Assess The Impact Of The Criminal Justice Act 2005
Critically assess the impact of the criminal justiceAct (2003) has had on penal policy and practice.
The criminal justice Act (2003) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and to a lesser extent in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is also an act to make provision for criminal justice including the powers and duties of the police and dealing with the offenders to amend the law relating to jury service .This act includes extensions of powers to stop and search warrants to enter and search arrestable offences, bail, disclosure allocation of criminal offences, prosecution appeals, bad character evidence sentence and release on licence to mention a few. It also expands the circumstances in which defendants can be tried twice for the same offence (double jeopardy) when new and compelling evidence is introduced. However this has had an impact on the penal policy and practice.
Andrews. D.A, Bonta (2010) suggests that for thirty years criminal justice policy has been dominated by a ‘get tough’ approach to offenders. Increasingly punitive measures have failed to reduce criminal recidivism and instead …show more content…
have led to a rapidly growing correctional system that has strained governments’ budget. The inability to rely on official punishment to deter crime is understandably within the context of the psychological human conduct .However this knowledge was largely ignored in the quest for harsher punishment .A better option for dealing with crime is to place greater effort on rehabilitation of offender in particular programs that adhere to the risk – need – responsively (RNR) and the powerful influence strategies for reducing criminal behaviour (cognitive social learning).
In order to understand the impact the criminal justice (Act 2003) has had on penal policy this essay will briefly describe the history and back ground of penal policy and practice. According to the Howard league for penal reform (2009) it is believed that the prison population is now at an all-time high. It has not always beenso, courts are oversubscribed, the police over stretched and the public unconfident in either the efficacy or justice of the penal system. Reoffending rates remain high with 2/3rds of prisoners reoffending with two years of release. Though the amount of crime reported to the British Crime Survey has declined by 42% since (1995), few academic commentators attributed much of this reduction to a greater use of imprisonment. In any case most people still believe that crime is rising and fear of crime is relatively high, suggesting that we need to look beyond the facts to understand public opinion on crime and punishment. The penal policy and the criminal justice system as a whole have been primarily responsible for driving up numbers.
Understanding penal policy also requires a focus on equality and fairness particularly if some groups are selected for harsher punishment or if apparently neutral policies have differential impact.
According to the home office (2004) the criminal justice Act (2003) brings forward a wide range of reforms across the criminal justice system.
Its provisions will be commenced by a series of commencement orders over the next couple years. Criminal justice Act (2003) has had impact on penal policy and practice. According to the report of the commission on English prisons a new approach of the penal modernisation and a number of fundamental reforms which include (A) Significant reduction in the prison population and the closure of establishment (B) The replacement of short prisons sentences with community based responses :( C) The dismantling of the national offender Management Service (NOMS) including the break-up of centrally managed prison
service.
To further analyse the impact the criminal justice act 2003 has had on the penal system this essay will also look at the functions and aims of the penal policy. Penal policy is a larger entity known as the criminal justice system, a term covering all those institutions that respond officially to the commission of offences, notably the police prosecution authorities and courts. Its aims are a concern to develop clear principle for the assignment of some offenders to prison, some to community sanctions, desire to base punishment on the seriousness of the offence and or likelihood of reoffending rather than on the need or circumstances of the offender. Also a connection with right formally defined rather than remedies right of offenders to fair punishment as well as right of public to protection from predatory criminals and last but not least the rights of the state to retribution and of victims to compensation. Justice, risk and human rights are key questions in penal policy it also considers the principal factors which shape the development of penal policy notably political imperatives, economic, influences and penological and criminological principles. To ascertain whether the criminal justice has had an impact on penal policy or not we need to identify what counts as justice in the context of sentencing and punishment. We also need to examine the ways by which parliament, judges and magistrates and the criminal justice professionals seek to justify, impose and implement policies which convey particular answers to these fundamental questions about sentencing and punishment.
According to Professor Ian Loader (2007) the principle that underpins the penal system is focused on how to justify punishment understood as the organized infliction of pain by the state upon an individual following a conviction by the state upon an individual for criminal wrong doing.
Chalmers I (2012) suggest that professionals sometimes do more harm than good when they intervene in the lives of other people, their policies and practice should be informed by transparent, up to date evaluations.
