Chapter 1 - Interrogating criminal justice - BLOCK 2, BOOK 2 Flashcards
(40 cards)
KEY AIM OF CHAPTER
- Situate criminal justice among a range of strategies that might be/are employed when social harms such as crimes occur
- In the main - these strategies are concerned with how to hold offenders to account
CONCEPT OF JUSTICE
- CONCEPT OF JUSTICE defies a straightforward definition
- It is abstract/opaque
- Can mean different things to different people
- It is a social value that nations strive to demonstrate and individuals demand
- How criminal justice is constituted depends on how crime is constituted
- Ability of CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM (CJS) to respond to and deliver justice when a crime occurs can be constrained by the procedural and structural form of the CJS itself.
- Concept of justice can conjure up competing images of:
a) fairness
b) equality
c) human rights
d) just deserts
e) deserved punishment
f) liberty
g) public protection
h) moral worth
- Criminal justice has been a subject of philosophical debate - is justice universally derived from natural principles or is it tied to specific changing social and political conditions or legal systems
VARIATION BETWEEN LEGAL SYSTEMS in the way criminal justice is constituted.
- There is variation between legal systems in the way that criminal justice is constituted
- MIXED LEGAL SYSTEMS are the most prevalent in terms of being used to govern globally
EXAMPLES OF LAW SYSTEMS
- MIXED LAW SYSTEMS - A mixture of all systems is used to govern, i.e SCOTLAND
- CIVIL LAW SYSTEM - Most European countries, Asia, central and south america use this system
- COMMON LAW SYSTEMS - UK, USA, Canada, and Oceania use this system
- MUSLIM LAW SYSTEM - I.e Islamic countries with Sharia law.
- CUSTOMARY LAW SYSTEM - i.e based on local knowledge and cultural traditions such as in those in Jersey and Andorra
BELIEFS ABOUT WHAT IS ‘JUST’
- Beliefs are contingent on circumstances. These may shift according to ‘cultural values and norms’
- Public and political perceptions of justice in the law are susceptible to changing sensibilities in relation to demands of society and rights of individuals.
AUTHORITY OF THE STATE
- This can be reinforced or undermined by poublic perception of its ability to uphold and deliver justice effectively
- Individual or collective pursuits of justice can lead to major reforms in the laws, or new laws being passed
- EXAMPLE - The reform of the the ‘law of DOUBLE JEOPARDY’ - this suggests that Law is not always static, it can shift due to national and international pressure
- Double jeopardy and war crime examples are both reliant on criminal law and the courts to pursue and achieve justice.
FACTORS INTEGRAL TO JUSTICE
- Considerations of human rights are integral to formulations of justice
- Reforms that afford rights to victims at the expense of offenders or the accused represent an ideology that suggest human rights are not universal, they are only recognised for those that are deemed as deserving.
- This ideology is not concerned with equality or balance in justice
- It creates further conflicts, social inequalities, and social harms etc.
TYPES (FORMS) OF JUSTICE
- Justice can be evoked and practised in many sites for many purposes
- Justice procedures may be informal and formal
- FORMS OF JUSTICE INCLUDE:
a) criminal
b) civil
c) regulatory
d) restorative
e) indigenous
f) populist
g) social
h) global
i) environmental
DELIVERING CRIMINAL JUSTICE
- Criminal justice has ‘multiple meanings (ZEDNER, 2004)
- There are theoretical and philosophical justifications for national/international forms of delivering criminal justice - particularly in common law systems used in UK
- RANGE OF MECHANISMS FOR DELIVERING JUSTICE:
a) surveillance
b) crime control
c) due process
d) retribution
e) just deserts
f) deterrance
g) incapacitation
h) corrections
i) rehabilitation
KEY QUESTIONS AROUND JUSTICE
- How is justice delivered?
- Who delivers justice, who has the power?
- How is justice defined and delivered through mechanisms?
- Are harms caused through delivering justice?
- Are some forms of justice not as prevalent within various approaches?
