are very inconclusive.
Politically, finally, you can analyse sentencing policy in terms of how it has changed over time - and why. The history of sentencing over the last two decades is a rather sad story of penal populism from government and pressure for "judicial independence" from below; retributivist sentencing has fallen out of fashion, but the research which could validate a utilitarian approach to sentencing has largely been ignored. Instead of sentencing being guided by a consistent theory and underpinned by research, in practice it is largely guided by political pressures and underpinned by gut feeling. Some interesting developments have taken place in areas such as restorative justice, and it remains to be seen how the Coalition's criminal justice policy will evolve in this area: which will be most powerful, the punitive voices on the Tory benches, the liberal inclinations of the current Minister of Justice or the ever-shrinking budget?
There are three very different ways of looking at sentencing policy; in fact, you can't really make sense of sentencing unless you look at all three of them, which is why I tried to get them all into the lecture. Philosophically, you can ask what sentencing is for: what are the courts trying to achieve by passing a particular sentence, and what should they be trying to achieve? How you answer this question depends on what kind of purpose you think sentencing should serve: is the main point of the sentence the punitive effect it has on the offender, or the beneficial effect it has on society? Retributive theories of sentencing argue that sentencing is all about punishment, but that the punishment should be scaled precisely to the offence; in practice, retributivists tend to be in favour of making sentences less harsh. Utilitarian theories argue that sentencing is carried out for the good of society, which may involve locking up some offenders for life or imposing excessively harsh punishments so as to deter potential offenders. Utilitarian theories are invoked to justify everything from restorative justice to indefinite prison sentences.
Practically, you can ask what sentences work. Utilitarian theorists, in particular, justify particular types of sentence on the grounds that they will cut crime. Research can be and has been carried out into whether this approach to sentencing actually works, and the results are very inconclusive.
Politically, finally, you can analyse sentencing policy in terms of how it has changed over time - and why. The history of sentencing over the last two decades is a rather sad story of penal populism from government and pressure for "judicial independence" from below; retributivist sentencing has fallen out of fashion, but the research which could validate a utilitarian approach to sentencing has largely been ignored. Instead of sentencing being guided by a consistent theory and underpinned by research, in practice it is largely guided by political pressures and underpinned by gut feeling. Some interesting developments have taken place in areas such as restorative justice, and it remains to be seen how the Coalition's criminal justice policy will evolve in this area: which will be most powerful, the punitive voices on the Tory benches, the liberal inclinations of the current Minister of Justice or the ever-shrinking budget?
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Week 7
This week we've been looking at the way that politics affects the criminal law.
Earlier in the unit we've talked about how and why particular actions get defined as 'crimes'. It has to do with harm and repugnance: if an action is seen as particularly harmful, or a harmless action is seen to be particularly revolting, it's likely to be criminalised.
The trouble is, this creates the possibility that actions - and people - will be criminalised purely because they happen to be unpopular. The law is supposed to stand in the way of this happening. The law is supposed to provide a coherent, comprehensive and rational set of rules governing everything that happens in society. Because the law is supposed to be coherent, new laws can't be added on arbitrarily; because the law is supposed to be rational, new laws have got to make sense.
At least, that's the theory. In practice, laws are made by politicians, which means that the law is vulnerable to political pressure. The main pressure on the law over the last couple of decades has come from an approach to the law called penal populism. Populism consists essentially of politicians telling people that their common-sense view of the world is right, and politicians are lying to them (at least, all the other politicians are). Penal populism consists of telling people that they're right to be worried about crime, they're right to think that the criminal justice system is in difficulty, and that the government is now going to listen to them and do something about it.
From Michael Howard in the mid-90s to Louise Casey in the late 00s, politicians of different parties have played the 'penal populist' card over and over again - hence Ian Loader's comment about taking "another ride on the law-and-order merry-go-round". This clearly suggests that there's a problem with penal populism - if it was ever going to work, it should have worked by now! The danger is that penal populism may encourage the anger and anxiety about crime which it claims to address - the more politicians announce that crime is a huge problem that other politicians have failed to deal with, the more people believe that crime is a huge problem that all politicians are failing to deal with.
Earlier in the unit we've talked about how and why particular actions get defined as 'crimes'. It has to do with harm and repugnance: if an action is seen as particularly harmful, or a harmless action is seen to be particularly revolting, it's likely to be criminalised.