One of the most asked questions is why do we punish and Carlsmith K and Darley M (2002) believed that a person deserves punishment proportionate to the moral wrong committed .Punishing an offender reduces the frequency and likely hood of future offences . Carlsmith K M (2002) also indicates that punishment is a common and inescapable aspect of daily life; social behaviour is often shaped by our use of punishment as well as our reaction to use.
Most used types of punishment are retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation and incapacitation.
Retribution:is when someone harms society by violating its rules punishment can be justified by the simple claim that wrong doing merits punishment and the perpetrator should suffer in proportion to his /her wrong doing. (Carlsmith K M et al 2002, Mcfather, 1997).
Deterrence:Theories assume that a potential wrongdoer is a rational act on and that punishment changes the cost and benefits of the situation so that the wrong doing becomes an unattractive option (Bentham, 1943/1962).
Incapacitation:Again theories argue that the causes for wrong doing lie primary within the perpetrator (Zimring and Hawkins, 1995).Past misbehaviour is the best predictor of future wrong doing so it is important to somehow incapacitate those who have behaved badly before.
Rehabilitation: According to Bentham it is way for an offender to refrain from re offending by taking away offenders desires to offend .The objective of rehabilitation is to reintegrate the offender into society after a period of punishment (Hudson 1987)
There has also been an issue of prison overcrowding. The prison serves has defined overcrowding as occurring when a prison contains more prisoners than the establishment certified normal accommodation (CNA). In 2007 the pressure on prisons places was such that the then labour government were forced to introduce on an early release scheme which permitted prisoners to be released up to 18days early to free up spaces. In January 2012, the ministry of justice reported that the prison population overall stood at 112% of in use. While new prison places have since became available unanticipated events such as the public disorder of 2011 which added 1000 extra prisoners in the space of a few weeks have once again created additional pressures? The criminal justice Act Alliance (2011) suggest that there is a long term rise in the use of imprisonment following the public disorder in August (2011) .In July 2011 the prison population stood at 84.902 and by earlier December it had risen to 87.371 this rapid increase in prison numbers has put additional pressure on a prison system that has been overcrowded for decades.
Members of the criminal justice Alliance report that the recent increase in overcrowding has made their work more difficult and undermining the rehabilitation of prisoners .It also suggest that the government needs to take urgent steps to limit the unnecessary use of prison , ensuring it is reserved for serious persistent and violent offenders for whom no alternative sanction is appropriate.
However the government ‘s commitment to greater use of the community sentence and a more effective probation service is more crucial to divert minor and violent offenders out of prisoner and in to the kind of measures which can enable them to make amends for their wrong doing and better address the problems which lie behind their offending .
Home office committee report (2005) suggest that the steep rise in prisons population over the last years does not appear to be attributable to an increase of the level of crime .Rather it arises from a significant increase in the proportion of offenders given a custodial sentences and an increase in the average length of prison sentence. Also much of the rise in the prison population over the last twenty years can be attributed to changes in law, policy and sentencing practice by the courts.
The Home Office report (2005) also suggest that the prison overcrowding has an effect on people in prison .Prisoners tend to be allocated to prisons where there is no space thus they are moved around the estate , as the prison system attempts to find space near to the appropriate court for prisoners on remand. There is also an issue of strain on staff who may be overstretched as they try to maintain a safe and rehabilitative prison environment.
Prison officers Association (2012) suggest that inadequate resources for the number of offenders detained can exacerbate levels of frustration by prisoner, leading to higher risk of violence. Deterioration of living conditions can mean that prisoners are expected to eat, sleep and defecate in the same small place. It was also found that there are high levels of iliteracy and innumeracy among the prison population and almost half of all prisoners have no qualifications at all due to lack of access to education and training and work in prisons.
The Halliday report (2001) devised a sentencing frame work where sentences –custodial and non-custodial benefited offenders and society. The new frame work was designed to successfully rehabilitate offenders, reduce re offending and reserve prison for those offenders that justify it.
The Halliday report also examines three major proposal which are the : the reform , use of custodial sentences and non-custodial sentences and the formulation of sentencing guidelines .It argues that despite specified aims the proposals have been implemented in such diluted ways that they have limited the chance of achieving the success predicted . However the government has failed to acknowledge the recommendations made and use the report to its full benefit.
Tim Newburn ( 2007) suggest that crime and penal policy have occupied a central place in political and public debate hence declining faith in rehabilitative innovations has been accompanied by increasingly harsh form of penal policy that emphasises the general deterrent and incapacitation effects of imprisonment and has dispraised welfare-oriented approaches as being soft on crime.
