Criminology

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Criminology Assignment

This essay will analyse a contemporary Policy document policing in the 21st century: Reconnecting police and the people. It is a document presented by the secretary of state for the Home Department by Command for Her Majesty in July 2010. It will look at how some philosophies of punishment and models of criminal justice are convincing in explaining the methods and tactics used to formulate criminal justice policies as evidence in Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting police and the people. Other policy documents will be looked at in other to compare their similarities. Crime control, bureaucratic models the philosophy of deterrence and rehabilitation are convincing in explaining the politics of this policy document. Due process and the other models of criminal justice has had very little or no influence in writing of this policy. The argument will be that though crime control is the main function of the police, it is not the only function. There must always be a compromise between a Due process and crime control [Newburn, T. P .561]

Crime control and due process were models identified by Herbert Packer [1968]. The crime control model was designed to help the police. The key objective is crime fighting. Emphasis is placed on facilitating criminal investigation, questioning and pursuit of offenders. Less emphasis is placed on the rights of the suspects. The aim is the conviction of the guilty even if it means convicting a few innocent ones. Due process on the other hand, stresses on the defendants’ rights to fair trial. It presumes that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. The accused should be equal before the law. They should be limits on the powers of the police and other law enforcing...

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...ssary because, public confidence increases when the number of police staff increases.

According to the 2009/2010 British Crime Survey, There has been some improvement in crime rates in England and Wales as compared to previous years.fro example in 2009-2010,the number of crimes recorded by the police forces across England and Wales declined by 8%. Overall crime has reduced by 9%as compared to the previous years. In this same year confidence of the police has increased up to 65% and the perception of antisocial behaviour has also decreased to 14% [Home office website: British crime statistics 2009/2010]. In the words of chief constable Keith Bistow, head of Association of Chief Police Officers, “the statistics reflects the effort of our workforce in doing all they can to protect communities from harm”. [BBC mobile news 15th July 2010].

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