Gaps in Provision

• Gaps in Provision = Achieve some degree of control over criminal and anti social behaviour but this can never be complete
• Gaps in provision:

  • Reasons
  • Budget cuts
  • New Technologies/complex crimes
  • Unreported crimes
  • Existing law limitations
  • Social Media
• Budget cuts

  Police - Budget cut by 19%. This led to a fall of 20,000 in police numbers

  CPS - Budget cut by a quarter and the organisation lost 1/3 of its staff

  Prisons - Budget fell by 16% and staff levels by 15%
• Budget cuts

  • Since the financial crisis of 2008, government spending cuts and re - organisations have also had an impact of state agencies
  • Rebuilding their effectiveness in maintaining social control
• Resources

  • Funding of state social control agencies comes mainly from the taxes paid by the public
  • Limits on how much tax payers are willing to pay for these agencies and governments face competing demands for resources from other sectors
• New Technology

  2018, head of CPS, Alison Saunders said criminal justice system was creaking and unable to cope with huge amounts of data being guranteed by technology

  • 600 police hours to go through the digital material
  • 15 officials working all weekend
• New Technology

  Direction of Public prosecutions, Max Hill said problems checking mobile phones for evidence have led to failures to disclose evidence
• Unreported crimes

  Agencies can only investigate, prosecute and convict offenders if the offence has been reported. Unit 1, only about 40% of crimes are reported to the police and different kinds of crime have different reporting rates
• Unreported crimes

  • Only about one in four rapes and attempted rapes are reported
  • Estimated 2.3 million domestic abuse cases occurred in 2019/20, but not all were reported to police and only 759,000 crimes were recorded

  Crimes may make up the data collected through the crime survey for England and Wales (CSEW)
• Existing law issues

  • Social control by criminal justice agencies can be only achieved so long as there are appropriate laws in place to begin with
  • Sometimes, a new type of harm emerges but there is no existing law to forbid it
  • State agencies are unable to bring prosecutions to control the harmful behaviour where not law allows it
• Social media and the law

  • Debate surrounds social media platforms responsibility for offensive and harmful content, such as the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks livestream
  • Traditional publishers face criminal liability for promoting hatred and terrorism, while social media companions, claiming they aren't publishers, avoid prosecution in the UK
• Social media and the law

  • Germany - Enacted a 2017 law requiring swift removal of hate speech, fake news, and illegal materials: fines up to 50m euros
  • Australia - Passed a 2019 law after Christchurch massacre, companies to notify police or remove videos of violent acts. Executives of companies who fall to comply may be liable for up to three years in Jail