The trouble is, this creates the possibility that actions - and people - will be criminalised purely because they happen to be unpopular. The law is supposed to stand in the way of this happening. The law is supposed to provide a coherent, comprehensive and rational set of rules governing everything that happens in society. Because the law is supposed to be coherent, new laws can't be added on arbitrarily; because the law is supposed to be rational, new laws have got to make sense.
At least, that's the theory. In practice, laws are made by politicians, which means that the law is vulnerable to political pressure. The main pressure on the law over the last couple of decades has come from an approach to the law called penal populism. Populism consists essentially of politicians telling people that their common-sense view of the world is right, and politicians are lying to them (at least, all the other politicians are). Penal populism consists of telling people that they're right to be worried about crime, they're right to think that the criminal justice system is in difficulty, and that the government is now going to listen to them and do something about it.
From Michael Howard in the mid-90s to Louise Casey in the late 00s, politicians of different parties have played the 'penal populist' card over and over again - hence Ian Loader's comment about taking "another ride on the law-and-order merry-go-round". This clearly suggests that there's a problem with penal populism - if it was ever going to work, it should have worked by now! The danger is that penal populism may encourage the anger and anxiety about crime which it claims to address - the more politicians announce that crime is a huge problem that other politicians have failed to deal with, the more people believe that crime is a huge problem that all politicians are failing to deal with.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Week 5
This week we looked at Packer's 'due process' and 'crime control' models, in what was the most theoretically-oriented & probably the most demanding week of the unit so far.
The best way to think about these two models of the CJS is probably to start from those two images, the "conveyor belt" and the "obstacle course".
According to the 'crime control' model, the CJS needs to process a lot of offenders in order to keep society safe and orderly; the police can be trusted to identify the right people most of the time; and the system should operate as far as possible like a 'conveyor belt' from the moment that a suspect is arrested. This is the meaning of the 'presumption of guilt': in practice, everyone who is in the system is presumed to be equally guilty (in reality), because treating them as innocent would be far too demanding and time-consuming.
According to the 'due process' model, on the other hand, the CJS can do a lot of harm to the people it 'processes'; the police can't be trusted to get it right every time; so the system should operate as far a possible like an 'obstacle course', in which the suspect is only convicted once every piece of contradictory evidence has been eliminated and every weakness in the case has been rectified. The 'presumption of innocence' says that everyone who is in the system is innocent (in law), and should be treated as such, until they have been proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
Don't try to reconcile these models with each other: they're meant to be polar opposites! However, it is true that if you push either one of these models to extremes you get something grotesque and unreal, like a court which sits for decades without deciding anything or a system for maintaining order by means of random execution. The question is always which way to push the system: do we want a bit more 'due process' (e.g. by letting more suspects opt for a jury trial) or a bit more 'efficiency' (e.g. by letting the police hold suspects for longer)? There are costs and benefits either way. (We may also want a bit more Doctor Who. Or that may just be me.)
Finally, one important point about the difference between the two mindsets is that the 'due process' model is characterised by scepticism about how much good the CJS can do. Looking back at the lecture on statistics, a 'due process' advocate would point to the very similar trends in the crime rate across many different Western nations and say that changes to criminal justice policy in Britain haven't made much difference to crime. That being the case, they might argue, it's a good idea to design the system in such a way that it does as little harm as possible, e.g. by locking up innocent people.
How do you think an 'efficiency' advocate would answer this argument? One possible counter-argument would be that the CJS isn't just about the actual level of crime - it's also there to deal with fear of crime, and with the widespread public anxieties about crime, terrorism, anti-social behaviour and so on. This brings us back to the 'Durkheimian' view of criminal justice - the CJS should respond to public fears and anxieties, by being seen to do something about the things society finds repugnant.
What do you think?
No classes or lectures next week, which will leave you free to hit the Employability Fair on Monday and Tuesday. I'm not running my standard office hours either, but I'm contactable by email any time - if you want to meet up, drop me a line on p.j.edwards at em em yoo dot ac dot uk.
The best way to think about these two models of the CJS is probably to start from those two images, the "conveyor belt" and the "obstacle course".
According to the 'crime control' model, the CJS needs to process a lot of offenders in order to keep society safe and orderly; the police can be trusted to identify the right people most of the time; and the system should operate as far as possible like a 'conveyor belt' from the moment that a suspect is arrested. This is the meaning of the 'presumption of guilt': in practice, everyone who is in the system is presumed to be equally guilty (in reality), because treating them as innocent would be far too demanding and time-consuming.
