10. Race, ethnicities, and the criminal justice system

2021 ◽  
pp. 273-307
Author(s):  
Neena Samota
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Justice System ◽  
State Level ◽  
System P ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk

This chapter explores the broader context and history of race-related issues in the UK, considering why racial disparities persist in diverse societies like the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK, before narrowing the focus to race and ethnicity in the sphere of crime and criminal justice. The concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ have long played major roles in both classroom and broader societal discussions about crime, punishment, and justice, but they have arguably never been more present and visible than today. The chapter looks at the problems with the statistics available on race, ethnicity, and crime, noting the ways in which they may not tell the whole story, before considering the statistics themselves as the chapter discusses the relationships between ethnicity and victimisation and offending. It then moves on to how ethnic minorities experience the various elements of the criminal justice system and the disadvantages they often face, before outlining the attempts that have been made to address these disparities at a state level. Finally, the chapter discusses critical race theory, a key theory in modern criminological examinations of race and its relationship to crime and justice, which grew out of the US but has much broader value and relevance as a framework of analysis.

10. Race, ethnicities, and the criminal justice system

Criminology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neena Samota
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
State Response ◽  
System P ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process

This chapter examines the salience of race and ethnicity in the criminal justice system from the perspective of critical race theory (CRT). It first provides an overview of the key ideas of CRT before discussing the interrelationships among race, crime, and the criminal justice system. It then explores the state response to rising social inequality and racial discrimination, as well as the key decision-making points in the criminal justice process that potentially increase or decrease ethnic disproportionality. It also considers the use of CRT to understand crime and criminal justice in England and Wales and how the principle of fairness that underpins the concept of policing by consent is undermined by any unfair practices or unlawful discrimination. concludes by citing evidence showing that people from ethnic minorities are at greater risk of criminalisation and harsher sanctions through the policing, prosecution, and sentencing stages.

Machine-Learnt Bias? Algorithmic Decision Making and Access to Criminal Justice

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-100
Author(s):  
Malwina Anna Wojcik
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Crime Mapping ◽  
The Us ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
The Uk

The pressure on the criminal justice system in England and Wales is mounting. Recent figures reveal that despite a rise in recorded crime, the number of defendants in court proceedings has been the lowest in 50 years. This indicates a crisis of access to criminal justice. Predictive policing and risk assessment programmes based on algorithmic decision making (ADM) offer a prospect of increasing efficiency of law enforcement, eliminating delays and cutting the costs. These technologies are already used in the UK for crime-mapping and facilitating decisions regarding prosecution of arrested individuals. In the US their deployment is much wider, covering also sentencing and parole applications.

Transforming Probation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Penal Policy ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Community Rehabilitation ◽  
System P ◽  
History Of

Although it is possible to trace a recent history of far reaching change in probation, the criminal justice system, and penal policy since the 1980s, it is of specific interest to excavate the period from 1997 to 2015. This is because new labour 1997-2010 modernised the criminal justice domain, followed by the era of coalition government that imposed profound transformations in the form of the rehabilitation revolution. The latter culminated in a proportion of probation work being privatised following the creation of 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies. This updated, revised, and largely re-written book constructs an extended theoretical grid to develop a more sophisticated and critical analysis of modernising incursions and transformational traumas under the politico-economic conditions of neoliberal capitalism. Accordingly, in 6 substantive chapters, the book makes an original and timely contribution to theoretical excavation and research in the criminal justice system. To achieve this objective, the book has been expanded to accommodate theoretical insights elicited from Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Foucault, Lacan and Žižek. Additionally, there is a distinctive religious and personalist tradition of considerable longevity that must be factored into this analysis. This is facilitated by refining the conceptual device of moral economy. A major strength of this revised and updated text is the refined theoretical framework to excavate a recent history of politically imposed modernisation and transformation, largely associated with the reconstruction of the probation system.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 183-188
Author(s):  
Sarah Esther Lageson
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Criminal Record ◽  
Central Source ◽  
System P ◽  
The Us ◽  
Imperfect System

In the digitally connected world, people are confronted with an incredible array of information about one another. The US criminal justice system has become a central source for the data people use to make moral judgments about one another. This overreliance on the criminal justice system as a means to assess the value of other people should be replaced by rigorously questioning the information this system provides. Given the power of a criminal record to dictate the path of a person’s life, serious doubts must be raised about the accuracy and integrity of the information. It must be asked how much a criminal record reflects a person and how much it reflects a very imperfect system.

scholarly journals Justicia’s Gaze: Surveillance, Evidence and the Criminal Trial

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Edmond ◽  
Mehera San Roque
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
The Us ◽  
Static Images ◽  
Image Artefact ◽  
The Uk

