Criminal Procedure Policy Paper CJA/ 364 Criminal Procedure May 29, 2012 Criminal Procedure Policy Paper The role the criminal justice system plays in society is expansive. Criminal justice is designed to keep the public safe, to stop wrongdoing, to punish wrongdoers, and to provide order to society. Given this broad role there will be times when criminal justice will not perform all roles well. This means, of course, that criminal justice will often fail to meet public expectations. Ultimately, the needs people have for criminal justice mean that they believe the criminal justice system should be designed to pursue goals that fulfill
Proactive, or preventative, patrol is focused or targeted more on specific hot spots, crime problems, or offenders. The goal of proactive patrol is to detect crimes in progress and deter crime by having a routine police presence (Grant & Terry, 2008). There are a couple different downfalls to policing agencies using one form of patrol over the other. One downfall is that if only one of these patrol styles were adopted, the police would lose some of their discretion. Conditions of an officer’s reaction to certain responds would change (Grant & Terry, 2008).
Most, if not all, acts of crime are categorized as deviant behaviour, for example, murder. Deviance is behaviour which drifts away from society’s established norms and values, but is not necessarily perceived as crime, such as queue jumping (Haralambos and Holborn 2009). The functionalist approach to crime and deviance is one of value consensus. They emphasise social stability and collective public values, a ‘collective conscience’. Functionalist define crime and deviance as functional and necessary to society as a whole, with just the right amount of crime to avoid anomie; normlessness.
Criminal law consists of bodies of regulations and rules that will specify and define the punishments for the wrong committed against society or the state. Criminal laws are enforced on state, federal, and local levels. Criminal laws are in place to maintain some type of standard of conduct more acceptable in society, and to safeguard society from criminals. The purpose of criminal laws is to set a no tolerance standard for criminal behavior, also meaning no crime committed will go unpunished thus an attempt to keep the community crime free and safe. When
Although theories like functionalism and Marxism focus on the causes of crime, realists also look at the ways we can prevent crime from happening. Realists trust official statistics and both left and right realists have come up with a variety of solutions to fight crime. Right realists think that situational crime prevention or SCP. They reason that intervening in the immediate situation where crime is taking place is the one of the best things to be done. Using materials like anti-climb paint or neighbourhood watch schemes they make the target harder to achieve, or more risky.
‘Outline and explain ways in which data about crime is collected’ Crime can be defined as deviant activities that break the law in any particular society. Finding out how much crime takes place isn’t easy, and attempts to measure crime can prove misleading. This doesn’t mean that crime statistics aren’t affective, but it does mean that no single measure can be fully relied upon. Many sociologists see crime statistics as a social construction, as collecting crime data is a result of the cultural expectations of society, and by understanding who commits crime and what sorts of crimes are committed, we can get a clearer picture of why people commit crime in the first place. Different sociologists have presented different theories and concepts to explain what drives a person to commit a crime, and research and statistics give us an idea of the type of crimes committed and the places that they’re most likely to occur.
Assess the usefulness of functionalism in explaining crime in society today Functionalism was the first major sociologist approach to crime and deviance however this could mean that maybe functionalists view on crime and deviance is outdated in today’s society. Functionalists take a structural view of crime they also believe that a certain level of crime and deviance is dysfunctional and a threat to social order but integral to a healthy society. However functionalists do not tell us what the perfect amount of crime is therefore it may not be seen as useful in society today. Durkheims theory that crime has four characteristics does relate to society today, these four c characteristics are. Inevitable which is in modern society we have complex specialised divisions of labour which leads to individuals becoming less integrated and more individualistic.
Offenders in this society know or at least thinks that they will only get a smack on the wrist if they were to commit a crime. This in turn doesn’t help to deter them from their criminal ways. The adolescents that are in similar circumstances uses the choice theory wisely. They effectively weigh their options and decide that it’s not worth the risk of being caught and being
The three requirements for police officers are: 1) search and seizure, 2) arrests, and 3) interrogation (Criminal Justice Today, p. 127-128). Due Process also protects people from his or her rights violated under state laws. Crime Control Models and Due Process Model In the late 60s, Stanford University Professor Herbert Packer introduced the theory of the Criminal Control Model, which states that there should be efficient arrests and conviction of those who break the law (Criminal Justice Today). The concerns of this model seem to view the importance of arrests and convictions, rather than the individual who commits the crime. The CRIMINAL PROCEDURE POLICY
Capital punishment likewise makes criminals think about whether perpetrating a crime is truly justified regardless of their lives or not. Capital punishment guarantees significant serenity to the world in light of the fact that it guarantees that murders will never execute