Newburn(2007) also suggest that England and Wales are the highest incarcerator in western Europe although the last decade has seen substantial drops in overall levels of crime however this is not reflected in public opinion which continues to believe that crime and disorderliness are rising.
In conclusion
The criminal justice act ( 2003) lists punishment , crime reduction, public protection and reparation as the approved purpose of sentencing without the slightest hint that these aims may clash , point sentence different directions or require prioritizing. However there are problems with the current penal system which are prison overcrowding and high rates of recidivism. This leads to suggestion that restorative justice may be able to provide at least partial solutions .In 2007 there were over 81 000 people in prisons in England and Wales. This however represents a crisis of the penal policy and sentencing rather than of prisons. Halliday report (2001) suggest that sentencing has become more severe with judges and magistrate both awarding custodial sentence than they used to .
Further arguments by Dr Hoyle C (year ) suggest that if prison worked at least utilitarians could feel comfortable about the high numbers of men and women serving increasingly long sentences in less than ideal conditions even if retributivists were alarmed by disproportionate sentences , but when prison fails either to rehabilitate or deter offenders from community further crimes it is hard to see which of the pain of justification of the pain of imprisonment are satisfied by the current penal system.
Statistics by the Howard league shows that two out of three people or three quarters of all young offenders re –offend within two years of release from prison .This should be clear that as an instrument of desistance prisons are as ineffective as ever .
References
Andrews D and Bonata J (2010) Rehabilitating criminal justice policy and practice psychology, public and law, vol (1) pg 39-55
Cavadino M (1953), Digman J (1953) the penal system an introduction
Coyle A (2005), understanding prisons: key issues in policy and practice, crime and justice
Cullomption W (2005) the effects of imprisonment
Newburn T (2003) crime and criminal justice policy: Pearson education Limited
Newburn T (2007) crime and justice vol 36 no 1 crime, Punishment and politics in a comparative perspective pp 425-470: University of Chicago Press
Rutherford A (1984) Prison and the process of justice the reductionist challenge London: William Heineman
HTTP://www.nacro.org.uk changing lives reducingcrime accessed 22/11/2013
Http: / www. The guardian .co.com /politics/2011/apr/16/Ken –Clarke- prison waste money http:/www.internate journal of criminology.com/
The criminal justice Act (2003) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and to a lesser extent in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is also an act to make provision for criminal justice including the powers and duties of the police and dealing with the offenders to amend the law relating to jury service .This act includes extensions of powers to stop and search warrants to enter and search arrestable offences, bail, disclosure allocation of criminal offences, prosecution appeals, bad character evidence sentence and release on licence to mention a few. It also expands the circumstances in which defendants can be tried twice for the same offence (double jeopardy) when new and compelling evidence is introduced. However this has had an impact on the penal policy and practice.
Andrews. D.A, Bonta (2010) suggests that for thirty years criminal justice policy has been dominated by a ‘get tough’ approach to offenders. Increasingly punitive measures have failed to reduce criminal recidivism and instead …show more content…
have led to a rapidly growing correctional system that has strained governments’ budget. The inability to rely on official punishment to deter crime is understandably within the context of the psychological human conduct .However this knowledge was largely ignored in the quest for harsher punishment .A better option for dealing with crime is to place greater effort on rehabilitation of offender in particular programs that adhere to the risk – need – responsively (RNR) and the powerful influence strategies for reducing criminal behaviour (cognitive social learning).
In order to understand the impact the criminal justice (Act 2003) has had on penal policy this essay will briefly describe the history and back ground of penal policy and practice. According to the Howard league for penal reform (2009) it is believed that the prison population is now at an all-time high. It has not always beenso, courts are oversubscribed, the police over stretched and the public unconfident in either the efficacy or justice of the penal system. Reoffending rates remain high with 2/3rds of prisoners reoffending with two years of release. Though the amount of crime reported to the British Crime Survey has declined by 42% since (1995), few academic commentators attributed much of this reduction to a greater use of imprisonment. In any case most people still believe that crime is rising and fear of crime is relatively high, suggesting that we need to look beyond the facts to understand public opinion on crime and punishment. The penal policy and the criminal justice system as a whole have been primarily responsible for driving up numbers.
Understanding penal policy also requires a focus on equality and fairness particularly if some groups are selected for harsher punishment or if apparently neutral policies have differential impact.
