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The history of crime and punishment is an important, yet under-resourced area of criminology and criminal justice.
This valuable book provides concise but robust definitions of key terms and concepts, going well beyond a simple explanation of the word or theme. Offering a succinct approach to the vocabulary and terminology of historical and contemporary approaches to crime and punishment, it includes entries from expert contributors in a user-friendly A-Z format with clear direction to related entries and further reading. Including explanations of terms ranging from 'garrotting' to The Bow Street Runners, baby farming to juvenile delinquency, this easily accessible text will be ideal for the reader to draw on across the variety of modules and studies relating to the topic.
This is the first accessible, succinct text to provide definitions and explanations of key terms and concepts relating to the expanding field of crime, harm and victimisation. Written by a wide range of experts, it includes theories, ideas and case studies relating to victims of conventional crime and victims outside the remit of criminal law. It encapsulates the domestic and international nature, extent and measurement of victims of crime and harm, together with responses to victims and victimisation as a result of conventional, corporate and state crimes and harms.
As part of the Companion series, entries are presented in a user-friendly A-Z format with clear links to related entries and further reading, allowing easy navigation for both students and practitioners. Filling a gap in the market, this is a good source and quick reference point for undergraduates studying a variety of courses in criminology, criminal justice, victimology and other related disciplines.
Interest in the study of state power, civil liberties, human rights, and state sponsored crime is growing and there is a need for a book which brings these topics together. This book, part of the Companions series, provides succinct yet robust definitions and explanations of core concepts and themes in relation to state power, liberties and human rights. The entries are bound by their inter-relatedness and relevance to the study of crime and harm and the volume draws upon established and emerging commentaries from other social and political disciplines.
Laid out in a user-friendly A-Z format, it includes entries from expert contributors with clear direction to related entries and further reading. The contributors critically engage with the topics in an accessible yet challenging way, ensuring that the definitions go beyond a simple explanation of the word or theme.
It will be suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students on a variety of courses such as Criminology, Criminal Justice, International Relations, Politics, Social Policy, Policing Studies, and Law as well as other researchers in these areas.
Only by understanding the past and its relationship with, and impact upon, the present can the notion of ‘crime’ and criminal justice responses to it be understood. This is the focus of the chapter. It discusses the social construction of crime and in so doing it illustrates how the concept of crime is contested and contextual. Through looking at the past and the present, it can be seen that what constitutes crime changes over time, place and culture. This chapter demonstrates that in social, political and media spheres there is an obsession with street crime and that crimes of the powerful are neglected. Therefore, the concept of ‘crime’ excludes many serious harms. Finally, this chapter discusses changes in policing, the court system and punishment, and it documents the impact of recent technological changes on crime and criminal justice.
Punishment is never a random activity but always one that fits with the society of which it is a part. This chapter deals with the concept and practice of punishment in relation to the criminal justice system in England and Wales. In so doing, it pays particular attention to imprisonment as a form of punishment, as, in the UK and other places around the world, imprisonment is one of the most severe forms of punishment. This chapter focuses on people in prison. It discusses the purpose, type and degree of punishment, prisons and imprisonment as a method of punishment, the changing face of punishment, and contemporary prisons and imprisonment. It concludes that contemporarily prisons and imprisonment still punish both the mind and the body.
The Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 is considered a key moment in police history and the single most important piece of legislation related to policing in England and Wales. It provides the framework for police powers in relation to individual citizens in England and Wales. PACE also provides direction to other organisations that conduct criminal investigation, such as HM Revenue and Customs. This chapter provides a critical evaluation of PACE. It discusses police powers prior to PACE, circumstances leading to its enactment and its impact. In particular, the chapter focuses on two controversial powers enabled by PACE, namely, stop and search and detention. It concludes that, despite the successes of PACE with regard to police accountability so far, there are continued calls for even greater accountability and transparency.
Police custody is a fundamental component of the criminal justice process at home and abroad. It is also one of the most controversial and key aspects of policing. This chapter critically evaluates the policy and practice of police custody in England and Wales. It explores the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984, police custody, and the two safeguards regarding police custody in England and Wales, namely the appropriate adult safeguard and the Independent Custody Visiting Scheme. Despite such safeguards, in practice, due to the competing demands made of the police, the rights of detainees are not always a priority. In addition, although PACE 1984 intended to tighten up the regulation of police custody, police discretion and the permissiveness of the law mean that in reality this has not happened. It suggests that during and post-COVID-19 may offer some hope of improvement in police custody.
Feminist Security Studies (FSS) has highlighted the masculinised culture of security, both in practice and as an academic discipline. In so doing, it has drawn attention to the way in which key areas of analysis such as war, combat, the military, conflict resolution and peace have been dealt with in the absence of any understanding of gender difference, but, more importantly, of a gender hierarchy – there has been a failure to engage with the way in which international institutions are inherently masculine. In the case of war, feminists have drawn attention to the previously invisible role of women; men do not simply become soldiers and fight, they use weapons produced by women in low-paid factories (Enloe, 2015), they rely on a largely silent system of domestic support and, of course, they are (re)produced by mothers. Feminists specialising in this area have highlighted the problematic assumptions in fields such as International Relations, which also surround the idea of combat, in particular, highlighting the devastating role played by sexual violence. In this case, FSS has tried to highlight how sexual violence and rape in war are issues that should be taken seriously.
There have also been key challenges to the pervading masculinity of various militaries, their unwillingness until recently to consider women as possible front-line troops and the prevalence of sexism and homophobia. Deep-rooted assumptions about masculine and feminine roles have been exposed in reactions to and the treatment of women terrorists, still assumed to be an abnormality.
‘Gendercide’ is a term coined by US feminist scholar Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book Gendercide: The implications of sex selection to refer to the ‘deliberate extermination of persons of a particular sex (or gender)’ (Warren, 1985, p 3). It is the intentional killing of a group of people due to their gender identity. Warren drew an analogy between gendercide, a gender-selective mass killing, and genocide. In the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2 defined genocide as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
As Warren (1985, p 22) observed in her book, gendercide:
is a sex-neutral term, in that the victims may be either male or female. There is a need for such a sex-neutral term, since sexually discriminatory killing is just as wrong when the victims happen to be male. The term also calls attention to the fact that gender roles have often had lethal consequences, and that these are in important respects analogous to the lethal consequences of racial, religious, and class prejudice.
Charles II passed ‘habeas corpus’ in 1679 to safeguard individuals from unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment. It refers to the ‘Great Writ of Liberty’ being clearly stated in the Magna Carta, clause 39, that ‘no free man shall be imprisoned except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land’. As such, habeas corpus holds a fundamental position in the UK constitution. A petition of habeas corpus is a civil proceeding brought by a prisoner against the government official who detained him/her in order to challenge the legality of his/her detention. The petition addresses issues of procedural correctness to determine that the court made a legal or factual error rather than the issue of guilt or innocence. The Act is a remedy by which representatives of the state are brought to account for the detention of a person.
Habeas corpus, meaning ‘you have the body’, requires an imprisoned person to be brought before the judge or court when determining the legality of confinement or detention. Imprisoned or detained people can make an application themselves or someone can make the application on their behalf. In order to make the process accessible to all, the application form and guidance notes are available in electronic form. Although introduced in Britain, it was extended into other countries as part of English common law, thus influencing other legal systems across the world. For the legal theorist William Blackstone (1765, cited in Ferrell, 2011), the procedural right to file a writ of habeas corpus is fundamental to preserving liberties.