According to the 'due process' model, on the other hand, the CJS can do a lot of harm to the people it 'processes'; the police can't be trusted to get it right every time; so the system should operate as far a possible like an 'obstacle course', in which the suspect is only convicted once every piece of contradictory evidence has been eliminated and every weakness in the case has been rectified. The 'presumption of innocence' says that everyone who is in the system is innocent (in law), and should be treated as such, until they have been proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
Don't try to reconcile these models with each other: they're meant to be polar opposites! However, it is true that if you push either one of these models to extremes you get something grotesque and unreal, like a court which sits for decades without deciding anything or a system for maintaining order by means of random execution. The question is always which way to push the system: do we want a bit more 'due process' (e.g. by letting more suspects opt for a jury trial) or a bit more 'efficiency' (e.g. by letting the police hold suspects for longer)? There are costs and benefits either way. (We may also want a bit more Doctor Who. Or that may just be me.)
Finally, one important point about the difference between the two mindsets is that the 'due process' model is characterised by scepticism about how much good the CJS can do. Looking back at the lecture on statistics, a 'due process' advocate would point to the very similar trends in the crime rate across many different Western nations and say that changes to criminal justice policy in Britain haven't made much difference to crime. That being the case, they might argue, it's a good idea to design the system in such a way that it does as little harm as possible, e.g. by locking up innocent people.
How do you think an 'efficiency' advocate would answer this argument? One possible counter-argument would be that the CJS isn't just about the actual level of crime - it's also there to deal with fear of crime, and with the widespread public anxieties about crime, terrorism, anti-social behaviour and so on. This brings us back to the 'Durkheimian' view of criminal justice - the CJS should respond to public fears and anxieties, by being seen to do something about the things society finds repugnant.
What do you think?
No classes or lectures next week, which will leave you free to hit the Employability Fair on Monday and Tuesday. I'm not running my standard office hours either, but I'm contactable by email any time - if you want to meet up, drop me a line on p.j.edwards at em em yoo dot ac dot uk.
Thursday, 20 October 2011
Week 4
Mostly statistics this week!
The point of this week's seminar & lecture was to think about how statistics on crime are produced. There is no "God's eye view" of crime: if we want to know what's going on, we've only got statistics to go on (apart from anecdotes and personal experience). So if we want to understand, for example, why the statistics show that a particular kind of crime has gone up, we need to understand how those statistics were produced. Usually there are a whole range of factors influencing statistics, and changes in those factors may lead to changes in the figures.
There was one particularly interesting example in the seminar, with the statement that "petty offences, many of them committed by young people, form an increasing proportion of crime". This could be because
This kind of problem is the reason why it's useful to have different statistical sources of information on crime. In this case, most of the external factors we've identified affect police recorded crime figures; cross-checking against figures from the British Crime Survey would help to eliminate external influences on the statistics. (Although BCS data has its own potential distorting factors.)
Finally, I said at the end of the lecture that next week's lecture would look at sentencing. Wrong! Next week's lecture is about "due process" and "crime control". In advance of it, please read the first chapter of Sanders and Young's Criminal Justice, which is called "The aims and values of 'criminal justice'". You can find it (the chapter) online; it's linked on Moodle under the Essential Reading heading.
The point of this week's seminar & lecture was to think about how statistics on crime are produced. There is no "God's eye view" of crime: if we want to know what's going on, we've only got statistics to go on (apart from anecdotes and personal experience). So if we want to understand, for example, why the statistics show that a particular kind of crime has gone up, we need to understand how those statistics were produced. Usually there are a whole range of factors influencing statistics, and changes in those factors may lead to changes in the figures.
There was one particularly interesting example in the seminar, with the statement that "petty offences, many of them committed by young people, form an increasing proportion of crime". This could be because
- People are committing more crime at the moment, opportunistic petty crime in particular, due to the recession
- Young people in particular are committing more crime at the moment (because of the recession) and young people are more likely to commit petty crime
- Petty crime is being more heavily policed at the moment (by PCSOs, street wardens etc), leading to more petty crime being recorded in police figures (although it may be that no more crime is actually being committed)
- A number of new low-level offences have been created recently, leading to a rise in overall crime because people are committing new crimes (although it may be that people's behaviour hasn't changed)
- Low-level offending has remained constant, but more serious offending has dropped, leading to a rise in low-level offending as a proportion of the total
This kind of problem is the reason why it's useful to have different statistical sources of information on crime. In this case, most of the external factors we've identified affect police recorded crime figures; cross-checking against figures from the British Crime Survey would help to eliminate external influences on the statistics. (Although BCS data has its own potential distorting factors.)
