8. Summary justice in the magistrates’ court

2021 ◽  
pp. 389-430
Author(s):  
Lucy Welsh ◽  
Layla Skinns ◽  
Andrew Sanders

This chapter focuses on the magistrates’ courts. It discusses the importance of the magistracy and the work that they do; the involvement (and funding) of lawyers in summary justice; major pre-trial decisions such as bail and whether a case can be dealt with in the magistrates’ court or is so serious that it needs to be sent to the Crown court (mode of trial/allocation); how magistrates and their legal advisors measure up to the crime control/due process models of criminal justice; and the future of summary justice (including the impact of managerialist and ‘victim rights’ reforms and trends that encourage dealing with much lower court business away from the courtroom itself).

1997 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Fenwick

This paper draws attention to the interests of the victim in the criminal justice system in relation to the use of charge bargaining and the sentence discount in UK law. The paper argues that debate in this area tends to assume that these practices, particularly use of the graded sentence discount, are in harmony with the needs of crime control and with the interests of victims, but that they may infringe due process rights. Debate tends to concentrate on the due process implications of such practices, while the ready association of victims' interests with those of crime control tends to preclude consideration of a distinctive victim's perspective. This paper therefore seeks to identify the impact of charge bargaining and the sentence discount on victims in order to identify a particular victim's perspective. It goes on to evaluate measures which would afford it expression including the introduction of victim consultation and participation in charge bargains and discount decisions as proposed under the 1996 Victim's Charter. It will be argued, however, that while this possibility has value, victims' interests might be more clearly served by limiting or abandoning the use of these practices.


Author(s):  
Harley Williamson ◽  
Mai Sato ◽  
Rachel Dioso-Villa

The fallible nature of the criminal justice system continues to see judicial errors—that is, wrongful convictions and erroneous acquittals—undermine its integrity, efficacy, and legitimacy. Public perceptions of judicial errors are important contributors to criminal justice policy and reforms. The current study utilizes the 2016 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) dataset to examine public attitudes toward judicial errors. It applies Herbert Packer’s crime control and due process models to understand how concerns around procedural safeguards and public safety are associated with public perceptions toward judicial errors. Packer’s model has been challenged by studies, which theorize that the models are not mutually exclusive. Yet, they have not been empirically tested in this context, which is a gap this study seeks to fill. Findings show that due process and crime control concerns shape public attitudes toward wrongful convictions and challenge the notion that Packer’s models be applied on a continuum.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-52
Author(s):  
Lucy Welsh ◽  
Layla Skinns ◽  
Andrew Sanders

This chapter discusses the nature, structure, values and objectives of ‘criminal justice’, together with recent trends, primarily in England and Wales. This includes examining the concepts of guilt and innocence, and the difficulty of ‘proving’ either in many cases; the adversarial nature of the Anglo-American system, contrasted with the inquisitorial approaches that traditionally underpin ‘European’ systems; and the analytical tools of ‘crime control’ and ‘due process’. The importance, and limitation, of the human rights approach in criminal justice is discussed, along with the increasing influences of managerialism and neoliberalism. The chapter then looks at how victims are catered for in these various approaches. It concludes that human rights provide only a bare minimum of protection for suspects and victims alike, and that the system is more exclusionary than inclusionary. Thus a new theoretical framework is proposed that is centred on ‘freedom’, which would prioritise three ‘core values’: justice, democracy and efficiency.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J Brent

Reflecting the punitive turn in criminal justice, schools have adopted a crime control orientation when responding to student misconduct. Termed the ‘criminalization of school discipline’, this trend has diminished student and school outcomes while also establishing a school-to-prison pipeline. Consequently, there has been mounting pressure to reform punitive and disproportionate practices. While research has evaluated the impact of remedial programs, little work explores how punitive logics continue to structure disciplinary responses. Drawing from ethnographic and interview data, this study examines the entrenchment of punitive dispositions in the context of appeals for alternative practices. By tracing the contours of punitive norms within a non-criminal justice context, this study captures the mechanisms through which penal logics infuse into society and extend beyond criminal justice systems.


2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 266-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hagit Lernau

One of the most influential attempts to describe and comprehend the criminal law system is Packer's celebrated notion regarding the “Two Models of the Criminal Justice System.” Packer regards the criminal justice process as an image constantly shifting between two conflicting models — the “Crime Control Model” and the “Due Process Model” of criminal law. The first model strives to create an effective criminal system that will protect society's right to peace and safety. This aim may be achieved by emphasizing the earlier, informal stages in the law enforcement procedure, namely, police investigation and the decision to prosecute. The second model aims to ensure that the law enforcement process, which is one of the most coercive powers of the state, will be conducted in a lawful manner that will protect suspects and defendants from both intentional wrongdoing and from unintentional mistakes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Le Lan Chi