SURVEILLANCE
‘PANOPTICON’ PRISON DESIGN - BENTHAM
- Example - The ‘Panopticon’ prison design coined by Jeremy Bentham
- This design allowed for:
a) the uninterrupted inspection, observation, surveillance of prisoners
b) Inmates were separated from each other but place permanently in full view of the central unseen prison guard
c) prisoners were visible at all times but were never sure when they were being observed, so they know they must behave. This promoted self-control and self-discipline from prisoners
d) Bentham dreamed of PERPETUAL SURVEILLANCE being applied in cities, prisons, workhouses, asylums, hospitals, schools etc.
e) Indeed - Institutional arrangements of the 19th century till the present day were based on COMPLIANCE being achieved through SURVEILLANCE.
RANGE OF SURVEILLANCE TECHNIQUES - 21st CENTURY.
- CCTV
- Biometric scanning devices
- Smart cards
- fingerprinting
- iris scans
- Voice recognition
- DNA Testing
- Digitised facial recognition.
2001 PATRIOT ACT (USA)
- 2001 PATRIOT ACT was introduced after 9/11
- This gave the government the power in the name on the war on terror to access peoples financial records, medical histories, internet usage, travel patterns, book purchases etc.
- Bu 2008 - UK had highest penetration of CCTV cameras in the world - 4 million - 1 for every 14 people.
- DATABASES are now commonplace for groups such as:
a) hooligans
b) political demonstrators
c) illegal immigrants
d) environmental campaigners
WIDESPREAD CONSEQUENCES OF SURVEILLANCE DEVELOPMENTS.
- There are widespread consequences of surveillance developments for:
a) population control
b) spatial segregation
c) urban regulation (all MOONEY AND TALBOT, 2010).
- Modern forms of SOCIAL PANOPTICISM - operate in the background like an UNSEEN EYE (GANDY, 1993)
- Individuals are identified, classified, assessed to coordinate and control their access to goods and services
- SURVEILLANCE has become a system of power on which rests the survival of global corporate capital (GANDY, 1993)
- Its reach is:
a) pervasive
b) potentially dangerous
c) allocates privilege selectively on basis of information d) collected and stored
e) perpetuates inequality
f) perpetuates mistrust that leads to further surveillance
TECHNOLOGIES OF SURVEILLANCE
- These offer protection and reassurance (positives)
- less private space
- potential greater state interference
- potential greater state control over citizens
- peoples information being collected without consent
ABOLITIONISM
- ABOLITIONISM - A sociological and political perspective that analyses criminal justice and penal systems as social problems that intensify rather than diminish crime and its impact. Abolitionists advocate the radical transformation of the prison and punishment system and their replacement with a reflexive and integrative strategy for dealing with crime and harm.
AUTHORITARIANISM
- AUTHORITARIANISM- The mobilisation of state power to promote regulation and secure the dominance of particular groups or nations through repressive political and criminal justice agendas.
CLASSICAL SCHOOL
- CLASSICAL SCHOOL - An approach to the study of crime and criminality that is underpinned by the notion of rational action and free will. It was developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century by reformers who aimed to create a clear and legitimate criminal justice system based upon equality.
- At its core is the idea that punishment should be proportionate to the criminal act and should be viewed as a deterrent. Further assumptions include the notion of individual choice within a consensual society based upon a social contract and the common interest.
CRIME CONTROL MODEL (PACKER, 1968).
Primary function is to uphold law and order.
There is a long-standing dispute in relation to how far justice should prioritise the protection of individual rights
OR
the protection of notions of public safety and making all individuals responsible for their actions.
Packer (1968) explored this tension and came up with 2 normative models to illustrate competing and shifting demands placed on criminal justice. These are:
- crime control values
- due process values.
- CRIME-CONTROL MODEL - A system of criminal justice that has as its primary aim the need to ‘repress’ criminal conduct. In this model, the courts are more guardians of law and order than upholders of impartial justice.
2.Crime control emphasises that criminal acts are major threats to the social order and that their
repression is the most important function of criminal justice. To achieve this, high rates of apprehension and conviction are required to demonstrate the efficiency, speed and certainty of outcome. The process is geared to the production of maximum convictions. Wrongful
conviction and police discretion are tolerated as long as they do not bring the system into disrepute. Packer (1968) referred to this as ‘assembly line justice’.
DETERRENCE and DETERRENT MODEL OF CRIME CONTROL.
This was formulated by the CLASSICAL SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY (CLASSICISM).
