Summary
Is the use of imprisonment a credible way to respond to offending behavior?
Imprisonment has long been accompanying human society throughout its history. As a place of detention, the prison existed in the most distant centuries. In ancient times, penitentiaries were set up to contain criminals, prisoners, and debtors, both private and public, and to strengthen other punishments and carry out various executions. In the Middle Ages, the imprisonment of convicts, debtors, criminals, and politically harmful persons was widely practiced in monastic cells, in the towers of fortresses and knightly castles, and in city halls. The Tower of London, the dungeon in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, and the dungeons of the Nuremberg Town Hall became infamous. This paper examines the essential characteristics of the UK criminal justice system with a focus on approaches and principles of imprisonment.
British Penitentiaries
Prisons and the nature of imprisonment have been developing together with human society. Thus, before the 18th century, British criminals used to be sent to distant colonies without being detained in British islands. However, by the late 18th century, civil society more and more became interested in reforming the imprisonment system due to the harsh conditions in British prisons. Thus, for instance, at that time, all prisoners used to be detained together regardless of sex, age, and the severity of the crime. So, in 1779 the Parliament passed the Petitionary Act that obliged prisoners to pay for their detainment, and prison staff had to maintain cleanliness and order in prisons (Baker, 2019). Hence, people’s imprisonment began to change, meaning that the jails and penitentiaries should not punish and torture detainees, but correct them.
The modern penitentiary system in Britain has undergone significant changes in comparison even with the last century, not to mention earlier times. In general, all British convicts fall into four major categories. They depend on the severity of the crime, the identity of the convicted person, and the opinion of the police. Convicts of category A are under the most stringent supervision. Full measures are applied against their possible escape. Persons of category B are also strictly guarded, and the territory in which they can move is extremely limited. For category C and D prisoners, security measures are milder.
Also, convicts have four levels, depending on their behaviour – improved, standard, basic, and reduced. On admission to prison, everyone is at a basic stage, then ascends to standard, and in the case of good behavior, to an improved level. A convicted person can also be transferred to a downgraded status; for this, three warnings are enough. These categories dictate how many hours can convicts can be outside of their cells. Thus, prisoners of an improved level can walk outside their cells longer than other convicts of lower ones.
Civil society takes a significant role in the penitentiary system of the UK. Thus, there are so-called monitoring boards consisting of volunteers. Each UK prison has independent monitoring boards, and their responsibility is to monitor the observance of the principles of humanity concerning convicts. An important part is making sure that the prisoner is not punished more than the sentence stipulates. The number of such volunteers exceeds 1600 people in the country (O’Hagan & Elliot, 2018). Their rights and duties were enshrined in a special Criminal Justice Act 1972.
These visitors must be present in prison for at least eight hours a month. Also, they have the right to enter any prison room at any time with their set of keys. In an incident, the visitor must arrive at the scene, even if the situation is being considered, for example, by the police. At the same time, they control the correctness of the actions of law enforcement officers. Visitors examine all the injuries sustained by the convicts, accompany their transfer from cell to cell, placement in a punishment cell, and transfer to a safe place. The state pays the visitor for the trip to prison and in case of loss of salary at the primary job, reimburses it.
Obviously, there are also problems in the English penitentiary system, including the growing number of convicts and overcrowding in prisons associated with many arriving migrants from Asia and Africa. For instance, around 26% of the total prison population constitutes people of BAME (blacks, Asians, and minority ethnic) background, over 22 thousand people. However, this proportion is different in the case of young male offenders. As of 2019, about 51% of young offender institutions’ population constituted BAME boys (Prison Reform Trust, 2019). Also, according to the Prison Reform Trust data, BAME people are more likely to be sent to prison in Crown Courts, despite the high non-guilty pleas.
Women’s prison population remains considerably low; only 5% of the prison population constitutes female offenders, and most of them serve time for non-violent offenses. Also, Women are allowed to bring their children under 18 months if they do short-term sentences. There are special mother and baby units for women with children, including those who gave birth in prison, but these children may stay with mothers unless under 18 months. Nevertheless, women are considered as the most vulnerable prison population portion – female convicts make up about 20% of self-injury cases among the prison population (Ministry of Justice, 2018). Therefore, the UK government is trying to fix the situation with various initiatives and strategies, including Female Offender Strategy.
Once they serve their convictions, people often face difficulties in re-integrating into society. Post-prison life can be challenging due to several pivotal problems such as employment, healthcare, and accommodation. To address these and many other issues, the government of the UK introduced the Integrated Offender Management (IOM) strategy in 2009. Thus, the procedure involves various government organizations, including but not limited to local police and authorities, healthcare institutions, and prisons, in order to manage offenders in the community.
In addition, the strategy also includes improvement and implications of such existing programs as the Drug Intervention Program (DIP), Prolific and other Priority Offender programs (PPO), and Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). These programs deal with various aspects of offends and offenders, their rehabilitation and reintegration into the community, and the prevention of offending in the future (O’Hagan & Elliot, 2018). Also, Integrated Offender Management targets achieving the long-term effect through continuous support to individuals who are found to be at risk of re-offending.