According to the home office (2004) the criminal justice Act (2003) brings forward a wide range of reforms across the criminal justice system.
Its provisions will be commenced by a series of commencement orders over the next couple years. Criminal justice Act (2003) has had impact on penal policy and practice. According to the report of the commission on English prisons a new approach of the penal modernisation and a number of fundamental reforms which include (A) Significant reduction in the prison population and the closure of establishment (B) The replacement of short prisons sentences with community based responses :( C) The dismantling of the national offender Management Service (NOMS) including the break-up of centrally managed prison
service.
To further analyse the impact the criminal justice act 2003 has had on the penal system this essay will also look at the functions and aims of the penal policy. Penal policy is a larger entity known as the criminal justice system, a term covering all those institutions that respond officially to the commission of offences, notably the police prosecution authorities and courts. Its aims are a concern to develop clear principle for the assignment of some offenders to prison, some to community sanctions, desire to base punishment on the seriousness of the offence and or likelihood of reoffending rather than on the need or circumstances of the offender. Also a connection with right formally defined rather than remedies right of offenders to fair punishment as well as right of public to protection from predatory criminals and last but not least the rights of the state to retribution and of victims to compensation. Justice, risk and human rights are key questions in penal policy it also considers the principal factors which shape the development of penal policy notably political imperatives, economic, influences and penological and criminological principles. To ascertain whether the criminal justice has had an impact on penal policy or not we need to identify what counts as justice in the context of sentencing and punishment. We also need to examine the ways by which parliament, judges and magistrates and the criminal justice professionals seek to justify, impose and implement policies which convey particular answers to these fundamental questions about sentencing and punishment.
According to Professor Ian Loader (2007) the principle that underpins the penal system is focused on how to justify punishment understood as the organized infliction of pain by the state upon an individual following a conviction by the state upon an individual for criminal wrong doing.
Chalmers I (2012) suggest that professionals sometimes do more harm than good when they intervene in the lives of other people, their policies and practice should be informed by transparent, up to date evaluations.
One of the most asked questions is why do we punish and Carlsmith K and Darley M (2002) believed that a person deserves punishment proportionate to the moral wrong committed .Punishing an offender reduces the frequency and likely hood of future offences . Carlsmith K M (2002) also indicates that punishment is a common and inescapable aspect of daily life; social behaviour is often shaped by our use of punishment as well as our reaction to use.
Most used types of punishment are retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation and incapacitation.
Retribution:is when someone harms society by violating its rules punishment can be justified by the simple claim that wrong doing merits punishment and the perpetrator should suffer in proportion to his /her wrong doing. (Carlsmith K M et al 2002, Mcfather, 1997).
Deterrence:Theories assume that a potential wrongdoer is a rational act on and that punishment changes the cost and benefits of the situation so that the wrong doing becomes an unattractive option (Bentham, 1943/1962).
Incapacitation:Again theories argue that the causes for wrong doing lie primary within the perpetrator (Zimring and Hawkins, 1995).Past misbehaviour is the best predictor of future wrong doing so it is important to somehow incapacitate those who have behaved badly before.
Rehabilitation: According to Bentham it is way for an offender to refrain from re offending by taking away offenders desires to offend .The objective of rehabilitation is to reintegrate the offender into society after a period of punishment (Hudson 1987)
There has also been an issue of prison overcrowding. The prison serves has defined overcrowding as occurring when a prison contains more prisoners than the establishment certified normal accommodation (CNA). In 2007 the pressure on prisons places was such that the then labour government were forced to introduce on an early release scheme which permitted prisoners to be released up to 18days early to free up spaces. In January 2012, the ministry of justice reported that the prison population overall stood at 112% of in use. While new prison places have since became available unanticipated events such as the public disorder of 2011 which added 1000 extra prisoners in the space of a few weeks have once again created additional pressures? The criminal justice Act Alliance (2011) suggest that there is a long term rise in the use of imprisonment following the public disorder in August (2011) .In July 2011 the prison population stood at 84.902 and by earlier December it had risen to 87.371 this rapid increase in prison numbers has put additional pressure on a prison system that has been overcrowded for decades.
Members of the criminal justice Alliance report that the recent increase in overcrowding has made their work more difficult and undermining the rehabilitation of prisoners .It also suggest that the government needs to take urgent steps to limit the unnecessary use of prison , ensuring it is reserved for serious persistent and violent offenders for whom no alternative sanction is appropriate.
