Search

This article results from series of linked research projects designed to support the development of a Degree Holder Entry Programme in England and Wales, as part of the College of Policing's Policing Educational Qualification Framework (PEQF). Its aim is to draw out some of the issues that need addressing, and challenges that need solving in the design of any degree-level courses required as an entry qualification for recruits to the police service in England and Wales. It examines the rationale for professionalization of policing, and how this relates the development and application of a body of policing knowledge. It considers the main challenges facing the English and Welsh police service in developing an effective policing qualification at degree level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study that this article is based on examined cases of alleged misconduct involving chief police officers and staff. It described the nature of cases that came to light, examined pathways that lead to misconduct, and suggested ways of mitigating risks. The study was based on interviews with key stakeholders and with investigating officers in chief officer misconduct cases since April 2008. Cases involving chief officer misconduct fell into two broad categories: those associated with professional decision-making and those related to interpersonal conduct. In around a third of cases, no misconduct was found. There were various routes into misconduct. The ethical climate of a police force was a key determinant of chief officer misconduct. Behaviour was also shaped by individual vulnerabilities, including lack of support, lack of challenge, exposure to corrupting influences, and cognitive failures in decision-making. Various things can be done to mitigate the risk of chief officer misconduct: police leadership needs to develop a greater consensus on what constitutes misconduct; chief officers need to recognise the specific risks of cognitive failure that organisational leaders face, and the temptations of excepting themselves from rules and norms. There also needs to be an organisational ethos in which leaders can be challenged and in which leaders are given the right sort of support when faced with ethical challenges. There needs to be more recognition of the impact of selection and training processes, and of performance management systems, on the ethical climate of police organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper discusses trends in criminal justice and penal policy over the past twenty‐five years. This period has been characterised as a time of penal populism, which originated in the failure of the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, and the competition between the main political parties to be ‘tough on crime’. However, this is not the only trend to be found in penal policy. There has continued to be a strong undertow of support for rehabilitation and community penalties, including restorative justice. There has been pressure from the left as much as the right to take domestic violence, sexual offences against women and children, and hate crimes more seriously. There have been pressures to meet performance targets—which gradually transformed into calls to build the legitimacy of the justice system. Finally, there have been pressures to privatise criminal justice agencies. These various impulses have sometimes amplified and sometimes counteracted the pressures towards tough penal policy. If the period of intense penal populism ran from 1993 to 2007, inertia in the system has ensured that there have been no significant attempts to row back from tough policies, and to reassert the values of penal parsimony. Given that money has been tight since 2007 and crime has continued to fall, this must amount to a lost opportunity of significant proportions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on a study of differential treatment of young people in the youth justice system to present a typology of styles of policing that contrasts procedural justice with adversarial policing. It considers the factors that can trap police in adversarial styles of policing and offers suggestions about how best to move towards policing grounded on principles of procedural justice. It argues that ideas about procedural justice may be able to gain more traction in times of austerity, given that changing policing style does not necessarily incur significant costs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines public attitudes to the sentencing offences associated with the rioting which took place in England in August 2011. Findings are based on a nationally representative survey of adults. The study uses a randomized split-sample experimental design to compare sentencing preferences for actual offences committed during the riots with preferences for similar offences committed under normal circumstances. The riot sub-sample generally ‘sentenced’ more severely than the non-riot sub-sample, but much less severely than the courts. The majority also thought that a non-custodial sentence with a reparative element was an acceptable alternative to custody. These trends suggest an unusual divergence of perspectives between the community and the courts: although the public are generally critical of the courts for leniency, with respect to non-violent offending during the riots, the latter appear more punitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion surveys have long documented public criticism of 'lenient' sentencers. There are two principal perceptions contributing to negative attitudes: a lack of community input and the view that sentencers determine sentence according to their own views. This study embeds an experimental design within a representative survey of respondents in England and Wales (n = 1,004), supplemented by laboratory-based work (n = 230) and focus groups. Results demonstrated that the public is ill-informed about both the magistracy and the sentencing guidelines. In addition, providing information about sentencing changed public attitudes to sentencing and reduced public punitiveness. Respondents were less critical of disposals and less punitive in their own sentence recommendations when they had been given context about the structure of sentencing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the immediate and more distant