Criminal Justice

Bryan Gibson

Description

The most straightforward overview available covering the entire criminal justice system. A 'no frills' explanation for beginners.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 31 mars 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908162670
• Langue: English

Extrait

Criminal Justice
A Beginner’s Guide
Bryan Gibson
Copyright and Publication Details
Criminal Justice
A Beginner’s Guide
Bryan Gibson
ISBN 978-1-909976-00-9 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-908162-67-0 (Epub)
ISBN 978-1-908162-68-7 (Adobe Ebook)
Copyright © 2014 This work is the copyright of Bryan Gibson. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by the author in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means, including in hard or electronic copy and via the internet, without the prior written permission of the author.
Cover design © 2014 Waterside Press. Artwork by www.gibgob.com
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
e-book Criminal Justice A Beginner’s Guide is available as an e-book and also to subscribers of Myilibrary, Dawsonera, Ebrary and Ebscohost.
Printed by Lightning Source, Milton Keynes .
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
North American distribution Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. Tel: [phone]; [e-mail]
Published 2014 by
Waterside Press Ltd.
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield on Loddon
Hook, Hampshire
United Kingdom RG27 0JG
Telephone [phone]
E-mail [e-mail]
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Contents
Copyright and Publication Details
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 What is Crime?
2 What is Criminal Justice?
3 Who’s Who?
4 Modern Developments
5 The Police
6 The Criminal Courts in Action
7 Sentencing
8 Prisons and Imprisonment
9 Victims and Restorative Justice
10 Causes of Crime
Glossary of Words, Acronyms and Abbreviations
Index
About the Author
Bryan Gibson is a barrister who worked in the criminal justice system before founding Waterside Press in 1989. He has written several books on aspects of crime and punishment as well as for legal journals and the media. As an editor, he has worked with other authors on a range of interrelated publications.
Acknowledgements
This book could not have been created but for osmosis: a gleaning of facts, ideas and information from authors I have worked with at Waterside Press. I would particularly like to thank John Hostettler, Martin Wright, David J Cornwell, John Blad, Ursula Smartt, Angela Devlin, Frankie Owens, Peter Villiers, (the late) John Alderson, Tony Moore, Tim Newell, Thomas Mathiesen, David Wilson, Andrew Rutherford, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, (the late) Terence Morris, Alan Baker, John Harding, Joanna Kozubska, Paul Cavadino, Herschel Prins, Ben Ashcroft, Bob Turney, Allan Weaver, Justin Rollins, Alan Smith, Stephen Shaw, Eric Cullen, Tessa West, Mike Watkins, Daniel Briggs, Roger Billingsley, George Skelly and Satish Sekar. And I am doubly grateful to David Faulkner for reading and commenting on a late revision of the text. Any errors that remain are my responsibility entirely.
Bryan Gibson
April 2014
Introduction
Criminal justice can be a fascinating topic even if some people prefer more cheering pursuits. From a complex and often controversial subject, I have tried to distil an outline of the essentials: a skeleton to which flesh can be added as the reader explores the subject further.
Law and Order
In an ideal world rules of behaviour and sanctions to enforce them ought to be superfluous. But the real world must take account of human nature: anger, aggression, jealousy, greed, temptation, or simply ‘beating the system’. As in fiction such as Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies , unregulated societies tend to slide into anarchy.
The response is for laws to be passed by the state: in a liberal democracy by consensus, in a ‘managed democracy’ or totalitarian regime by ‘rubber stamping’ or diktat, respectively. The aim can be summed-up using tags in common use: keeping the peace, crime prevention, protecting the public. The state develops strategies to these ends and a range of sanctions to inhibit wrongdoers.
Security, control and risk
Vital to law and order are the tasks of police, prosecutors, courts and correctional services (prisons and probation); plus those of some less obvious participants as will be explained in later chapters. Central to this, three concepts predominate, ‘security’, ‘control’ and ‘risk’: Security of the state, the individual, in prisons, at ports and airports, in places where people gather, to prevent fraud, protect premises, computers and systems Controls on offenders in prison and in the community, on drugs or alcohol, on deviant behaviour, dangerous individuals, terrorists and organized crime. An all-embracing idea is that of ‘crime control’; and Risk assessment to try and reduce or manage dangers (below).