The court exercises the judicial power, thereby plays an important role in protecting human rights. However, such role varies across nations and models of criminal procedure. Vietnam, the country has been following the model of crime control, has its corresponding approach to the role of the court in protecting human rights. Notwithstanding, the current context of improving the rule of law and human rights has posed challenges and raised questions of changing the approach. Keywords The Court, adjudication, human rights, model, due-process, crime-control, the accused References [1] Herbert L. Packer, Two models of the criminal process, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1964, 1 (http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/penn_law_review/vol113/iss1/1) [2] Joycelyn M. Pollock, Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in Criminal Justice, Cengage Learning, Boston, 2015, p.116 [3] https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/criminal-justice/the-criminal-justice-system/which-model-crime-control-or-due-process [4] Fairchild, E. and Dammer, H. R., Comparative Criminal Justice System, 2nd ed. Belmont, Wadsworth Thomson Learning, 2001, p. 146 [5] Fairchild, E. and Dammer, H. R., Comparative Criminal Justice System, 2nd ed. Belmont, Wadsworth Thomson Learning, 2001, p. 148 [6] Đào Trí Úc, Hệ thống những nguyên tắc cơ bản của tố tụng hình sự Việt Nam theo Bộ luật tố tụng hình sự năm 2015 (in trong sách chuyên khảo “Những nội dung mới trong Bộ luật tố tụng hình sự năm 2015”, Nguyễn Hoà Bình (chủ biên), Nxb. Chính trị quốc gia – Sự thật, Hà Nội, 2016, trang 59.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Perussich

<h2>This article discusses the role of gender in the commission of crime, criminality, and harm prevention, by critically examining the notion of crime within theories about women’s and men’s criminality, and the gendered nature of crime control policies throughout the United Kingdom (UK), England, Wales, and Scotland. Throughout the literature, there has been a continued focus on women needing to be ‘repaired’ when they commit crime, because women are seen as having gone outside the traditional role of what it means to be female. On the other hand, the link between hegemonic masculinity and criminal behaviour among men is often ignored within criminal justice policies. It will be argued that both women and men are failed by a system that does not engage with gendered power and harms within society. A combination of targeted approaches that focus on the factors that lead to offending is required to reduce crime. </h2>


Author(s):  
Janet Chan

Internet and telecommunications, ubiquitous sensing devices, and advances in data storage and analytic capacities have heralded the age of Big Data, where the volume, velocity, and variety of data not only promise new opportunities for the harvesting of information, but also threaten to overload existing resources for making sense of this information. The use of Big Data technology for criminal justice and crime control is a relatively new development. Big Data technology has overlapped with criminology in two main areas: (a) Big Data is used as a type of data in criminological research, and (b) Big Data analytics is employed as a predictive tool to guide criminal justice decisions and strategies. Much of the debate about Big Data in criminology is concerned with legitimacy, including privacy, accountability, transparency, and fairness. Big Data is often made accessible through data visualization. Big Data visualization is a performance that simultaneously masks the power of commercial and governmental surveillance and renders information political. The production of visuality operates in an economy of attention. In crime control enterprises, future uncertainties can be masked by affective triggers that create an atmosphere of risk and suspicion. There have also been efforts to mobilize data to expose harms and injustices and garner support for resistance. While Big Data and visuality can perform affective modulation in the race for attention, the impact of data visualization is not always predictable. By removing the visibility of real people or events and by aestheticizing representations of tragedies, data visualization may achieve further distancing and deadening of conscience in situations where graphic photographic images might at least garner initial emotional impact.


1976 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Musheno ◽  
Dennis Palumbo ◽  
James Levine

A normative policy-impact model that provides criteria for evaluating specific programs as well as for determining which goals should be given priority in criminal justice is presented. With "decision structure," "self-interest goals," and "public-interest goals" the main elements of the model, the article stresses the impact of criminal justice on various groups related to this policy area. Although a policy may be aimed primarily at groups out side government (e.g., criminals), it also will have an impact on those asked to carry it out (e.g., police). When the effects benefit the nongovernment groups (sometimes called the clientele), the policy achieves "public-interest goals. " When the beneficiaries are government officials, "self-interest goals" are being attained. One of the main themes of this paper is that the extent to which public-interest goals can be reached depends entirely on how well they serve the self-interests of those who are responsible for executing the policies in question. Thus, while the article proposes that the ultimate goal of the criminal justice system should be the "equalization of the burden of crime," it emphasizes that the means of accomplishing this goal are uncertain because traditional crime-control strategies (e.g., deterrence) have major fallacies. Moreover, even if promising strategies are discovered, the self- interests of personnel in the criminal justice system motivate them to subvert such policies. Only through conscious mani pulation of work incentives can the vested interests of many criminal justice personnel in the status quo be altered and the equalization of the costs of crime be obtained.


2021 ◽  
pp. 689-716
Author(s):  
Alisdair A. Gillespie ◽  
Siobhan Weare

This chapter considers the impact that COVID-19 has had on the English Legal System. The chapter is broken down into sections that mirror the parts of this book. The chapter begins by noting that the manner in which laws are passed differed because of coronavirus. The government were given wide-ranging powers to introduce new laws that restricted liberty. In many instances, these were not subject to Parliamentary debate or judicial analysis. The chapter also considers how the courts had to adjust to new ways of working. While traditionally, the courts rely on live proceedings, with everyone gathered in court, this was not possible throughout the pandemic. Remote hearings became the new normal until so-called ‘Nightingale Courts’ were introduced to allow for socially-distant trials to resume. However, this has led to significant delays in both the civil and criminal justice systems that will have a lasting impact. The chapter considers not only what has happened during the coronavirus pandemic, but also what lessons have been learnt that can carry through to the future.


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