37. Sentencing

Sentencing represents the apex of the criminal process and is the most public stage of the criminal justice system. Controversial sentences attract widespread media coverage, intense public interest, and much public and political criticism. This chapter explores sentencing in the United Kingdom, and draws some conclusions with relevance to other common law jurisdictions. Sentencing has changed greatly in recent years, notably through the introduction of sentencing guidelines in England and Wales, and more recently, Scotland. However, there are still doubts about the fairness and consistency of sentencing practice, not least in the use of imprisonment. Among the key issues to be examined in this chapter are the tendency towards net-widening, the effects of race and gender, the impact of pleading guilty, the use of indeterminate sentences, the rise of mandatory sentences, and the role of the victim in the sentencing process. The chapter begins by outlining the methods by which cases come before the courts for sentencing. It then summarizes the specific sentences available to courts and examines current sentencing patterns, before turning to a more detailed exploration of sentencing guidelines, and of the key issues identified above. The chapter addresses two critical questions: What is sentencing (namely who exerts the power to punish)? Does sentencing in the UK measure up to appropriate standards of fairness and consistency?

36. Principles, pragmatism, and prohibition: explaining continuity and change in british drug policy

This chapter analyses the development of British policy on illicit drugs from the late nineteenth century until 2016. It shows how this is characterized by contestation between social groups who have an interest in the control and regulation of some drugs and their users. It argues that there is a ‘medico-penal constellation’ of powerful organizations that produce British drug policy in accordance with their own ideas and interest. There have been clashes between the different principles held by people within these organizations but these have often been dealt with through the creation of pragmatic compromises. Recent examples include policies towards ‘recovery’ in drug treatment and new psychoactive substances whilst heroin-related deaths are used to explain why, so far, these pragmatic compromises have not ended the prohibition upon which British drug policy is based.

14. Green criminology

Criminology must maintain relevance in a changing world and engage with new challenges. Perhaps pre-eminent among those facing the planet today are threats to the natural environment and, by extension, to human health and rights and to other species. A green criminology has emerged as a (now well established) criminological perspective that addresses a wide range of harms, offences, and crimes related to the environment and environmental victims. This chapter provides a review of green criminological work on climate change, consumption and waste, state-corporate and organized crimes, animal abuse, and wildlife trafficking. It also considers the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to regulation and control.

12. Social harm and zemiology

This chapter examines the relationships between social harm, zemiology, and criminology. It begins by reviewing some of the main arguments set out by those advocating a turn towards social harm and/or zemiology. It then elaborates on some of those arguments, first through illustrating the kinds of harms more significant than those captured by ’crime’ and, following that, to consider how these harms might take peculiar forms under neoliberalism. The chapter then turns to consider ‘criminological’ responses to those arguments—both at the level of the discipline as a set of institutions, and then via an analyses of some of the more critical, intellectual responses. The final substantive section explores the relationship between critical criminology, social harm, and zemiology.

10. Public opinion, crime, and criminal justice

This chapter summarizes research on public opinion about crime and criminal justice in developed industrialized societies. It starts with an assessment of what can be said about public knowledge about crime, documenting widespread misperceptions about the nature of crime, about crime trends, and about the criminal justice response to crime. It then considers public attitudes towards crime and justice, which tend to be largely negative. The chapter presents evidence of the links between levels of knowledge and attitudes to justice, suggesting that misinformation about crime and justice is the likely source of negative public ratings of the justice system. Penal populism and populist punitiveness are considered. The chapter ends by exploring issues of public trust in justice, confidence, and legitimacy.

