Ac 3.4

• Evaluating the effectiveness of Police in achieving social control- social responsibilities

  Detection, investigation and prevention of crime. They have specialist departments, units and sections dealing with serious and complex cases.

  • Specialist policing- HM revenue tax evasion, border forces for immigration offences, and specialist forces such as the British transport police
• Evaluating the effectiveness of police and achieving social control- social control responsibilities


  Offence of public concern- please have made progress in prioritising offence of public concerns such as domestic abuse, more cases are being reported and recorded.

  • Survey evidence from 2017 annual report of HM Inspector of police shows 2/3 of domestic abuse practitioners believe the police as approach has improved.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of police in achieving social control- social control responsibilities

  However the survey evidence from the 2017 annual report of HM inspector of police shows shortcomings on the police performance with the mass abuse, arrest rate has fallen, police aren’t using bail conditions to protect victims, staff shortages are causing delays and responding to incidents
• Evaluate the effectiveness of police and achieving social control- limitations: inefficiency


  Sometimes claim the police are incompetent in investigating offences. E.g. The McPherson Report highlighted failings in the Stephen Lawrence case Such as their inability together evidence and investigate leads meaning family had to wait 20 years for any form of justice.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of police and achieving social control- inefficiency


  cromer disorder 2017- police failed to properly deal with this ordering Cromer because senior officers misread the significant of events, 100 travellers were investigated, pubs shops, restaurants closed over the weekend of the 19th of August, poor information flows blame for the failure to deploy extra offices
• Effectiveness of police in social control: limitations- current trends, more crimes but few were solved


  According to police is own statistics crime appears to be increasing from 4.5m in 2016 to 5.8m in 2020. Crime did fall to 5.44m from 2020-21 which could be a result of Covid

  • Knife and gun crime- police stats for certain crimes of increased significantly e.g. recorded knife crime rose from 24,000 to 35,800 between 2014 and 2020
  • in 20 1515% of cases resulted in someone being charged but in 2020 this has fallen to 7%
• Effectiveness of police in social control: limitations- dropped cases


  Police are failing to investigate large numbers of offences reported to them

  • In 2018 the Met police dropped 2.9 times many cases on the day they were reported as they had done in 2013
  • From 2013-18 met police screened out a total of 525,000 crimes on the same day as they were reported
• Effectiveness of police in social control: limitations- financial circumstances

  from 2010 the government made major cuts in police budgets which has been a cause of police decisions to drop investigations

  • With limited budget and fewer officers, some investigations and prevention measures have been prioritised over others Eg Cases of arson
  • Staff shortages caused delays in responding putting victims at risk
  • This is likely to affect the ability of police to achieve social control
• Effectiveness of police in achieving social control: limitations- accuracy statistics


  stats suggest police are becoming less effective in achieving social control, but stats need to be treated with caution for several reasons

  • Improved recording procedures- have become better at recording crime, in 2014 police recorded stats redeemed to not meet the standards required by the office the National statistics, since then police have made efforts to improve crime recording which results in a greater proportion of offence appearing in the statistics
• Effectiveness of police in social control: limitations counter evidence from CSEW


  Counter evidence from CSEW- A survey of victims, shows overall crime rate has generally been level or falling in recent years rather than increasing in March 2020 the rate fell by 9%.

  The reason for the difference between the two sets of statistics maybe how they deal with different crimes, CSEW doesn’t deal with crimes against businesses, it only surveys a sample of the population so under represents less common but more serious crimes such as weapon offences
• Effectiveness of police in social control: limitations- counter evidence from CSEW


  Reasons for difference in stats between CSEW and police

  • police stats pick up more serious crimes and one where police crime number is needed for insurance claims e.g. burglary
• Effectiveness of police in achieving social control- racism and bias


  Macpherson report in 1999 into the murder of Stephen Lawrence found met police to be institutionally racist. Since then there has been considerable interest in the relationship of police to minority ethnic groups and concerns continue

  • Recruitment- Minority ethnic backgrounds has increased, but they are still under represented, especially in senior ranks
  • Stop and searches and tasers- still disproportionate against minority ethnic
  • This reduces social control as if police wont be helped by them
• Effectiveness of police in social control- media reporting

  Police play the media a crimebusters image e.g. in 2014 South Yorkshire police invited BBC to film their raid on Cliff Richard in connection with historical child abuse allegations but no charges were ever made so BBC had to pay damages to the singer

  • Police have been criticised overreacting to the media causing moral panics eg Stanley cohen mods and rockers caused sfp
• Effectiveness of CPS in social control

  Achieve social control by: aim to achieve social control by charging preparing cases, presenting them to court to secure conviction. They charge the right people using the full test and reflect the due process model.

