History and Theories of Crime Control - Essay Example

I. History of Crime Control This morning on BBC Radio 3, during the news summary it was mentioned that a report by the select committee of the HomeOffice is to announce that the United Kingdom is in danger of becoming a “surveillance society.” They report the rise of what is referred to as “function creep,” that is the utilization of collected private information for other purposes than it was intended. The National Identity Card scheme has prompted this investigation and this initiative coupled with the rapid advancement in surveillance and information gathering technologies may severely impinge on the liberties and freedoms of the country’s citizens. In reflecting on the history of crime control, the policies of the government and the calls for reforms from citizens have played a dynamic role in shaping crime control and policing. One issue in attempting to explicate a history of crime control in the United Kingdom is that crime statistics were not kept before 1805 and thus all endeavours to reconstruct the state of crime before then must be gathered from, at times, shady court records (Emsley 204). The genesis of modern crime control is often attributed, by most Whig historians, to the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 by then Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel (Sharpe 6). The traditional historical account suggests that this was prompted by the rising rates of crime throughout London and other increasingly urbanized areas in the north and midlands, and the perceived outmoded inadequacy of the previous system of parish constables and watchmen, which had shown its impotence in such situations as the Gordon Riots in 1780 (Emsley 211). The elevation of crime control measures from primarily local and discretionary mechanisms to centralized and homogenous is a general trend that is in part due to the growth of London and other large cities, and the attendant concerns of urban populism mandated greater national implementation of crime management techniques (Emsley 226). One possible explanation for this is that urban environments present a more complex and interconnected social dynamic, which can more easily breakdown with more disastrous results, than in the more agrarian and rural milieu that dominated Great Britain in centuries prior. II. Theories of Crime Control Rather than focusing on the dozens of crime control theories that populate handbooks and research journals, some attention should be paid to the nature of crime control theory itself and how it is established. One of the difficulties in generating sound theories of crime control is in gathering accurate data regarding the crime event, as such data requires micro-level knowledge of individual behaviour of offenders, victims, and law enforcement, who are at times necessarily inaccessible to researchers (Goff 75). Also, much of the research in the UK is directed by the Home Office, which operates a significant researching contingent of some 100 social scientists tasked with arranging, conducting and reporting various projects (Tilley 205). This is quite advantageous insofar that research can be specifically tailored to policy initiatives being discussed and possibly implemented by Parliament. In this way, theoretical research can be directly and efficiently policy guiding. However, this has the negative consequence of possibly lacking scientific integrity and governmental independence and perhaps at times the research is performed in order to satisfy the populist concerns and vagaries of whatever party happens to be in power at the time. The final issue in crime control theory is the deployment of language in describing crime events, nowhere is this more an issue than in the theoretical investigation of terrorism. Defining the term itself has been rather slippery as the term is not necessarily applied to a particular act but rather as a general motivating schema that underpins criminal activities as terroristic (Mythen and Walklate 381). Furthermore, attempting to associate that particular motivational scheme to a set of predictable activities, which can subsequently sought to be controlled has proven difficult as terrorist psychopathology does not always follow the general trajectories of criminal pathos as has been traditionally observed. In the UK, experience with such groups as the IRA has not proven to be particularly fruitful as the sort of actors involved in the recent wave of Islamic fundamentalist motivated terrorism do not operate in the same hierarchical and centralized manner with clearly defined objectives as groups as the IRA did. As such some have postulated that a “new terrorism” is being formed, which requires an entirely new theoretic to be established (Mythen and Walklate 382-383). III. Crime Prevention On 10 January 2006, Tony Blair announced the “Respect Action Plan.” Its intention was to respond, manage and reduce anti-social behaviour. The report outlines what the plan sees as the sources of such behaviour and pledges to, “promote respect positively, bear down uncompromisingly on anti-social behaviour; tackle its causes; and offer leadership and support to local people and local services” (McDonald 191). After defining the nature of respect, the plan pinpoints the causes of anti-social behaviour to various social institutions including families, education and the community-at-large. Tools implemented to deal with such behaviour in regard to these institutions include, Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs), Penalty Notices for Disorder (PNDs) and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ABSOs) (McDonald 192). In the post 9/11 and 7/7 worlds, growing fears about crime both on the macro-level and local and community safety level, have prompted such rhetorically fervent initiatives (Stenson 266). The concern here is that this reliance on such disconcertingly totalitarian concepts as “respect” and “order” and the strict zero-tolerance policy regarding the understandably “childish” behaviours of children, does little to actually reduce fear and instead demonizes everyone under the age of 16 in the United Kingdom. No doubt that such a demonization could be regarded with significant resentment by Britain’s youth; such resentment could eventually boil over into backlash. The other consequence of such a plan could create conduit for career criminals as teenagers are more easily introduced to the penal system via these ABSOs, introducing them into a cycle of authorial remonstration that will only escalate as they become adults. This creation of a recidivist class of “others” generates the kind of anomie that marks the rise of terrorist activities seen around the world, as those on the outside are set over and against the law-abiding majority (Stenson 268). It seems that the intention of the plan was to create a mechanism to resolve or intercede on specific behaviours before they became strictly criminal ones, but instead the “Respect Action Plan” has paradoxically, expanded the scope of criminality to include these “anti-social behaviours.” In other words, it has transformed the proclivities of teenage rebelliousness into “pseudo-crimes” and thus turning teenagers into pseudo-criminals. IV. Community Crime Controls In 1994, then Home Secretary Michael Howard introduced the Street Watch scheme as civilians “walking with a purpose” (Williams 527). The idea is quite intuitive, that members of the local community would voluntarily walk the streets of their neighbourhoods reporting any suspicious activity to the proper authorities. The idea is that “active citizenship” promotes solidarity among members within the community, which makes them less likely to commit crimes against a neighbour. Furthermore it acts a natural deterrent for crime as the number of eyes in any one place is multiplied geometrically. These benefits prompted the Home Office in 2000 to declare the Street Watch and Neighbourhood Watch programs as “one of the biggest and most successful crime prevention initiatives ever” (Williams 528). This is also in-line with current ideological shifts occurring in Britain regarding the nature of policing, known as pluralized or nodal policing (Kempa and Johnston 181). One of the issues that the Home Office was alive to was the concern over the possible rise of vigilantism undertaken by overzealous members of the Street Watch. In the initial guidelines set forth, it was explained that the Street Watch was set specifically to work with the police and not act in any way independently or contrarily to any police strategy. This was again reinforced in a later set of guidelines discouraging “have a-go heroes.” The reason for such repetition comes from an inherent tension between the nature of “active citizenship” and heterogeneous authority. Legally, speaking these voluntary groups can have no legal authority to execute their duties, yet the nature of the Street Watch places some citizens in some power-relationship with other citizens, and this kind of power relationship interposes a “natural authority.” This can lead to conflict with official sources of authority like the police, and the sense of legitimacy propounded can cause “active citizenship” to slip to “autonomous citizenship” (Williams 530). Tangibly, if the police are affiliated with these groups that have no legitimate legal authority and this affiliation leads to conflicts of interest, in the case where a member of the Street Watch group practices some inappropriate surveillance technique, then the police are in the unenviable position of attempting to placate and ameliorate the efforts of the Street Watch group, while simultaneously managing the rights of the accused or targeted individuals-forcing the police to play one set of citizens off against another set. V. Policing As has been mentioned in previous reflections, the police have been requested to increase engagement and collaboration with other crime management bodies inside the community, to become more of a positive force rather than a purely retributive institution. Moreover, these directives have been focused on increasing the presence of state authority in the lives of potential young offenders (Waters 244). Programs such as the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Program (ISSP) are geared for police initiated community-based interventions for young offenders. This “new” mode for the police is often described as an expanding of the role, yet interestingly when the Metropolitan police were first established by Peel, their first and primary duty as it was stated was the prevention of crime (Emsley 213). The evolution of the force as a primarily investigating and incarcerating body developed as a result of WWII and the desire to establish legitimacy as a professional law enforcement body. During WWII concerns over espionage not only with external agents, but internal agitators required not only the beginning of the secret service, but