crimeinfo.org.uk

Crime, its causes, and how it is dealt with, are some of the biggest issues in Britain today. Politicians and political parties can win or lose power depending on how well we think they are doing on the issue of crime. Not a day passes without some criminal justice story featuring in the news. This page is intended to give you some foundation in this important area.

What is Crime?

As a starting point, crime may be defined as an act or omission prohibited or punished by law. A ‘criminal offence’ includes any infringement of the criminal law, from murder to riding a bicycle without lights. This is quite separate from the ‘civil law.’ In the civil law proceedings are begun by persons, companies, or organizations claiming to have suffered a breach. Prosecutions in the criminal law are begun by an agency of the State.

In England, criminal cases are cited as The Crown verses Mr. X (and are written as R. v. Mr. X, the R. standing for Regina, the Queen).

What is classified as a crime is supposed to reflect the values of society and to reinforce those values. If an act is regarded as harmful to society or its citizens, it is often, but not always (take smoking and drinking for example), classified as a criminal offence.

The United Kingdom relies on Parliament to classify what acts are criminal and what the penalties for these criminal offences are; the idea being that those most harmful to us carry the harshest penalties. In other words, crime is what the government says it is. Of course, what this means is that what is a crime one year might not be a crime the next, and that penalties for crime can also change a great deal.

For example:

In 1966 sex between two twenty-one year old men was illegal. In 1967, after the passing of the Sexual Offences Act, it was legal.
In 2002 you could be sent to jail for simple possession of marijuana, now you cannot.
In 1919 you were free to possess and consume opium (of which heroin is a derivative), but in 1920 it became illegal without a doctor’s prescription.

Politics, Politicians, and Crime

What a person’s or a political party’s position on issues relating to crime is may influence greatly their prospects of getting elected. This does not mean, however, that the people in power or the political parties are that far from each other in their stances.

Over the last ten years the crime rate has fallen.
In that same period the United Kingdom’s prison population has rapidly grown.
This is despite the fact that prison is the most costly response to crime (at about £300 a night) and rates of re-offending of released prisoners are extremely high.
We now imprison at a greater rate than any other country in the European Union, we imprison more children than anyone else, and the female prison population has doubled in the last ten years.
In the last ten years we have been governed by both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.

So what is going on?

Surveys have shown that Britons are becoming increasingly afraid of being a victim of crime when the actual chance of being a victim of crime is at its lowest in 20 years. In response politicians promise to be tough on crime and, in some cases, on the causes of crime too. Here are the main policies of the three main parties:

Labour: Has overseen the greatest portion of the growth of the prison population. Boasts record numbers of police supported by new ‘community support officers’ and ‘tough new laws.’ Has recently focused on crime committed by young people, anti-social behaviour, and ‘persistent and prolific offenders.’

Conservative: Promise a ’war on crime’ and the building of more prisons. Believes that prison sentences should be longer and intend to do away with early release schemes for prsioners. Claims that police performance is slipping and police are hampered by form-filling and red tape. Want to recruit 5,000 more police officers per year.

Liberal Democrat: Would like new ‘tough liberalism’ to be introduced into criminal justice policy. This includes more training and education for prisoners, selling inner-city prisons and building ‘modern prisons’ outside of city centres, and introducing ‘community justice panels’ staffed by members of communities to determine sentences for some offenders.

Crime and the Media

Two thirds of the country believe that crime is rising when it is doing the opposite. So why are we getting it so wrong?

Most of us get our information about crime from the popular media: television and radio news, and the newspapers. Three quarters of people get information about the criminal justice system from television or radio news, and about one half said that they get information from television documentaries, local and tabloid newspapers.

BUT: only 6 per cent of people think that their main source of news about the criminal justice system is inaccurate.

THIS MEANS: the vast majority of us trust our news sources, SO what these sources say is very important.

The fact is that sensational stories attract the most people. The most sensational stories involve the most shocking crimes (murder, rape, and any crime against children), or the most prolific or exceptional offenders. But these are only a small minority of crimes. And the amount of time and space covering crime issues continues to rise. As does our fear of crime.

The Cost of Crime

The Home Office estimates that the total cost of crime in Britain each year is £59.9 billion. This figure represents much more than just the value of goods that may have been stolen, it includes:

Spending on security to prevent crime;
The cost of treating victims of crime in hospital;
Lost wages; and
The cost of running the criminal justice system – courts, police, prisons, and all.

With all that money being lost and spent, there is also plenty of it to be made. More and more the government is looking to private companies to provide services within the criminal justice system:

There are now ten private prisons in the United Kingdom.
These prisons hold 9 per cent of the prison population.
They are run by multinational companies such as Group 4, Premier, Serco, Sodexho and Securicor.
In September 2003 Serco estimated that its existing UK prisons and correctional services contracts were valued at £2 billion.
All the Immigration Detention Centres are privately operated.
These and other companies also design and build prisons, transport prisoners, run holding cells in courts, supply food, supply the police with equipment and so on.

Crime is big business.

The criminal justice system and business are linked in other ways too. For example, the Prison Service is seeking to increase partnerships with industries, supplying machinery and a workforce in return for training.

Did you know . . . ?

Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of modern sociology, believed that crime was important to the well-being of society because challenges to established moral and legal laws (deviance and crime, respectively) acted to unify the law-abiding and reinforce their values.
The Inside-Out Trust runs a program in Her Majesty’s Prison Wandsworth in which prisoners can work on repairing bicycles that are then sent to Africa for use there.

Useful Links:

http://www.inside-out.org.uk - The Inside-Out trust develops prison projects based on restorative justice principles. Prisoners learn new skills which they willingly use to provide goods and services to disadvantaged people all over the world; new skills which should improve their own employment prospects after release.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime/index.html - The Home Office’s crime website.

See what the three main parties have to say:

http://www.labour.org.uk/crime04/ - The Labour Party
http://www.libdems.org.uk/index.cfm/page.folders/section.policy/folder.policy_papers - The Liberal Democrats
http://www.conservatives.com/policies - The Conservative Party