Introduction
High rates of victimization are one of the main problems that affected the criminal justice system. The scientific method will help to test the assumptions of blame and determine the degree of victimization and psychological abuse. The issues chosen for the scientific method are those which promoted strategy to facilitate the conviction and punishment of the guilty: the abolition of the judge’s obligation to warn a jury in cases of rape or other sexual assaults of the danger of convicting on the victim’s evidence alone enhanced powers to assist other countries’ agencies in the investigation of fraud offenses committed overseas; the disqualification from jury service of persons on bail; and police powers to take body samples for DNA analysis (Faulkner, 2001). The contentious issue of the right of, or to, silence is complicated by an awareness that confused and vulnerable suspects might be at risk of adverse inferences are drawn from their failure to answer questions. Improbable as it may seem, some suspects do confess to crimes which they have not committed, or otherwise incriminate themselves, in the course of questioning at the police station. The most frequent reasons for false confessions are: to obtain notoriety, to protect a third party, to terminate prolonged questioning, or because a suspect has become temporarily convinced by his interrogators that he did commit the offense (Hough and Roberts, 2005).
Body
The scientific method refers to the device adopted to evade the difficulties posed by the mandatory sentence. The scientific method to test assumptions of blame is a device that is unpopular like with the families of the victim and the psychiatrists who had ‘the unhappy task of stating on oath their views on matters which are often on the fringe of their professional competence’. One of the considerations which had militated against change is a fear that the abolition of the assumptions of blame would be regarded as a sign of weakness, of ‘going soft on law and order’, and of promoting the welfare of the criminal at the expense of the victim or potential victim. The scientific method aims to demonstrate that the opposite would be the case. Assumptions of blame imposed at the discretion of the court would have a meaning restored to it which is obscured at present. It would show that the offender had committed a crime of such heinousness that no finite term of imprisonment would be appropriate, or that the degree of risk of further serious offending is such that it is impossible to predict, from the standpoint of the safety of the public, when blame would be justified. Despite these endorsements, doubts are germinating in the minds of some officials about whether it would be possible or prudent to continue with the open-ended commitment which is inherent in the current investigation scheme (Hudson, 2003).
Conclusion
In sum, the scientific method used to test assumptions of blame would help the police officers to create trustworthy testimonials and objective witnesses related to every case.
Such a change would be a way of checking the uncontrolled flow of blames required to meet the cost in real terms of the claims assessed under the common law damages scheme, at the same time avoiding the cumbersome process of individual assessment which had caused lengthy delays. To the orderly civil service mind, the advantage is seen in replacing the value judgments of two dozen or so individuals with a more explicit published scheme founded on certain defined principles. Compensation would cease to reflect a particular victim’s losses; payments would be related instead to the category of injury without regard to the age, sex, or personal circumstances of the victim.
References
Faulkner, D. (2001). Crime, State and Citizen: A Field Full of Folk, Winchester: Waterside Press.
Hough, M., Roberts, J. (2005). Understanding Public Attitudes to Criminal Justice. Open University Press.
Hudson, B. (2003). Understanding Justice: An Introduction to Ideas, Perspectives and Controversies in Modern Penal Theory, 2nd edn, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.