origins of a programme of comparative research that is examining cross-national variations in public trust in justice and in the police. The programme is built around a module of the fifth European Social Survey, and evolved from a study funded by the European Commission. The paper describes the conceptual framework within which we are operating – developed in large measure from theories of procedural justice. It reviews some of the methodological issues raised by the use of sample surveys to research issues of public trust in the police, public perceptions of institutional legitimacy and compliance with the law. Finally it gives a flavour of some of the early findings emerging from the programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A considerable body of scholarship has explored the jury as a legal institution but community reaction to the institution and function of the jury has not, to date, been the subject of a review. The present article fills this void by addressing a number of important questions about public attitudes to the jury. The focus is upon public attitudes to the criminal jury in England and Wales, although limited comparisons are made with public opinion in other jurisdictions. The results demonstrate widespread support for, and confidence in, the criminal jury, both in this country and in other common law jurisdictions. The research record also demonstrates strong public opposition to proposals to restrict the right to trial by jury. There is some evidence, however, that support for the right to trial by jury may decline in the context of offenders charged with terrorism-related offences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determining the factors which make a difference between a custodial sentence and a community penalty is one of the most challenging decisions for sentencers. Little research to date has explored the nature of public reaction to mitigating factors and the circumstances which may justify imposition of a community penalty even though the custodial threshold has been crossed. This article reports findings from a representative survey of the British public. Respondents were asked a series of questions designed to explore public reaction to sentencing cases at the custodial threshold. Public opinion polls suggest that the public respond punitively at sentencing, and have little sympathy for mitigating factors relating to the offender. In a series of questions, using experimental manipulations, respondents demonstrated considerable flexibility when sentencing cases near the custodial threshold. Significant support emerged for a wide range of mitigating factors at sentencing. The strength of public support for custody as a sanction was also explored by providing respondents who had imposed a term of imprisonment a possible alternative community penalty. Significant proportions of respondents found the alternative acceptable, even for relatively serious offences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article assesses some of the claims made for experimental research in the field of rehabilitation of offenders. It suggests that both policy officials and evaluators have tended to overinvest financially and intellectually in a technocratic model of reducing reoffending that emphasizes programmes for offenders, and to under-invest in models that see the process as a complex 'people changing' skill. It argues that the complexity of this process renders it hard to evaluate using experimental methods of evaluation such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs). RCTs provide strong internal validity, but in complex settings offer weak external validity, making it hard to generalize from the experimental setting to other settings. The article suggests that the proper role for evaluative research in this field should be seen as building and testing middle-level theories about how best to change offenders' behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Licensing Act 2003, coming into force in November 2005 in England and Wales, abolished set licensing hours for pubs and clubs. The aim was to liberalize a rigid system while reducing the problems of drinking and disorder associated with a standard closing time. This article summarizes the results of an evaluation funded by the Home Office. Despite widespread concern that the legislation would lead to '24-hour drinking' and an increase in associated problems, the experience of the first year shows very little change. The scale of change in licensing hours was variable but modest: while the majority of pubs extended their hours, most of these extensions were short. Thus the average national increase in opening hours was small. Alcohol consumption showed a slight fall. There was no obvious impact on violent crime and disorder, according to a range of measures, including crime statistics, victim surveys and medical statistics. These results are not particularly consistent with findings in other jurisdictions which have relaxed controls over opening hours of pubs and clubs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on an evaluation of a large-scale programme in London, 'From Dependency to Work' (D2W), to discuss the obstacles to effective work with offenders with multiple needs. D2W, a five-year programme funded through the Single Regeneration Budget, aimed to support offenders with a range of multiple needs including drug dependence, mental health issues, employment problems and illiteracy. It was an ambitious programme that sought to co-ordinate the work of statutory and voluntary agencies in a similar way to the 'mixed economy' model envisaged for the National Offender Management Service (NOMS); that met with implementation problems, which limited its overall impact. These related in part to problems in finding ways of effectively assessing those with multiple needs, and planning a rational sequence of interventions; but the way in which the programme was performance-managed also destabilized the partnership to a considerable degree. The study carries important lessons for NOMS, both in relation to approaches to offender management and to contract management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from a survey that systematically explores public opinion, youth crime and justice in England and Wales. Particular emphasis was placed