This paper considers the use of the products of surveillance, primarily images, as evidence within the criminal trial. These products, whether static images, video or voice recordings, are increasingly being mediated for the fact-finder via ‘experts’, proffering an opinion about the meaning of some surveillance image, artefact or trace. Common law courts, including those in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US, have been surprisingly accommodating towards such evidence—allowing incriminating opinions to be presented by witnesses with questionable or unsubstantiated, ‘expertise’. Institutional and judicial responses tend to be inattentive to the reliability of such evidence, and display a misplaced faith in the capacity of traditional trial safeguards to expose and manage the weaknesses inherent in this type of evidence. In looking at the ways in which courts use CCTV images, voice recordings and other traces generated by surveillant assemblages, this paper offers a legal site for consideration that has not featured as prominently in recent surveillance literature. It suggests that the preoccupations generated by the ubiquitous nature of everyday surveillance do not always map cleanly onto the use of surveillance artefacts (e.g. images and other traces) in the criminal justice system. At the same time this paper explores how ideas and concepts familiar to the analysis of surveillance techniques, cultures, imaginaries and practices might inform our understanding of the criminal trial and its related processes. Fundamentally concerned with the value of such evidence, this paper argues that, given the premium placed upon accuracy and fairness within the criminal trial, the state should be able to guarantee the basic trustworthiness of the opinions before interpretations derived from surveillance assemblages are admitted to assist with proof of identity and guilt.

Unlock imagined: arts in criminal justice

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-143
Author(s):  
Alison Frater
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Personal Perspective ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Optimistic Picture ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Causes Of Crime

Starting with a personal perspective this piece outlines the place and role of the arts in the criminal justice system in the UK. It paints an optimistic picture, though an unsettling one, because the imagination and reflexiveness of the arts reveals a great deal about the causes of crime and the consequences of incarceration. It raises questions about the transforming impact of the arts: how the benefits could, and should, be optimised and why evaluations of arts interventions are consistent in identifying the need for a non-coercive, more socially focused, paradigm for rehabilitation. It concludes that the deeper the arts are embedded in the criminal justice system the greater the benefits will be, that a more interdisciplinary approach would support better theoretical understanding, and that increased capacity to deliver arts in the criminal justice system is needed to offer more people a creative pathway out of crime.

scholarly journals Mercy towards decarceration: Examining the legal constraints on early release from prison

Incarceration ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 263266632097780
Author(s):  
Alexandra Cox ◽  
Dwayne Betts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Family Members ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Release ◽  
The Us ◽  
Legal Constraints ◽  
Release From Prison

There are close to seven million people under correctional supervision in the United States, both in prison and in the community. The US criminal justice system is widely regarded as an inherently unmerciful institution by scholars and policymakers but also by people who have spent time in prison and their family members; it is deeply punitive, racist, expansive and damaging in its reach. In this article, we probe the meanings of mercy for the institution of parole.

Criminal Justice in an Era of Mass Deportation

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid V. Eagly
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
State Level ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Collateral Consequence

After a sustained period of hypercriminalization, the United States criminal justice system is undergoing reform. Congress has reduced federal sentencing for drug crimes, prison growth is slowing, and some states are even closing prisons. Low-level crimes have been removed from criminal law books, and attention is beginning to focus on long-neglected issues such as bail and criminal court fines. Still largely overlooked in this era of ambitious reform, however, is the treatment of immigrants in the criminal justice system. An unprecedented focus on immigration enforcement targeted at “felons, not families” has resulted in a separate system of punitive treatment reserved for noncitizens, which includes crimes of migration, longer periods of pretrial detention, harsher criminal sentences, and the almost certain collateral consequence of lifetime banishment from the United States. For examples of state-level solutions to this predicament, this Essay turns to a trio of bold criminal justice reforms from California that (1) require prosecutors to consider immigration penalties in plea bargaining; (2) change the state definition of “misdemeanor” from a maximum sentence of a year to 364 days; and (3) instruct law enforcement agencies to not hold immigrants for deportation purposes unless they are first convicted of serious crimes. Together, these new laws provide an important window into how state criminal justice systems could begin to address some of the unique concerns of noncitizen criminal defendants.

scholarly journals A history of Malawi’s criminal justice system: from pre-colonial to democratic periods

Fundamina ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-336
Author(s):  
Lewis Chezan Bande
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
Correctional Services ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
History Of

This contribution traces the historical development of the criminal justice system in Malawi, from the pre-colonial period, through the colonial and independence periods, to the contemporary democratic period. It highlights the major political hallmarks of each historical period and their impact on the development of the criminal justice system. The contribution shows that all aspects of the current criminal justice system – substantive criminal law, procedural law, criminallaw enforcement agencies, courts and correctional services – are products of political and constitutional processes and events of the past century. Their origins are directly traceable to the imposition of British protectorate rule on Nyasaland in the late nineteenth century. The development of the Malawian criminal justice system since then has been heavily influenced by the tension and conflict of colonialism, the brutality of one-party dictatorship and the country’s quest for a constitutional order that is based on liberal principles of democracy, rule of law, transparency and accountability, respect for human rights, limited government and equality before the law. To properly understand Malawi’s current criminal justice system, one has to know and appreciate its historical origins and development.

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