What happens without crime controls?
There is a marked convergence amongst different nations as to the main things justifying state intervention: homicide (the unlawful killing of one person by another: murder, manslaughter and the like), robbery, theft, rioting and public disorder, violence, damage to property (including by lighting fires: aka ‘arson’), causing explosions and sexual misconduct (especially rape or offences against children). Beyond this, the nature of crime varies widely indeed: Chapter 1 .
Some communities exist without highly-structured crime controls. Threats are resolved, e.g. by ‘elders’ following custom and tradition. Others use restorative justice: Chapter 9 . At the other extreme, a void in state intervention may serve as an invitation to others to step in: the Mafia and organized crime politically or religiously-motivated groups such as the IRA (with its own punishment beatings and executions) vigilantes harassing people such as anti-gay and lesbian activists at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia; or the Ku Klux Klan in the southern states of the USA in the early 20 th -century (targeting black people in particular).
Effective state-sponsored justice avoids the need for unlawful or private justice, vengeance, mob rule or kangaroo courts (a misnomer for artificial courts lacking any legal authority). State control may vary in its extent due, e.g. to zero-tolerance, soft or heavy policing, prosecution policy, political will or different levels of ‘punitive-mindedness’.
Risk assessment
Risk assessments are one way that the authorities decide what to pro-actively treat, or ‘process’ as crime, what lesser harms can be tolerated, relatively speaking. From a mass of potential crime control targets, someone has to decide what to prioritise on the grounds that it poses the greatest threat to public safety, national security or social harmony. Apart from looking at overall patterns of crime, risk assessments (aka ‘predictions’) are used in relation to, e.g.: domestic violence and child abuse sex offenders dangerous offenders missing persons people ‘at-risk’ of falling into crime those likely to become victims of crime protests, demonstrations and large public gatherings to weigh-up whether these might get out of hand vulnerable people terrorism, organized crime and threats to what is sometimes termed the country’s ‘critical infrastructure’.
They are designed to give an indication of the extent and likelihood of an attack or other criminal event, usually based on intelligence from police sources (or sometimes the security services): witnesses, informants, databases, historical patterns, criminal and other records (see Chapter 4 for extensive developments in the use of e-data). Risk mechanisms also include the offender assessment system (OASys) used by prison and probation staff ( Chapters 7 and 8 ); Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPAs) to identify risks to children and others close to a potential offender; and the Hare Psychopathy Checklist used by criminal psychologists ( Chapter 7 ).
Risk aversion
It is sometimes said that the criminal justice system (CJS) is risk averse, practitioners erring on the side of caution. But risk aversion also needs to be seen in the light of tragic outcomes such as: the case of Victoria Climbié (a child tortured and killed by her guardians despite regular visits by social work staff) the murder of Naomi Bryant in 2005 by a convicted sex offender, nine months after he was given parole (one of several cases where released prisoners have killed).
Public or judicial inquiries have led to critical reports on occasion, that, e.g. in the Victoria Climbié case being known as the Laming Report (readily available at the internet). Others claim that the public must acknowledge some degree of risk: that the CJS would ‘freeze’ without flexibility, that prisons would fill-up due to a small number of atypical cases. Hence a constant search for better assessment tools.
The Rule of Law
Stemming from the work of jurists of the 18 th -century, the Rule of Law holds that ‘no-one is above the law’. Whatever their station in life, age, race, gender, inclinations or beliefs, suspects should only be arrested, convicted or punished by the same due processes of law.
In 2013, a soldier was killed in a busy London street in broad daylight. This was captured on a camera. One perpetrator explained quite openly why he had carried out the offence. Some people questioned whether a trial was necessary at all. But the Rule of Law serves to prevent short-cuts or special treatment, no matter how obvious events may seem, or outwardly disagreeable the suspect. Judges, lawyers, correctional staff and others learn to ‘compartmentalise’ their thinking, to act with humanity and decency towards people they may personally detest: to separate the individual from their crimes.
To make sure that those suspected of crime are properly treated: everyone is presumed innocent