upon public reaction to restorative sentencing. The survey uncovered a number of misperceptions about youth crime. Few respondents rated youth courts as doing a good job, and most thought that sentences imposed on young offenders are too lenient. A considerable gap existed between the sentences that respondents wanted to see imposed on young offenders and the sentences that they assumed would be imposed. Generally speaking, expected sentences were less harsh than favoured punishments. When respondents were asked to impose sentence in case scenarios, there was significantly less support for custody as a sanction when the young offender had made some restorative steps such as writing a letter of apology and promising to make compensation to the victim. When asked about alternatives to imprisonment, significant proportions of respondents found alternatives to be satisfactory substitutes for imprisonment, a result consistent with research in other jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews public opinion research relating to imprisonment. The focus is upon British attitudes, but wherever possible we place findings from this country in an international context. Most members of the public report little familiarity with the prison system– few people report having had any direct contact with a penal institution. A common finding around the world is that most people believe that prison conditions are quite easy; this belief helps to explain low public levels of confidence in the prison system. Despite these trends, the public does not wish to make prison life harsher merely for the purpose of punishment. People want and expect prisoners to improve their lives while inside, although there is widespread scepticism that rehabilitation is possible in today's prisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illicit drug markets are a part of our society. How visible and detrimental they are to their host communities has shaped enforcement action against them. Until the mid-1990s, open street-based markets were probably where most illicit drugs of dependency were bought and sold. With the steady rise in market activity, communities tired of the damage these markets caused, and demanded a police response. Quite separately, but around the same time, there was a proliferation in the ownership and use of mobile phones. Together, they provided open markets with both the impetus and the means to evolve into closed markets. Now this type of market is probably where most drugs of dependency are bought and sold. This article offers a classification of retail markets, distinguishing between open markets, closed markets, crack or dealing houses and other forms of retail system, and examines variations in the structure of distribution within these markets - mainly in the United Kingdom. At the same time, we also examine the available evidence on the 'middle level' drug markets that support these retail markets; and consider the relationship between supply, demand and enforcement, examining the adaptations that markets will make to enforcement and the perverse effects that enforcement may cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the article "Revisiting crime surveys: emotional responses without emotions? Or: Look back at anger," by Stephen Farrall, published in the seventh issue of the "International Journal of Social Research Methodology" of 2004.

This article is concerned with a paradox about public-sector modernization as it affects the criminal justice system. Whilst the modernization agenda has been shaped with its electoral attractiveness at least partly in mind, little attention is actually paid to the impact achieved by the process on public confidence in the services being "modernized'. The article examines public confidence in the police and in sentencers. It argues that the "modernization' of the police has probably done more harm than good to public confidence in the police, whilst confidence in the criminal process has been very largely ignored by modernizers. Possible reasons for this are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes what is known, and what is uncertain, about strategies what exploit the coercive potential of the criminal justice system to get problem drug users to get treatment for their dependency. It considers the links between problem drug use and crime, the characteristics of effective treatment for problem drug users, the effectiveness of coerced treatment, and the practical obstacles in bridging the gap between criminal justice and treatment services. It draws on experience in Britain, though it is also informed by the English-language research literature, especially that carried out in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on public opinion over the past three decades has consistently established that the British public are critical of sentencers, and that this criticism exists independent of crime trends and even dramatic changes in criminal justice policies. This finding points to the possibilities that the findings are an artefact of the approach used by these surveys or that public opinion is formed in ignorance of actual practice. The 1996 British Crime Survey (BCS) contained a section of questions designed to test these hypotheses. Respondents were asked a series of questions about their knowledge of, as well as attitudes towards, sentencing practice and sentencers. Results indicate that judges received significantly more negative evaluations than any other group of criminal justice professionals. The public systematically under-estimate the severity of sentencing patterns, and this is significantly related to attitudes to sentencers. When asked to provide a sentence in a specific case of burglary, members of the public favoured sentences that were on balance little different from, and if anything more lenient than, current sentencing practice. Discussion focuses on the policy implications of these findings, as well as their relation to research in other jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial. Comments on changes and reform in the criminal justice system in Great Britain. Issues related to the probation service in the criminal justice system; Capacity for resistance to modernizing the criminal justice system; Importance of public perceptions related to constitutional modernization in Europe.