the exposure of the police force to the techniques of investigation and surveillance that are critical for effective counter-intelligence operations. These operations incubated in the heat of WWII grew during the Cold War as fears of Communist insurgents became culturally ubiquitous. Subsequently, the need for better trained and thus better paid police officers asked questions about the effectiveness and efficiency of the Bobbies. Given that it is impossible to statistically account for what crimes did not occur, the increased pressure to establish an incarceration record became more important as tangible evidence of the police’s necessity and efficacy in society. As arrests became more relevant, the need to establish a criminal justice system that could work with the police increased the need for officers to be properly trained in investigative techniques and the rights of citizens to insure violations of civil procedures and the personal liberties were minimized. Finally, the increasing wealth and affluence in the United Kingdom created a greater concern for the protection of property and wealth, further increasing the role of the police as a law enforcement body as more individuals were more affected by larger and larger spheres of the legal system as issues of possession became more relevant in litigation. VI. Criminal Justice System While it would be a gross generalization to suggest that the amelioration from the “Bloody Codes” of the eighteenth century, in which there existed no fewer than 200 separate offences for which one could face capital punishment to the abolishment of the death penalty in 1965, has occurred in a linearly progressive manner; it is clear that the movement towards imprisonment and rehabilitation has defined the major shift in the conception of criminal justice over the past two centuries (Emsley 221). During the Middle Ages in the absence of a police force, the need to establish fear and aversion to crime was primarily accomplished through obscenely cruel displays of execution (Scan 53). The shifting sensibilities away from the death penalty in society seemed to have originated from a shifting in the understanding of God, beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, from a vengeful and wrathful deity, to a benevolent all-loving creator. Thus, “he had never intended barbarous punishments and consequently, far more appropriate than the gallows was the prison, conducted on humane principles to encourage the offender’s reformation” (Emsley 222). Though prisons are certainly not new in the United Kingdom, their development into institutions of possible rehabilitation is certainly a more modern phenomenon, and a controversial one at that. In 2007, the UK spent approximately £3 billion in the prison system and by most accounts it is not enough, since many of these incarceration facilities are well past their intended maximum capacity (Fraser 451). Furthermore, the early-release parole program that has been implemented to ease the load has resulted in a number of repeat violent offenders, resulting in the death of hundreds of people, some who claim could have been avoided by an abandonment of the parole system and an increase in the number of prisons. Many issues in the Criminal Justice system, from crime control and prevention to punishment and the role of the death penalty are dependent on the shifting, economic, political, and social perspectives of British citizens. It is clear that the solutions to crime are only as effective and relevant as we make them out to be, and as new methods of law enforcement are developed, new methods of law-breaking seem to develop as well. Works Cited Emsley, Clive. "The Oxford Handbook of Criminology." Maguire, Mike, Rod Morgan and Robert Reiner. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 203-230. Fido, Martin. A History of British Serial Killing. London: Carlton Books Limited, 2001. Fraser, David. "British Crime Statistics and the Need for More Prisons." Contemporary Review (2006): 449-453. Goff, Elizabeth R. "Simulation for Theory Testing and Experimentation: An Example Using Routine Activity Theory and Street Robbery." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 23 (2007): 75-103. Kempa, Michael and Lee Johnston. "Challenges and Prospects for the Development of Inclusive Plural Policiing in Britain: Overcoming Political and Conceptual Obstacles." The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 38.2 (2005): 181-191. McDonald, Iain. "The Respect Action Plan: Something New or More of the Same." Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law 28.2 (2006): 191-200. Mythen, Gabe and Sandra Walklate. "Criminology and Terrorism." British Journal of Criminology 46 (2006): 379-398. Scan, McGlynn. "Violence and the Law in Medieval England." History Today 58.4 (2008): 53-59. Sharpe, James. "The History of Crime in England, 1550-1914." ReFresh 20 (1995): 5-8. Stenson, Kevin. "Sovereignty, Biopolitics and the Local Government of Crime in Britain." Theoretical Criminology 9.3 (2005): 265-287. Tilley, Nick. "Experimentation and Criminal Justice Policies in the United Kingdom." Crime & Delinquency 46.2 (2000): 194-213. Waters, Ian. "The Police, Intelligence, and Young Offenders." International Journal of Police Science and Management 9.3 (2007): 244-256. Williams, Kate. "Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Police Experiences with the Legitimacy of Street Watch Partnerships." The Howard Journal 44.5 (2005): 527-537. Read More