3.3✅

• Repeat Offending-Recidivism Rates:

  • social control measures are not always effective as can be seen from the recidivism (repeat-offending) rates 
  • in 2019: they have an overall recidivism rate is around 28%
  • on average those who re-offend commit a further 4 offences each, the average number of re-offences per offender has been gradually rising since 2009
  • around 37% of juvenile offenders re-offend within a year, for juveniles released from custody, 63% are re-convicted within a year 
• Recividism Rates-The Rising Prison Population:

  -> the prison population today is almost double what it was in 1993, repeat offending is one reason for this increase

  -> e.g. those released from prison on licence will be recalled to serve the rest of their licence if they commit a further offence during the licence period 

  -> longer sentences: repeat offending is less important as a cause of the rising prison population than the fact that courts are now giving longer sentences e.g:

  • the average minimum sentence for murder increased from 12.5 years in 2003 to 21.3 years in 2016
• Recividism Rates-Who Re-offends?

  • males are more likely to re-offend than females 
  • offenders who served a prison sentence are more likely to re-offend than those who received a warning, fine or community sentence 
  • offenders w/ drug/alcohol addictions, homeless, those w/ few qualifications, unemployed = more likely to re-offend 

  -> the figures above only refer to proven re-offending, although there is likely to be a dark figure of further offending where they haven't been caught or punished 
• Recividism Rates-Theory:

  • right realists: argue that ‘prison works’, that offenders are rational actors + so the fear of being jailed acts as a deterrent to offending, although the high-rate of re-offending shows that this is not so, a fact that right realists fail to explain 
  • marxists believe that it is not surprising that unemployed offenders re-offend as they have little chances of meeting their needs + have to survive on benefits  
• Civil Liberties + Legal Barriers-Human Rights Abuse:

  • in some police states, social control agencies like the police have few restrictions on their power to force citizens to behave as the state wishes them to 
  • critics of the government could find that they are not free to express their opinions + risk being locked up indefinitely or worse 
• What are Civil Liberties?

  -> they are basic rights + freedoms guaranteed to every individual by law e.g:

  • freedom of speech: the right to say what you like, including freedom of the press + media 
  • freedom of movement: the right to go where you want, within the law 
  • freedom of religion + conscience 
  • the right to privacy: especially from the state
• Civil Liberties-Due Process:

  • lots of these civil liberties are aspects of the due process model of justice 
  • e.g. freedom from arbitrary arrest (where the police can arrest anyone they wish) + freedom from detention w/o trial (where someone can be held in custody indefinitely w/o being brought before a court) are both important protections for the individual against the state’s abuse of its power 
  • legal processes involved in due process are a barrier to the state exercising control over its citizens w/o good cause  
• Access to Resources + Support:

  -> offenders need resources + support to help them to rehabilitate + prevent them from re-offending 

  -> its quite a serious matter in relation to prisoners as they are generally the people who have committed the most serious offences or are repeat offenders
• Resources + Support inside Prison:

  -> 1 aim of imprisonment in rehabilitation but in many cases prisons fail to rehabilitate offenders for many reasons:

  • short sentences: they don’t give enough time to do the intensive work needed to address deep-seated issues e.g. drug dependency, illiteracy, anger management, the issue is worsened when there are limited spaces on appropriate courses 
  • 15% cut in number of prison officers: there are fewer officers to supervise prisoners undertaking activities that would help their rehabilitation, w/ staff shortages prisoners then need to be locked up by 6pm
  • release on temporary licence: (ROTL) = is intended to allow trusted prisoners out to attend training, employment + job interviews, few are able to take advantage of this scheme because there aren’t enough staff to supervise it 
• Resources + Support in the Community:

  -> once released on licence prisoners serve the remainder of their sentence in the community under the supervision of the probation service, newly released prisoners may face difficult circumstances e.g:

  • lack of money: prisoners earn very little when working in prison, only receiving £46 discharge grant on their release 
  • lack of job: 1/4 of prisoners have a job to go to on their release 
  • homelessness: nacro states that 1/9 prisoners have no settled accommodation to go to upon release  
• The 'End Friday releases' Campaign:

  • over 1/3 of all releases from prison happen on Friday + charities + pressure groups like Nacro + the Howard League support the campaign to end Friday releases from prison 
  • when released on a Friday it is hard for the ex-offender to access services like accommodation, drug medication + benefits before everything closes for the weekend 
  • resulting in people having no choice but to sleep roughly + survive on only their discharge grant until the services re-open on the Monday, leaving them vulnerable to re-offending 
  • ex-prisoners quickly breach the conditions of their release licence + therefore are recalled to prison 
• Community Sentences:

  -> some offenders serve their whole sentence in the community under the supervision of the probation service 

  -> they are more successful than prison in reducing recidivism 

  -> although a significant minority do re-offenders, there are many reasons for this:

  • inadequate support for complex needs: drug addiction, mental health issues, homelessness they have few places on specialist programmes to address their needs 
  • inadequate supervision by probation services: there criticisms that the service is too relaxed in allowing offenders to miss supervision appointments 
• Finance:

  • w/o adequate finance to fund their operations, agencies such as the police, prisons + CPS will be unable to achieve effective social control 
  • their budgets come mainly from public funds 
  • government spending cuts have had a significant impact on these agencies, this is likely to reduce their effectiveness
• Finance-The Police:

  • between 2010-2018: the overall police budget was cut by 19%
  • this cut led to a fall of 20,000 in police numbers in the same period and there is a national shortage of detectives 
  • there’s evidence that police forces are dropping investigations into crimes including sexual offences, violent attacks + arson 
  • police forces may be particularly tempted to drop serious cases because they take much longer to investigate e.g. rape cases take an average of 129 days to solve in comparison to only 2 days for theft or criminal damage 
• Finance-The CPS:

  • 2010-2018: the CPS’s budget was cut by a quarter + the organisation lost 1/3 of its staff 
  • both the CPS + the police were failing to investigate thousands of cases efficiently including rape, fraud, modern slavery = these organisations are critically short of the skills + resources needed to deal with/ crime 
  • they have been accused of downgrading charges so that it can prosecute cases in magistrates courts as they are quicker + cheaper than taking them to Crown Court
  • offenders therefore get off w/ lighter sentences than they deserve, as magistrates’ sentencing powers are limited 
• Finance-Prisons:

  • 2010-2018: prisons budget fell by 16% + staff levels 15% + many experiences prison officers left the service 
  • critics describe prisons as being in crisis w/ rising levels of assaults, self-harm + suicides 
  • overcrowding + staff cuts mean that a lot of prisoners lack opportunities for activities that helps them to rehabilitate e.g. educating, work experience 
  • recidivism rates are around 60% within a year of release for those serving short sentences 
• Finance-The Probation Service:

  • in an annual report in 2019: it was highlighted that there were a range of problems including staff shortages, failures by the private CRCs + lack of confidence in the service by judges, victims, the public + offenders 
  • probation service has now been taken back into public control 
• Local + National Policies:

  • both national + local policies limit the ability of agencies such as the police to achieve social control e.g. when a new law makes a particular crime into a priority this is likely to mean that other offences are neglected to some extent as police are instructed to focus on the new one 
• Local + National Policies-National Government Policies:

  • at a national level: the central government introduces laws + policies affected the work of agencies such as the police, the CPS + others 
  • april 2019: the Home Secretary announced that he was making it easier for police officers to stop + search anyone for an offensive weapon w/o first having reasonable suspicion that they are carrying one 
  • this power is available to police throughout the country
• Local + National Policies-The Serious Violence Strategy:

  • increased police powers are part of a broader national serious violence strategy 
  • aiming to involve other agencies such as youth services, NHS, social services + education 
  • e.g. children excluded from school may be at risk of being groomed by gangs to deliver drug deals which are a major factor in violence offences 
• Local Policies:

  • some of the priorities of the different police forces around the country are set nationally by the Home Office but others are set locally in response to local needs 
  • e.g. in areas where knife crime is particularly high, police may respond w/ extra measures such as increase stop + searches 
• Local + National Policies-Weapon Amnesties:

  • they are a good example of a local priority 
  • sometimes local police forces hold amnesties where they will not arrest people who surrender illegal weapons e.g. 2 week guns amnesty: led to 250 firearms + 40,000 rounds of ammunition being handed in 
  • amnesties are intended to reduce the criminal use of weapons in the local area
• Local + National Policies-Moral Panics:

  • on both a local + a national level: the priorities of police + other agencies such as the CPS may be affected by the media coverage + moral panics about a particular type of crime 
  • moral panics in the press about ‘dangerous dogs’ led to the hasty introduction to a new law that was largely ineffective in protecting the public 
  • police forces sometimes de-prioritise a particular offence when they think it’s too trivial, a waste of police resources or too hard to enforce the law 
• Crime committed by those w/ Moral Imperatives:

  -> moral imperative is an overriding sense of what is right, a sense that is so strong it compels a person to act to uphold it, even if it means breaking the law 

  -> there are many examples of people who broke the law because their conscience told them it was the morally correct thing to do:

  • clive ponting broke the law by passing secret information to an MP about the sinking of the Argentinian ship the General Belgrano, arguing that he had done so in the public interest 
  • kay gilderdale broke the law by assisting the suicide of her daughter who had been seriously ill for 17 years 

  -> defendants were either acquitted, found guilty of a lesser charge or had their charges dropped when the jury could not agree on a verdict, showing that it may be difficult to persuade juries to control the actions of those whom they see as acting morally 
• Moral Imperatives-The Suffragettes:

  • in the early 20th century the Suffragettes campaigned for women’s rights in parliamentary elections 
  • as part of their campaign they took direct action + civil disobedience where they deliberately broke the law 
  • e.g. they set fire to post boxes, smashed windows of public buildings, cut telegraph wires etc.
  • when convicted they refused to pay fines 
  • Emily Davison died when she protested throwing herself under the kings horse in 1913
• Moral Imperatives-The Cat + Mouse Act:

  • the Suffragettes’ crimes were motivated by a moral imperative to force Parliament to change the law + end the injustice that women were denied the right to vote
  • 1 thousand women were imprisoned + went on hunger strike 
  • the government responded to this behaviour by passing the Prisoners Act, also known as the Cat + Mouse Act = this act allowed hunger strikers to be temporarily released but then re-imprisoned them once they have recovered their health 
  • the more suffragettes that refused food in prison, the authorities started force feeding them either through the nostril or stomach tube 
  • they achieved partial victory in 1918 when the vote was given to woman ages over 30 + then equalised at 21 in 1928 for boths sexes
• Moral Imperatives-The Stansted 15:

  • this is a more recent example of law breaking as a result of a moral imperative 
  • there were 15 protestors who broke into Stansted airports ‘airside’ area in 2017, to stage a non-violent protest, chaining themselves together around a plane that had been chartered by the Home Office to deport 60 people in Nigeria, Ghana + Sierra Leone
  • all 15 were convicted for ‘endangering an aerodrome’ which carries a potential life sentence, although all 15 convictions were quashed in 2021
  • they acted to prevent the deportation of individuals, some of whom were later proven to have been victims of human trafficking + one had been rapes + forced into sex work 
  • 11 due to be deported were given leave to remain in the UK 
• Moral Imperatives-Theory:

  • functionalists like Durkheim argue that without deviance: new social values couldn’t emerge, no change would be possible + society would stay at a stand still 
  • e.g. Suffragettes law breaking drew attention to the injustice of denying women the vote + promoted equality between the sexes as a basic value of UK society