The What Works Centre for Crime Reduction (WWCCR) in the UK's College of Policing has a key role in promoting the use of research in policing. Since 2014, the WWCCR has aimed to review – and make accessible – research to better inform and target crime reduction and to build police capacity to identify, evaluate and apply research evidence to practice. This comes amidst significant changes to entry requirements for policing in the UK as part of efforts to further professionalise the service and prepare for future challenges in policing. We report findings from in-depth interviews with senior police officers from forces across England and Wales, conducted as part of a three-year evaluation of the WWCCR. These interviews explored the traction of 'evidence-based practice' among senior officers and showed shifts over time in their accounts of the value placed on research and how it is promoted and used within their force. Additionally, an online survey across policing ranks, conducted in 2016, found differences by seniority in perceptions about the relevance of research for policing, and the level of organisational support for it. Findings are used to consider the status of research evidence in policing and its development within a policing profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends Tyler's procedural justice model of public compliance with the law. Analysing data from a national probability sample of adults in England and Wales, we present a new conceptualization of legitimacy based on not just the recognition of power, but also the justification of power. We find that people accept the police's right to dictate appropriate behaviour not only when they feel a duty to obey officers, but also when they believe that the institution acts according to a shared moral purpose with citizens. Highlighting a number of different routes by which institutions can influence citizen behaviour, our broader normative model provides a better framework far explaining why people are willing to comply with the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws together findings from two related studies of sentencing in England and Wales, and Scotland. It examines how sentencers in the two jurisdictions differ in their sentencing decision making, with a focus on cases on the borderline between prison and a community penalty. The article suggests that, despite differences in legal systems and criminal justice structures, sentencers' decision making in the two jurisdictions was remarkably similar. In both jurisdictions they took account of a wide range of factors in reaching their decisions, among which the legal category of the offence under sentence was often subsidiary to other considerations. The main difference between the two jurisdictions was the much more dramatic rate of increase in the adult prison population in England and Wales than in Scotland. Several possible explanations are offered for this, including the literal and metaphorical distance of Scotland from Westminster and the greater impact of sentencing guidance south of the border—which has probably had a largely unintended inflationary effect on the prison population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of two independent questionnaire studies that examined Scottish secondary schools teachers’ attitudes towards, and conceptualisation of, school counselling. Seventy-one teachers in a first study, and 33 teachers in a second study, responded to a range of qualitative and quantitative response-format questions that were designed to elicit their feelings and attitudes towards school counselling, and their notions of what counselling was. Results from the two studies confirm previous findings in this area, suggesting that teachers are generally positive in their attitudes towards counselling; valuing, in particular, the independence and expertise of the counsellor. A small minority of teachers, however, were found to hold strongly negative views towards counselling. Teachers also expressed concerns that students might abuse the counselling service, and that the service might not fully integrate with existing guidance arrangements provided by teachers in schools. The study also found that a high proportion of teachers conceptualised counselling in terms of advice-giving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British drugs legislation has recently been changed to reclassify cannabis from a Class B drug to a Class C one. The reclassification is intended to reflect more accurately the risks posed by cannabis relative to other drugs. The debate about reform of the British laws in regulating cannabis possession has tended to ignore the fact that even before cannabis was reclassified as a Class C drug, police officers often turned a 'blind eye' to cannabis offences, or else gave informal warnings. This paper examines the political background to reclassification. It then examines the factors that guide officers to use their discretion and informally dispose of cannabis offences. It goes on to consider the impact that reclassification may have on informal action. The data are drawn from a detailed study of the policing of cannabis prior to reclassification, conducted