2. Criminalizaton: historical, legal, and criminological perspectives

This chapter examines the relationship between legal and criminological constructions of crime and explores how these have changed over time. The chapter sets out the conceptual framework of criminalization within which the two dominant constructions of crime—legal and criminological—are situated. It considers their respective contributions and the close relationship between criminal law and criminal justice. Using the framework of criminalization, the chapter considers the historical contingency of crime by examining its development over the past 300 hundred years. It analyses the normative building blocks of contemporary criminal law to explain how crime is constructed in England and Wales today and it explores some of the most important recent developments in formal criminalization in England and Wales, not least the shifting boundaries and striking expansion of criminal liability. Finally, it considers the valuable contributions made by criminology to understanding the scope of, and limits on, criminalization.

24. Prison architecture and design: perspectives from criminology and carceral geography

This chapter seeks to convey why the architecture and design of prisons is pivotal to a full and nuanced understanding of ‘prison studies’. Placing prison design in historical and geographical perspectives, the chapter considers how evolving penal philosophies have been manifested in the form and fabric of prison buildings over the last two centuries. The current policy context in the UK, as new prisons have been built in Scotland and are being planned for England and Wales and Northern Ireland, is discussed. It is argued that this represents a rare opportunity not only to build new facilities that are fit-for-purpose but to re-assess how their aesthetic and spatial design might be mobilized to support a different model of criminal justice than that which has dominated since the last major wave of prison construction in the 1960s. Finally, the relationship between prisons and the communities in which they are situated is considered, and it is suggested that recently built prisons are no less a manifestation of society’s attitudes to offenders than Pentonville was in the mid-1800s. It is suggested that it may be more effective in the long term to influence public opinion through humane prison design than it is to build new prisons based on assumptions about public expectations.

17. Criminology and transitional justice

This chapter explores the intersection between criminology and transitional justice. The chapter begins with a critical discussion on the utility of criminological scholarship from settled democracies to the exceptional circumstances of post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies. It then explores a range of debates related to the punishment of offenders in such contexts including the role of prosecutions, amnesties, the reintegration of former combatants, and the role of restorative justice. The chapter next considers the social and political construction of victimhood in transitional contexts including competing notions of the ‘idealized’ victim. The relationship between transitional justice and social control is then examined including the importance of countering denial, the relationship between deviance and memory and the particular contribution of efforts ‘from below’ to counter elites-level narratives on past abuses. The chapter concludes that a criminology of transitional justice provides the basis for revisiting some of the foundational questions on responding to crime and justice in the most challenging of settings—a sobering but intellectually rich research agenda for years to come.

23. Crime and the city: urban encounters, civility, and tolerance

This chapter examines how cities are central to understandings of civility and tolerance and their relationships to crime and antisocial behaviour. The chapter identifies the importance of urban encounters in public space and explores whether antisocial behaviour, incivilities, and a general antipathy towards ‘others’ are increasing in contemporary societies. The chapter looks at definitions of civility and tolerance and theories about how urban behaviours in public space are related to wider urban economic, social, and cultural forces and how civility and tolerance are being transformed in a new planetary urbanism and social Darwinism. The chapter concludes with an examination of the governance of urban insecurities and public perceptions of these, followed by consideration of how a new urban civility and tolerance may be engendered through meaningful interaction.

43. Criminological engagements

This chapter considers the relationships between criminology and the worlds of penal policy and practice. It focuses in particular on the day-to-day interactions the authors of the chapter forge in their research lives and on their ‘effects’ and failures as ‘engaged criminologists’. The chapter supports forms of criminological engagement that are subtle, long term and relational rather than occasional, mechanical, linear, or instrumental, and proposes that these forms of engagement improve understanding but require constant reflection and negotiation. This chapter argues that knowledge-generation is slow and cumulative; it takes time to ‘read a situation’ in complex human and social environments and it should be an iterative process with the research community and the world of practice teaching, learning from each other at every step of the way. Research participants welcome a ‘full’ research presence of the kind described in this chapter. For knowledge to ‘do good’, it needs to be (qualitatively) ‘good’ and should be produced through patient, honest, rigorous, and disciplined but also deeply engaged forms of enquiry. This chapter suggests that our institutional structures often fail to support this model of research.