Criminal Justice System Public Role

Criminal Justice System Public Role

Introduction

Public opinion on crime and criminal justice has undergone a significant transformation over the past few years. Support for long prison sentences as the primary tool in the fight against crime is waning, as most people reject a purely punitive approach to criminal justice. Instead, the public now endorses a balanced, multifaceted solution that focuses on prevention and rehabilitation in concert with other remedies (Bull 1982, pp 269-282).

The last twenty years in the UK have witnessed a radical transformation in relations between the public and the state with regard to criminal justice policy and practice. There has been an increasing acknowledgement and recognition of the state's own limitations in its capacity to guarantee and maintain public order. In part, this stems from a series of recent crises in the apparatus of criminal justice established over the preceding 200 years or so (Bull 1982, pp 269-282), in which the role and involvement of the public have been pivotal sources of concern. This article explores the scope for public involvement and participation in an age of increasing 'punitive populism' and, crucially, the form that this might take.

The current limitations of the state stem from a fourfold crisis of effectiveness, efficiency, cost and confidence in the criminal justice process. Firstly, increased recorded crime rates have placed growing pressure upon criminal justice institutions. This has left them unable to respond in a traditional manner, continually looking for novel ways of managing the mass of cases through efficiency gains (e.g. 'fast-track' prosecution). Secondly, there has been a pervasive sense of failure as to the capacity of formal criminal justice systems to meet their own objectives of crime reduction, leading to what Garland has called (Chapman 1973 pp15-30), a 'crisis of penal modernism'. Thirdly, traditional modes of crime control place an increasing financial burden upon the public purse. Fourthly, there has been a simultaneous crisis of confidence (Chapman 1973 pp15-30 , with public attitudes towards the criminal justice system (including the police) becoming apparently more critical and less deferential. Given the crucial role that the public plays within criminal justice, as witnesses and victims particularly, a loss of confidence can adversely affect the flow of information between public and criminal justice institutions.

Purpose of study

Our examinations within the sociology of law and related criminal justice studies tend to be concerned, to varying degrees, with the autonomy of the criminal justice system, or aspects of it, as socially determinant (or vice versa) and how it functions (or is supposed to function); we tend to primarily study the features that characterize law enforcement and the legal system. However, I would like to pose a slightly different issue than is usually addressed in this area of study. I suggest that we look more specifically at perceptions of criminal justice and law enforcement and the way in which it penetrates social life and social thinking that is, not necessarily how the criminal justice system actually works (Chapman 1973 pp15-30, ...