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Criminal Justice System Essay

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Since the end of World War Two, there have been dramatic changes in justice models which have had an impact on the Criminal Justice System and the various roles within it. This essay shall go over the various approaches to punishment by looking at the diverse political shifts and the overall impact on the roles of the system.

In England and Wales, the criminal justice system is made up of several agencies including the police, prisons and probation services. The agencies enforce the law; the courts system; the penal system; and the crime prevention scheme (Malcolm, D).
According to Carrabine (2004), punishment is non other than a legally approved method designed to facilitate the task of crime control, its main purpose is to rehabilitate …show more content…

Deterrence’s main perspective is that of people’s fear of the punishment and causing them to avoid crime. This was fully supported by Home Secretary Michael Howard when he addressed the Conservative Party conference in 1993 and more recently Conservative leader William Hague in 2000. Unfortunately, deterrence is not effective, as no certain penalty prevented someone from committing a given crime. There are two kinds of deterrence. Individual deterrence when the individual that commits the crime is punished, and finds the punishment so frightening that they never commit the offence again. Not effective as some commit crime either way. This was the rationale behind “short, sharp shock” detention centre regime for young offenders by Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative government in the early 1980’s (PENAL SYSTEM CAVADINO 3RD ED). Then there is general deterrence which is based on the idea that offenders are punished not to deter themselves but to encourage others not to commit crimes. This does not seem successful as well, as England has more prisoners proportionate to its population than most other countries in Western Europe. Also, reduction is prison’s populations, such as for example, West German prison population in the 1980’s, did not lead to an increase in major crime (Feest, 1988; Flynn,

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