- DETERRENCE - A philosophy of punishment that aims to prevent criminal activity through the development and application of effective and efficient sanctions. It involves demonstrating to both the citizenry and the reasoning criminal that the pains and losses associated with apprehension and punishment will overshadow the possibility of criminal gain or profit.
- DETERRENCE - is based on a premise of affording rational, self-interested individuals good reasons not to commit crime
- A DETERRENT MODEL OF CRIME was formulated by THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY (CLASSICISM)
- Logic of classicism - crime is a rational, self-interested, freely chosen behaviour and any individual that commits crime will find the punishment so unpleasant they will not do it again.
- So - in the long run, punishment serves a s a deterrent to the prevention of future crime.
- Punishment must be the same for all individuals regardless of age, mentality, social status, gender etc.
- Individual differences from personal experiences or social factors are denied or ignored. So, clemency, pardons and mitigating circumstances are exclude.
- It is about equal rights for everyone - so the punishment should fir the crime, not the individual (ROSHIER, 1989).
DUE-PROCESS MODEL (PACKER 1968)
normative model to illustrate competing and shifting demands placed on criminal justice by PACKER, 1968.
Primary function of this is to protect ‘civil liberties’
- DUE-PROCESS MODEL - An emphasis on the need to administer justice according to legal rules and procedures that are publicly known, fair and seen to be just.
- DUE PROCESS - places more emphasis on protecting
the individual from unjust acts committed by the state. - It does so by foregrounding procedural safeguards such as presumption of innocence, transparency of police and judicial proceedings and effective appeals
procedures. - The aim is to uphold the moral authority of the criminal process where strict and formal adherence to the law, judicial equality and the protection of individual rights is more significant than punishing offenders.
- Packer (1968) referred to this as ‘obstacle course justice’ in which prosecutors have to navigate their way through extensive sets of formal procedure. In a crime control model the primary function of criminal justice is to uphold law and order; in a due process model the primary function is to protect civil liberties.
JUST DESERTS
- ‘JUST DESERTS’ - means ‘deserved punishment’ (p.16 and 17), and is found in the philosophical justification of punishment ‘RETRIBUTIVE THEORY/RETRIBUTION - which advocates repayment for ‘harm’ done - p.16
NEO-CONSERVATISM
- NEO-CONSERVATISM - Neo-conservative criminology treats criminality as one of a group of social pathological phenomena, seeing its prevalence as due to the corrosive influence of permissive and liberal modern culture.
- In terms of criminal justice policy - neo-conservative criminology is oriented on the one hand to the preservation of traditional values and norms through coercive means, and on the other to the promotion of a technocratic and instrumental means of crime control that decouples the control of crime from its social and economic contexts.
- NEO-CONSERVATISM - stresses the need for a strong government and social authoritarianism to create a disciplined and hierarchical society in which individual needs come second (subordinated) to those of the nation
PYRRHIC DEFEAT
- PYRRHIC DEFEAT - The proposition that failures in criminal justice to reduce crime recreate particular images of crime and criminals and deflect attention from the crimes of the powerful. Failure yields such benefits for those in positions of power that it amounts to a success.
- REIMAN (2007) argues aim of criminal justice is not to reduce crime or achieve justice, but is to construct a public image of the perpetual threat of crime from particular sections of society.
- This means particular populations defined as criminal must be maintained, and the CJS must be designed to fail and reduce crime.
- REIMAN (2007) refers to this ‘UPSIDE-DOWN IDEA’ of criminal justice as PYRRHIC DEFEAT THEORY’, in which criminal justice serves the powerful not by its success, but by its failure.
- By this - the public are presented with the image that crime is down to the poor, and more dangerous acts committed by the powerful are ignored and not defined as crime. This benefits the economically powerful, as their crimes are hidden and invisible, but the powerless are criminalised.
- So real danger is seen to come ‘FROM BELOW’ and not ‘FROM ABOVE’.
- In other words - criminal justice must be seen to fight some crime, but not enough to reduce or eliminate it.
- BOX (1987) - argues that the young, unemployed, minorities, become the most vulnerable to arrests and prosecution not because they commit more crime, but because they fit media, public, and political images of DANGEROUSNESS.