by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research. We demonstrate that a multiplicity of police, offender and situational factors, either alone or in combination, influence an officer's decision to take informal action on the street. We outline the potential for reclassification to generate a reduction in the use of informal disposals, which may create a `net-widening' effect, or an increase in use, which might lead to the offence being selectively decriminalized. The implications for both scenarios are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policing of young people, especially through stop-and-search, has been rigorously debated in the context of rising violence in the UK. While concepts based on procedural justice theory and perceptions of police fairness are directly relevant to these debates, these have rarely been tested on young people, nor have they taken account of the impact of stop-and-search. This paper examines young people's experiences of stop-and-search in two Scottish and two English cities, and tests the relationship between these experiences, their trust in the police, their perceptions of police legitimacy and their compliance with the law. The study finds that Scottish adolescents, who experienced higher volume stop-and-search, had more negative attitudes to the police and perceived them to be less procedurally fair than English adolescents. Structural equation modelling confirms that principles of procedural justice theory do apply to young people in this UK sample. However, our findings suggest that stop-and-search may damage trust in the police and perceptions of police legitimacy, regardless of the volume of police stop-and-search, and this may result in increased offending behaviour. With ongoing calls to increase the use of stop-and-search in response to recent increases in knife crime in England, we argue that its use needs to be carefully balanced against the, as yet poorly evidenced, benefits of the use of the tactic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In recent years Latin American countries have increasingly rejected the traditional prohibitionist paradigm of drug policy, reflecting its failure to reduce either consumption or trafficking. The extent to which these policy trends currently command pubic support is unclear, however. This article goes some way to filling this gap, providing a snapshot of public attitudes towards drug policies in nine Latin American countries.Methods: The 2014 Annual Survey of the Observatory of Drug Policies and Public Opinion, which has representative population samples, was used to measure public opinion. Country comparisons are made using descriptive and inferential statistics.Results: Countries fall into three groups: Peru, Bolivia and El Salvador are the most conservative countries on drug policy and perceptions of risks of cannabis use; they also score lowest on Human Development Index. On the other hand, the public in Chile and Uruguay are more likely to support drug policy reform. The remaining four countries (Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Peru) tend to occupy the middle ground between these extremes. In addition, cannabis legalization is explained by its recreational use, being this the main meaning attached to cannabis policy among Latin American citizens.Conclusion: There is a significant heterogeneity in attitudes towards drug policies in Latin American countries, which suggests that people are questioning the policies that set the norm in Latin America without achieving any consensus regarding future measures for each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article present statistics on remand in custody in England and Wales. Currently, these statistics are spread across a wide range of government statistical publications, making it challenging to determine trends. We demonstrate that decisions to remand in custody are not a major contribution to prison overcrowding. However, it is important from perspectives both of human rights and economy to keep trends under close review, and to search for better ways of reducing the remand population in prisons. At the end of the article we review a number of strategies designed to reduce the remand population in this jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses approaches to assessing the size of the illicit market for powder cocaine, and the inherent difficulties of this issue. It describes recent attempts to investigate more accurate measures of the prevalence and extent of use than have been available to date. A new approach is suggested in which estimates are derived separately - using separate methodologies for different groups of powder cocaine users, and then summed. The review offers some suggestions that future researchers in the area of sizing the drugs market might consider. It suggests that prevalence and consumption estimates for non-problem users can be improved by re-weighting the British Crime Survey for characteristics associated with powder cocaine use. Indirect estimates of the number of problem users derived from arrestee and treatment data should be compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]