Crime Control

• Crime is a threat to people's freedom and so the goal of crime control is the suppression of crime.
• Crime control prioritises catching and the punishment of offenders, deterring and preventing them from committing further crime.
• The model starts from a presumption of guilt. It trusts the police to be able to identify those who are probably guilty through their investigations and interrogations.
• Police should be free from unnecessary legal technicalities that prevent them investigating crime.
• Once the "probably guilty" are identified, it favours a "conveyor belt" system that speedily prosecutes, convicts, and punishes them.
• Crime control argues that if a few innocent people are occasionally convicted by mistake, this is a price worth paying for convicting a large number of guilty people.
• It emphasises the rights of society and victims to be protected from crime, rather than the rights of suspects.
• Crime control links to two main theories: Right realism and functionalism.
• Right realism favours practices like zero tolerances policing strategies. It also wants to give police greater powers to investigate and suppress crimes.
• Functionalism likes crime control because it promotes the idea that punishment reinforces societies moral boundaries. The main function of justice is to punish the guilty, this enables society to express its moral outrage and strengthen social cohesion.
• Right Realism believes that there are three causes of crime:

  • Biological differences between individuals
  • Inadequate socialization
  • Offending is a rational choice
• Wilson and Herrnstein argue that biological differences make some individuals more likely to commit crime. They also believe that some personal traits are associated with criminality like aggressiveness, risk-taking, or low intelligence.
• Effective socialisation can reduce the chance of someone offending by teaching them self-control. Charles Murray, a leading right realist, states that everyone is tempted to commit crime but it is the amount of social bonds that often prevents us from doing so.
• The "Underclass" is an extreme form of inadequate socialisation. Charles Murray talks about the development of the "underclass" such as single parents where children grow up without appropriate role models.
• Murray says the "underclass" fails to properly socialise their children.
• Right realists also believe that there is a "permissive society" which is that society is becoming more loose on things like not hitting children in school, not having the death penalty, showing more sex and swearing on TV.
• Rational choice is calculating if the crime is worth committing by weighing up the risk/costs against the rewards/benefits. If the rewards outweigh the risk, people will be more likely to offend.
• Right realists argue that the crime rate is high because the perceived costs of crime are low. Criminals see the risk of being caught and do not expect to receive severe punishments even if they are convicted.
• Durkheim (Functionalism) said that crime is inevitable, moral, and necessary for life. Crime is inevitable because not everyone in society in going to be equally committed to the shared moral and values. This is because we are all exposed to difference influences and circumstances.
• Boundary maintenance: Crime produces a reaction that unites society's members against the wrongdoer, reminding them of the boundary between right and wrong and reaffirming their shared rules.
• Safety valve: For society to function the agents of socialisation must run smoothly.
• Warning light: Deviance indicates that an institution isn't functioning properly. Crime and deviance can lead to dysfunction when their levels are either very low or very high.
• Key features of crime control:

  1. Conveyor belt
  2. Guilt implied
  3. Minimal legal controls
  4. System designed to aid police
  5. Crime fighting is key
  6. Swift justice
  7. Unrestricted police
• Ian Tomlinson's case follow the crime control model. Ian was making his way home from work when a police officer struck him. Ian then collapsed and died. His cause of death was originally "natural causes" but when then changed to abdominal bleeding caused by a blow.
• Crime control can also work for cases like the Birmingham Six.