Finally, I said at the end of the lecture that next week's lecture would look at sentencing. Wrong! Next week's lecture is about "due process" and "crime control". In advance of it, please read the first chapter of Sanders and Young's Criminal Justice, which is called "The aims and values of 'criminal justice'". You can find it (the chapter) online; it's linked on Moodle under the Essential Reading heading.
Friday, 14 October 2011
Week 3
I didn't have much luck with the audio-visuals this week - the perils of writing lectures on a Mac! I hope Al Murray managed to get his point across even without video.
The point of this week's lecture was to open up the question of what the criminal justice system should be doing (and who it should be doing it for), before we start looking at statistics next week & ask whether it's doing it well. The lecture approached the question of what the CJS ought to be doing from two angles - starting from first principles and then looking at what the government currently says about it. The point I wanted to stress is that there are lots of different ways of defining success for the CJS: reducing crime, reducing fear of crime, rehabilitating offenders, locking up offenders for long periods, making the "law-abiding majority" feel safer, etc - and they all have costs and benefits. What we saw in the seminar was that they also appeal to different groups of people: not everyone wants the CJS to 'succeed' in the same way.
The point of this week's lecture was to open up the question of what the criminal justice system should be doing (and who it should be doing it for), before we start looking at statistics next week & ask whether it's doing it well. The lecture approached the question of what the CJS ought to be doing from two angles - starting from first principles and then looking at what the government currently says about it. The point I wanted to stress is that there are lots of different ways of defining success for the CJS: reducing crime, reducing fear of crime, rehabilitating offenders, locking up offenders for long periods, making the "law-abiding majority" feel safer, etc - and they all have costs and benefits. What we saw in the seminar was that they also appeal to different groups of people: not everyone wants the CJS to 'succeed' in the same way.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Week 2
This week's lecture gave an overview of the Criminal Justice System; the main point of the lecture was that the CJS is (a) big, (b) complex, (c) composed of lots of separate agencies and (d) not actually a system. In the seminar we looked at some of the different agencies involved & their conflicting priorities, suggesting that having different agencies pulling in different directions might not always be a bad thing.
As we go through the unit, I'm hoping people will leave comments & suggestions on these blog posts. I think the lecture was reasonably clear & trust it got the main points across, although the slides could perhaps have been a bit more exciting. I thought the seminars went pretty well (those I did, anyway) - most people had something to say & we filled the time. I think it was reasonably well integrated with the lecture, too, although I'd be interested to get the perspective of people in the Monday groups - what's it like doing the unit 'seminar first'?
More generally, I hope people are keeping up with the reading that's assigned in the Unit Outline. Newburn's Criminology in particular is a terrific resource, with something in it for just about every week of the unit - and it's even available online.
As we go through the unit, I'm hoping people will leave comments & suggestions on these blog posts. I think the lecture was reasonably clear & trust it got the main points across, although the slides could perhaps have been a bit more exciting. I thought the seminars went pretty well (those I did, anyway) - most people had something to say & we filled the time. I think it was reasonably well integrated with the lecture, too, although I'd be interested to get the perspective of people in the Monday groups - what's it like doing the unit 'seminar first'?
More generally, I hope people are keeping up with the reading that's assigned in the Unit Outline. Newburn's Criminology in particular is a terrific resource, with something in it for just about every week of the unit - and it's even available online.
Monday, 26 September 2011
Week 1
Hello World!
This is the first post on the CJP 2011/12 blog. I'll be using this space to put up general thoughts about the unit, and more specifically to say a few words about lectures, seminars and assessments. Comments will always be open, so you can use the blog to feed back any queries, comments and issues you may have. Announcements won't be made here - they will continue to appear on Moodle.
There's not much to say about week 1 - first lecture, introduction to the unit, that's about it. Unless you've got any thoughts...
This is the first post on the CJP 2011/12 blog. I'll be using this space to put up general thoughts about the unit, and more specifically to say a few words about lectures, seminars and assessments. Comments will always be open, so you can use the blog to feed back any queries, comments and issues you may have. Announcements won't be made here - they will continue to appear on Moodle.
There's not much to say about week 1 - first lecture, introduction to the unit, that's about it. Unless you've got any thoughts...
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