For instance, DIP was developed in order to prevent individuals found to be heavily drug-addicted from committing a crime. The program involves various public services to identify such people and maintain them with appropriate treatment and support. Similarly, PPO involves multiple agencies, including police, prisons, and probation services. This program aims to prevent re-offending cases through three core approaches: catch and convict, rehabilitate and resettle, prevent and deter. Local authorities, along with services, consider each case individually and decide what approach to apply (O’Hagan & Elliot, 2018). PPO applies a highly intensive scheme, and each individual is in frequent contact with the corresponding offender manager.
In the case of serious sexual and violent abusers, local authorities are guided by MAPPA. This is a program developed to monitor individuals involved in this type of crime. MAPPA aims to maintain its proper behavior so that people convicted of serious sexual or violent offenses do not pose a threat to their communities. The governments support agencies and local authorities via various recourses to provide adequate monitoring over individuals in the area of interest of IOM. In addition, multiple agencies share the universal database that helps administration and services identify and control individuals.
Thus, nowadays, imprisonment of people is strictly controlled by law and carried out by various agencies which account for the state and people. In the UK, for instance, the Ministry of Justice and Home Secretary are responsible for the whole imprisonment process beginning from identification, arrest and detention, courts to prisons, and legal aids. However, the immediate control of prisons, which deal with individuals after sentencing, is conducted by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. The principal duty of this service is to conduct sentences given by the courts in prisons and communities (GOV.UK., 2017). Apart from imprisoning the people, the service is responsible for rehabilitating individuals after prison, and maintaining people with sufficient support so that they will not repeat the offense.
Criminal Law in the UK
The decision of who will be imprisoned and go to prison is made in various courts throughout the UK within the complex judiciary system of the United Kingdom. The Judiciary of the UK is separated into three different independent legal systems and covers three parts of the country: England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. It is noteworthy that the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the newest legal institution being established in 2009, has a restricted set of rights. Thus, it cannot consider criminal cases in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Common Law
The primary sources of UK criminal law are common law (precedents), criminal statutes, and international agreements. Common law’s priority role in forming English criminal law was determined by judicial precedent, which is a court decision in a specific case containing a criminal law norm or its interpretation, mandatory for subsequent application in similar cases. In addition, English common law comprises two essential criminal elements. Actus reus covers the physical aspect of a committed crime and thus refers to unlawful action.
Among the advantages of a precedent as a source of criminal law, it is necessary to name its certainty, the ability for further development, and the speed of legal response to changing life realities. At the same time, strict adherence to a precedent that has the force of law when considering similar cases gives rise to the possibility of their incorrect resolution in cases where the precedent itself is erroneous.
Judicial precedents remain the leading source of criminal law. Many of them were formulated centuries ago, which gave rise to the assertion in English doctrine that the strength of a precedent supposedly depends on its “age.” Moreover, the English doctrine expresses the opinion that judicial precedent in the foreseeable future should remain the main source of criminal law in England since codification is alien to English law and capable of causing damage to the English criminal law system. Therefore, English criminal law is to remain committed to the norms of common law.
Nevertheless, due to the development of statutory law, the value of the precedent as a source has changed: the active development of criminal law has led to the fact that at present, only very few specific types of crimes have remained regulated only by the norms of case law. At the same time, some of the criminal law provisions of the General Part and the criminality of individual acts still exist as they were formulated in judicial precedents.
Moreover, it should be especially noted that in modern England, the courts are not entitled to establish criminal liability for any new acts or expand the existing committed offense, which directly follows from the decision in the case Knuller Ltd. v. DPP, passed by the House of Lords in 1972. It means that today courts can only act within the framework of existing criminal law, and they no longer have a legal right to create new regulations for certain cases.
Statutes
The second leading source of criminal law in English criminal law is statutes. The traditional relationship between statutes and precedents in criminal law is why the quantitative growth of criminal laws has led to the intensification of common law. The historically developed peculiar forms primarily lack codification. Thus, there are a number of statutes that act as law, including the Homicide Act 1957, Abolition of Death Penalty Act 1965, Criminal Law Act 1977, and Terrorism Act 2000, etc.
However, unless otherwise specified by law, it applies not only in England but throughout the United Kingdom. In applying statutes, its interpretation is of particular importance: if the statute establishing criminal liability contains ambiguous or vague expressions, it must be interpreted in favor of the individual. However, this rule does not apply when the statute explicitly introduces a criminal sanction. Thus, it is pivotal how one interprets the norms of statutes. In other words, the criminality of an act can be determined in precedents, whereas its punishment is always defined in the statute.
Reference List
Baker, J.H., (2019). An introduction to English legal history. Oxford University Press.
Prison Reform Trust (2019). race and prisons. [online] Prisonreformtrust.org.uk. Web.
Ministry of Justice (2018). Secretary of State launches a dedicated strategy to “break the cycle” of female offending. [online] GOV.UK. Web.
O’Hagan, A. and Elliot, A. (2018). Offender management: a review of approaches, benefits and challenges. Foresic Research & Criminology International Journal, 6(6), pp.527–533.
GOV.UK. (2017). About us. [online] Web.