Criminology revision cards

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Explain the roles of agencies in social control -T

The police - 

Aims and objectives:

According to the association of Chief Police Officers, the aims of the police are to:

  • Keep the peace and maintain order
  • Protect life and property 
  • Prevent, detect and investigate crime
  • Bring offenders to justice 

The police seek to achieve these aims using powers given by PACE 1984:

  • Stop
  • Question
  • Search
  • Arrest
  • Detain in a police station 
  • Interview a member of the public in relation to a crime

Working practices - Types of criminality and offender:

Police deal with all types of offence and offender, there are some specialist law enforcement agencies that deal with certain crimes and criminal. Specialist Policing:

  • Detectives in CID (Criminal investigations department)
  • Fraud and drug squads
  • Special branch
  • Covert operations and surveillance teams 
  • Traffic and mounted police 
  • Air support 
  • River police 
  • Underwater search teams 
  • Dog handler units 
  • Unarmed policing - with the exception of some specialist units, police in Britain are unarmed
  • Special constables - unpaid, part time volunteers who undergo the same training and have the same legal powers as paid officers
  • PCSOs - limited in their power, deal with anti-social behaviour e.g. issuing FPNs for littering or confiscating alcohol from underage drinkers. they can ask a police officer to arrest a person 
  • Police and Crime Commissioners PCCs - elected representatives of the people of the area covered by a police force (e.g. Bedfordshire, West Yorkshire). they give the local population a voice in policing and aim to cut crime and ensure efficient and effective policing. they set local police priorities and budget

Reach (local, national):

In the UK today, there are:

  • 39 regional police forces in England
  • 4 in Wales
  • 1 police force in Scotland
  • 1 police force in Northern Ireland

There are also specialist police organisations with a UK wide reach, such as the National Crime Agency, the British Transport Police, Border Force

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Explain the roles of agencies in social control -T

The Judiciary -

Aims and objectives:

The basic role of the judiciary is to interpret and apply the law to the cases that come before it in the courts:

  • In the crown court the judge must manage the trial, ensure fairness to all parties, explain the legal issues and procedures to members of the jury, sum up the evidence, and pass sentence if the defendant is found guilty 
  • In the appeal courts (the courts of appeal and supreme court), judges make rulings on the appeals that come before them from the lower courts in the hierarchy. This may involve creating precedents which then bind the future decisions of the lower courts

Working practices - Types of criminality and offender:

Judges deal with all types of offence and offender, except for the least serious cases, which are usually dealt with by magistrates, or by cautions, or by fixed penalty notices issued by the police.

Reach (local, national):

The position of judges reflect the importance of maintaining their independence so that they can uphold the rule of law and defend the rights of citizens. for this reason:

  • They have security of tenure: they cannot be removed from office except by a petition to the Queen passed by both Houses of Parliament 
  • Their salary is guarunteed

The judiciary is organised into a hierarchy:

  • Superior judges - Supreme court, Court of Appeal, and High Court - they have nationwide jurisdiction and points of law of national importance are settled here
  • Inferior judges - Crown Court and sometimes Magistrates' Court - they handle local cases in the country in their areas
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Examine the limitations of agencies to achieving s

The Police:

  • Between 2010 and 2018, the police's budget was cut by 19%
  • The cuts led to a fall of 20,000 in police numbers in the same period and there is a natioanl shortage of detectives 
  • There is evidence that police forces are dropping investigations into crimes, incljuding sexual offences, violent crimes, and arson. For example, the Met Police dropped 2.9x as many cases on the day they were reported in 2018 as they did in 2013. The force said this was necessary to "balance the books"
  • Police forces may be particularly tempted to drop serious casers as they take much longer to investigate. For example, **** cases take an average of 129 days to solve compared with 2 days for theft or criminal damage. This means that the shorter cases will need less money to solve than the longer cases

The CPS: 

  • Between 2010 and 2018, the CPSs budget was cut by 1/4 and the organisation lost 1/3 of its staff
  • The head of the CPS said in 2018 that the CPS and police were failing to investigate thousands of cases efficiently - including ****, fraud, and modern slavery - and that both organisations were critically short of the skills and resources needed to combat crime
  • The CPS has also beem accused of downgrading charges so that it can prosecute cases in magistrates' courts, because this is quicker and therefore cheaper than taking them to crown court
  • However, this may mean that offenders get off with lighter sentences than they deserve because magistrates' sentencing powers are more limited 

Prisons:

  • Between 2010 and 2018, the prisons budget fell by 16% and staff levels by 15% - manmy experienced prison staff left the profession 
  • Critics describe prisons as being in crisis, with rising levels of assaults, self-harm, and suicides
  • Overcrowding and staff cuts mean that many prisoners lack opportunities for activites that would help them to rehabilitate, such as education, training and work experience 
  • Recidivism rates are around 60% within a year of release for those serving short sentences 
  • Privatisation may have contributed to the crisis
  • In 2016, the wosrt prison riot in 25 years took place as HMP Birmingham, a prison privately run by G4S. The official report concluded that staff had become worn down by chronic staffing shortages and that prisoners "were in effect policing themselves 
  • As a result, in 2020 the government took HMP Birmingham back into public control

The Probation Service:

  • In her annual report in 2019, the then chief inspector of probation Glenys Stacey highlighted a range of problems, including staff shortages, failures by the private Community Rehabilitation Comapnies, and a lack of confidence in the services by judges, victims, the public, and offenders
  • Although the probation service has been taken back into public control, the new chief inspector Justin Russel warned in 2020 that it "must be properly funded, vacancies for probation officers must be filled and staff properly trained"
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Evaluate the effectiveness of agencies in achievin

Probation:

The Probation Service (TPS) has has mixed results in achieving social control through its work. There has been lost of difference in the perfromance of the public sector National Probation Service (NPS) and the privatised sector of community rehabilitation companies (CRCs). 

Privatisation:

  • In 2014, the Conservative governement under the then Justice Secretary Chris Grayling launched what he claims was a "rehabilitation revolution" aimed at reducinbg reoffending
  • A key part of the policy was the part-privatisation of TPS 
  • 21 private companies, called CRCs, were set up, each operating in a particular geographical area
  • The CRCs were to deal with low risk offenders and would earn their profits on a payment by results basis, with targets to reduce re-offending by their clients 

Evidence:

The CRCs performance failed to live up to the government's expectations. Of the 21 companies, 19 failed to meet their targets for rehabilitating offenders and had to have an extra £342m pumped in. According to the 2018 PS inspection report:

  • Offenders' housing needs were met less often: only 54% of cases suprevised by CRCs, compared with 70% of NPs supervised cases 
  • Offenders were often supervised by telephone only 
  • One CRC held meetings with clients i open plan offices, playing "white noise" to prevent people from eavsdropping 
  • CRCs provided an inadequate protection to victims and their children when domestic abusers were returned to the community 
  • Probation officers in the CRCs were carrying higher caseloads than those in the public sector, because the companies were cutting staff to save money

As a result of these failings,  

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