  • Their successes measured- in 2018 in a typical three month period CPS prosecute around 80,000 cases in Crown Court and over 450,000 in magistrates Court, 84% of those prosecuted are convicted
  • Covid impact in 2020/21 only 78.1% of defendants were convicted
• effectiveness of CPS in social control

  Lack of effectiveness despite the high proportion of conviction CPS to some extent failed to achieve social control due to 40,000 people waiting for their case to be heard in Crown Court

  • media hasn’t always reported the effect of the CPS properly for example there’s criticisms of its handling of rape cases e.g. 11.7% of rape cases were dropped, Saunders stated in a recent case it took police 600 hours to look through phone evidence which makes explain the reason for dropping the cases. This highlights how the CPS may be failing to gain justice for v’s
• Effectiveness of CPS in social contro— Realistic prospects of conviction


  Includes evidential test, prosecution must be satisfied as a realistic prospect of conviction, critics argue the CPR should be focused less on trial outcomes and more on bringing cases to justice

  • The number of rates reported rose by one third from 2016-20 but the number of prosecutions failed by 60%
• Effectiveness of CPS in social control- budget cuts

  Budget of 25% have led the CPS to lose one third of its staff

  • Max Hill says CPS cannot sustain further cuts because digital technologies is imposing heavy additional workload on its staff with the need to analyse content of smart phones to comply with the rules of disclosure to the defence
  • Took six hours to analyse the content of
• Effectiveness of CPS in social control- evidence disclosure


  CPS data showed 841 cases in 2017-18 was stopped due to failure to disclosure, however they believe the figure may be higher

  • New technologies means hours of extra work for staff eg trial of Liam Allen collapsed after a text messages in a rape case disclosed after the trial had started
  • Around 30 other cases that were due to go to court had to be reviewed and some halted after the Liam Allen case
• Effectiveness of CPS in social control- failure to build the case

  In some high profile cases, the CPS has failed to build an adequate case and this is led to the prosecution collapsing

  e.g. with the murder of Damilola Taylor the cps rested its case on an obviously lying witness when proper checks would’ve easily established the unreliability of her evidence
• Effectiveness of the CPS in social control- other criticisms

  Criticise for being too close with the police

  • Criticised for being too bureaucratic, inefficient and slow when dealing with cases meaning victims and defendants have to put their lives on hold for many months
  • Failure to communicate with relevant parties, there’s been examples where suspects have found out the case against them has been dropped by reading about it in the media
• The effectiveness of the judiciary in social control

  Media images of the judiciary- judges are often presented as old, white, upper-class men who are out of touch with modern society, who are often described as being soft, handing down lenient sentences for serious offences
• The effectiveness of judiciary in social control- are judges biased in their judgements?

  maybe- Backgrounds 68% of judges are male, more than half of judges are aged over 50, among judges under 40 a slight minority (51%) of female. Black Asian and minority ethnic groups are under represented only 7% of judges are from minority backgrounds. Judges mainly higher classes 74% of judges are privately educated, 74% of judges went to Oxford/Cambridge
• The effectiveness of judiciary in social control- are judges biased in their judgement?

  Not easy to prove- this may mean judges are biased to people of similar backgrounds to themselves/against people who are different. although there’s evidence of male judges showing a lack of empathy with female sexual assault victims, but it’s hard to demonstrate a clear pattern of bias. Most offenders are young so it’s hard to see if judges consider age.
• The effectiveness of judiciary and social control- evidence of gender bias

  Gender bias is clearly in certain cases, e.g. in 1989 judge james pickles sentenced a man to probation after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl, later that year he jailed a woman for contempt of court for refusing to give evidence against her ex-boyfriend who assaulted her
• The effectiveness of judiciary in social control- currency

  While there’s been cases of gender bias in the judiciary such as pickles they seem less common today than in the 80s/90s and maybe less accused of current concern, however class buyers continues to be current in some sentencing decisions

  • lavinia Woodward not jailed after stabbing her boyfriend Woodward was an Oxford uni med student training to be a heart surgeon, as the judge Ian Pringle QC didn’t want to harm her career prospects of a medical career he gave her a suspended sentence as a severe punishment would prevent her from this
• Effectiveness of judiciary in social control- Are judges out of touch

  Media stereotypes judges as out of touch with mainstream modern society, especially with public views on sentencing. Eg judge pickles stated who are the Beatles.
• effectiveness of the judiciary and social control- are judges out of touch

  Important issue is whether being out of touch makes their sentencing unreliable research from Australia which has a very similar justice system to the UK not. Karen Warner interviewed Australian jurors about judges, most thought judges weren’t out of touch or if they were they had not applied to the judge in the trial they had been involved with, if they are in touch they may be sued by public opinion and therefore wouldn’t be independent
• Effectiveness of judiciary and social control- are judges too lenient