However the government ‘s commitment to greater use of the community sentence and a more effective probation service is more crucial to divert minor and violent offenders out of prisoner and in to the kind of measures which can enable them to make amends for their wrong doing and better address the problems which lie behind their offending .
Home office committee report (2005) suggest that the steep rise in prisons population over the last years does not appear to be attributable to an increase of the level of crime .Rather it arises from a significant increase in the proportion of offenders given a custodial sentences and an increase in the average length of prison sentence. Also much of the rise in the prison population over the last twenty years can be attributed to changes in law, policy and sentencing practice by the courts.
The Home Office report (2005) also suggest that the prison overcrowding has an effect on people in prison .Prisoners tend to be allocated to prisons where there is no space thus they are moved around the estate , as the prison system attempts to find space near to the appropriate court for prisoners on remand. There is also an issue of strain on staff who may be overstretched as they try to maintain a safe and rehabilitative prison environment.
Prison officers Association (2012) suggest that inadequate resources for the number of offenders detained can exacerbate levels of frustration by prisoner, leading to higher risk of violence. Deterioration of living conditions can mean that prisoners are expected to eat, sleep and defecate in the same small place. It was also found that there are high levels of iliteracy and innumeracy among the prison population and almost half of all prisoners have no qualifications at all due to lack of access to education and training and work in prisons.
The Halliday report (2001) devised a sentencing frame work where sentences –custodial and non-custodial benefited offenders and society. The new frame work was designed to successfully rehabilitate offenders, reduce re offending and reserve prison for those offenders that justify it.
The Halliday report also examines three major proposal which are the : the reform , use of custodial sentences and non-custodial sentences and the formulation of sentencing guidelines .It argues that despite specified aims the proposals have been implemented in such diluted ways that they have limited the chance of achieving the success predicted . However the government has failed to acknowledge the recommendations made and use the report to its full benefit.
Tim Newburn ( 2007) suggest that crime and penal policy have occupied a central place in political and public debate hence declining faith in rehabilitative innovations has been accompanied by increasingly harsh form of penal policy that emphasises the general deterrent and incapacitation effects of imprisonment and has dispraised welfare-oriented approaches as being soft on crime.
Newburn(2007) also suggest that England and Wales are the highest incarcerator in western Europe although the last decade has seen substantial drops in overall levels of crime however this is not reflected in public opinion which continues to believe that crime and disorderliness are rising.
In conclusion
The criminal justice act ( 2003) lists punishment , crime reduction, public protection and reparation as the approved purpose of sentencing without the slightest hint that these aims may clash , point sentence different directions or require prioritizing. However there are problems with the current penal system which are prison overcrowding and high rates of recidivism. This leads to suggestion that restorative justice may be able to provide at least partial solutions .In 2007 there were over 81 000 people in prisons in England and Wales. This however represents a crisis of the penal policy and sentencing rather than of prisons. Halliday report (2001) suggest that sentencing has become more severe with judges and magistrate both awarding custodial sentence than they used to .
Further arguments by Dr Hoyle C (year ) suggest that if prison worked at least utilitarians could feel comfortable about the high numbers of men and women serving increasingly long sentences in less than ideal conditions even if retributivists were alarmed by disproportionate sentences , but when prison fails either to rehabilitate or deter offenders from community further crimes it is hard to see which of the pain of justification of the pain of imprisonment are satisfied by the current penal system.
Statistics by the Howard league shows that two out of three people or three quarters of all young offenders re –offend within two years of release from prison .This should be clear that as an instrument of desistance prisons are as ineffective as ever .
References
Andrews D and Bonata J (2010) Rehabilitating criminal justice policy and practice psychology, public and law, vol (1) pg 39-55
Cavadino M (1953), Digman J (1953) the penal system an introduction
Coyle A (2005), understanding prisons: key issues in policy and practice, crime and justice
Cullomption W (2005) the effects of imprisonment
Newburn T (2003) crime and criminal justice policy: Pearson education Limited
Newburn T (2007) crime and justice vol 36 no 1 crime, Punishment and politics in a comparative perspective pp 425-470: University of Chicago Press
Rutherford A (1984) Prison and the process of justice the reductionist challenge London: William Heineman
HTTP://www.nacro.org.uk changing lives reducingcrime accessed 22/11/2013
Http: / www. The guardian .co.com /politics/2011/apr/16/Ken –Clarke- prison waste money http:/www.internate journal of criminology.com/