Criminology

• Parliament is made up of three parts:

  The Monarch

  The House of Commons

  The House of Lords
• passage of a bill

  A) green paper

  B) white paper

  C) first reading

  D) second reading

  E) commitee stage

  F) report stage

  G) third reading

  H) repeat in ops

  I) royal ascention

  
• judicial precedent - a decision of a court that has been followed by other courts in similar cases
• Exceptions of judicial process:

  distinguishing - cases are too different

  Overruling - higher court decides the decision was wrong

  RvR husband raped wife and tried to get away with it because of century old precedent.
• Statutory Interpretation:

  Literal - statute given their plain and grammatical meaning

  Golden - allows a court to move away from literal meaning if result is absurd, allows interpretation of the statue.

  Mischief - allows court to enforce what the statue was intended to achieve, rather than what the words actually say
• Crime Control Model:

  Goal is suppression of crime

  Priorities in catching and punishing offenders, deterring and Preventing them from committing further crimes

  Model starts with a presumption of guilt

  Argues few innocents punished if worth it for convicting large numbers of guilty people

  Police should be free from unnecessary legal technicalities

  Favours conveyor belt style of justice once probable guilt is identified that quickly prosecutes convicts and punishes

  Emphasis on the rights of society and rights of victim rather than rights of suspect
• The Due Process Model believes that the power of the state is the greatest threat to an individual's freedom.
• The goal of the Due Process Model is the protection of the accused from oppression.
• The Due Process Model starts from the presumption of innocence.
• The Due Process Model has less faith in the police's ability to conduct satisfactory investigations.
• The Due Process Model believes that suspects' and defendants' rights need to be safeguarded by a use of due process rules that investigating and trials must follow.
• Due Process Model rules and regulations protect suspects' rights to a fair trial and mean prosecution must overcome some obstacles before securing convictions.
• Due Process Model means that guilty sometimes go free on technicalities, which is seen as a lesser evil than convicting innocents.
• The Due Process Model emphasises the rights of the accused over those of the victim or society.
• The UK justice system includes many due process rules to protect the individuals rights during an investigation and trial, including rules against admitting illegally obtained evidence.
• The due process model supports the defendant’s rights by protecting them from illegally obtained evidence.
• The crime control model may lead to a conviction if the judge admits illegally obtained evidence.
• In most cases, the police, prosecutors, and judges respect the due process rights of the accused and follow correct procedure.
• Only a small amount of defendants convicted of an offence appeal against their conviction or sentencing, suggesting that most people are satisfied with the way their case was processed by the justice system.
• Miscarriages of Justice:

  • Resulted due to the police, prosecution or judges failing to follow correct procedure and sometimes breaking the law themselves
  • These cases highlight that in practice, the justice system does not always operate according to the principles of the due process model.
• Internal forms of social control are the controls over our behaviour that come from within ourselves, such as our personalities and values.
• Moral conscience or superego, according to Freud's psychoanalytic theory, is the part of the mind that tells us what is right and wrong and makes us feel guilty if we don't behave in the way we know we should.
• Moral conscience or superego develops through early socialisation within the family as an internal 'nagging parent' telling us how we should behave.
• The function of moral conscience or superego is to retrain the selfishness of the id and allows us to exercise self control and behave in socially acceptable ways.
• Traditions and culture, including our own individual culture, become part of us through socialisation.
• Following the religious traditions that we have been raised in is an important way of affirming our identity and being accepted as a member of a particular community.
• Socialisation is the process by which we internalise rules, whether from our parents or from wider social groups and institutions such as religion, school, and peer groups.
• Rational ideology describes the fact that we internalise social rules and use them to tell us what is right and wrong, enabling us to keep within the law.
• A deviant is someone who departs from usual or accepted standards, especially in social or sexual behaviour.
• Our own conscience is an internal form of social control, external forms of social control involve factors beyond ourselves.
• External forms of social control include the family, peer groups, education system, criminal justice system, and coercion.
• Coercion involves the use of force (or threat of force) in order to make someone do something, or stop doing something.
• The negative sanctions imposed by the Criminal Justice System are examples of coercion.
• Fear of punishment is one way of trying to achieve social control and make people conform to the law.
• Control theory asks 'why do people obey the law?', while criminological theories ask 'why do people commit crime?'.
• Travis Hirschi argues that people conform because they are controlled by their bonds to society, which keep them from deviating.
• Hirschi argues that 'delinquent acts occur when an individual's bond to society is weak or broken'.
• Hirschi's bond to society is made up of four elements: attachment, commitment, involvement, and beliefs.
• Parenting plays a crucial role in creating bonds that stop young people from offending, according to control theorists.
• Gottfredson & Hirschi argue that poor socialisation and inconsistent or absent parental discipline can cause delinquency.