  The unduly lenient scheme allows victims, prosecutors are members of the public to apply to the attorney general or solicitor general for a sentence to be reviewed if they feel it was too lenient. The scheme applies to serious offences e.g. murder, rape and child sex crime

  • If the minister agrees the judge made errors and sentencing, they will ask the court of appeal to review it
  • If they agree, the sentence was too lenient they will increase sentence
  • few sentences are referred/ altered suggesting judges arent too lenient
• Effectiveness of judiciary and social control- and severe sentences

  Equally, if there are examples of judges and magistrates imposing what seems to be unruly severe sentences, as in many of the cases arising out of the 2011 riots when offenders often receive custodial sentences for minor theft defences

  • eg an 18 year year-old was in prison for one day for stealing two Burberry T-shirts
• Effectiveness of prison in social control

  Prison aims to achieve social control in two ways- punishing offenders and rehabilitating them so they go onto lead a crime free life and exercising control over individuals while they’re in prison to ensure they follow the rules

  • Staff cut between 2010-18 number of offices fell by 15% as a result of budget cut. More experienced officers more likely to leave, by 2018 1/3 a prison officers had less than two years experience making it harder to control inmates, prisoners locked in cells for longer leading to riot and suicide
• Effectiveness of prison in social control

  Overcrowding (penal populism) prison population is doubled from 43,000 to around 80,000 in 2021, this again leads to riots and suicide. Penal populism aims to punish everyone, this is a right realist theory that some people favour but results in overcrowding which is a problem as you can’t control them and causes rule breaking
• Effectiveness of prison in social control

  Not addressing rehab needs- Increase in number of prisoners and staff shortages and budget cards mean prisons often can’t tackle the cause of offending eg addiction, mental health, ill literacy, this is made worse by short sentences being increasingly popular meaning inmates will leave prison unchanged and reoffend
• Effectiveness of prison in social control

  Drugs- rapid increase in “new psychoactive substances” (NPS) in prison such as spice they’re 1000 times stronger than cannabis causing psychosis, aggression and depression, between 2013-18 117 deaths in prison were linked to NPS use. Mandatory drug testing is inefficient due to staff shortages.

  • The availability of drugs undermines discipline and control by reducing inmates participation in rehab activities and increases violence due to debt among prisoners
• Effectiveness of prisons in social control-

  Security,

  + prisoners rarely escape from prison, in 2022-23 there was just one prisoner escape recorded in England, England and Wales, and few run away from open prison

  — but they have been breaches of security due to drugs being smuggled in by drones and through the body

  + however over the last two years more than 70 X body scanners have been installed in all closed male prisons, these scanners have caught almost 20,000 attempts to smuggle contraband onto wings
• Effectiveness of prisons in social control

  Safety- there’s been a rise in assault, self harm and suicide, in 2020 there was 9800 assault on staff, 76 suicides, 32,000 assault incidences and 65,000 incidences of self harm

  • There was 380 assaults for every 1000 prisoners
• Effectiveness of prisons in social control

  Riots and disorder- HMP Birmingham 2016, worst riot in 25 years in prison do partly to staff shortages, there has been a series of lesser incidents

  • In 2018, there was serious disorder at several prisons, including the Mount, long lartin and Bedford. The chief inspector of prison warned of a complete breakdown in order and discipline at Bedford described as rundown and rat infested.
• Effectiveness of prisons in social control- after release the evidence on reoffending + conclusion

  Although rehab is the aim of the prison system, many ex-prisoners reoffend. within one year of release :

  • 36% of all ex-prisoners reoffended
  • Among ex-prisoners with many previous previous convictions nearly half reoffend
  • 64.1% of those in short sentences (below 12 months) reoffend
  • Around 37% of juvenile offenders reoffend
• Effectiveness of prison and social control- conclusion

  Overall evidence shows that prisons are ineffective in both achieving social control over offenders while they’re in prison and that they are ineffective in rehabilitating them so they leave the crime free life after they’ve left prison
• Effectiveness of probation in social control

  Probation is mainly looked after by the national probation service however in 2014 Chris Grayling (justice security- conservative) launched ‘community rehab companies’- 2021 private companies who were operating in specific geographical areas are designed to work with low risk offenders, they were paid on a by results basis
• Effectiveness of probation in social control

  CRC impact- issues with privatisation where that the government had no way of knowing how well these companies were performing and it took away the centralisation of services

  • A report in 2017 by Dame Gleny’s Stacey (chief inspector of probation) and Peter Clarke (chief inspector of prisons) said too many prisoners are being released not knowing where they should sleep that night due to lack of joined up thinking, in too many cases prisoners risk to public had been in adequately assessed before release