Police Policing And Sentencing - 2287 Words

Two key areas of state-organised responses to crime are policing and sentencing, these both play a role in how the criminal justice system works. This essay will provide a critical comparison between the two and how the policy shifts within them have been influenced by both populism and managerialism. On one hand, populism is described as â€Å"existing wherever there is an ideology of popular resentment against the order imposed on society† Shils (1956). Thus policies based upon populist influences focus on common-sense conceptions of crime. They have emotional and expressive responses, due to the fact it is mainly based around public protection and the idea that the public must be heard (Garland,2001). On the other hand, managerialism is â€Å"A†¦show more content†¦The second wave was introduced with the New Labour government in 1997, this attempted to establish ‘performance management’ across the public sector. New Labour believed the criminal justic e system should be modernized, therefore it should establish reinforcing objectives on a ‘what works’ principle, to achieve maximum use of the resources (McLaughlin,2013). Although the police have a vital role in determining who goes through the criminal process, sentencing within the courts has an immediate impact on the penal system (CavadinoDignan,2007). Policy shifts within sentencing over the last two decades has been dominated by populist influences which is seen in contemporary prison population statistics. This is due to the fact the public believe the aim of sentencing should be deterrence and incapacitation, the offender should be taken out of society which would work as a deterrent to others. At the beginning of the 1990s, however, policy shifts reflected instrumental managerial concerns. The Criminal Justice act 1991 followed the ideas of the White Paper:1990 which stated that ‘Imprisonment can be an expensive way of making bad people worse’ (Home office,1990). This policy was ‘offence based’ as the main focus was on a just deserts policy, this is the movement which states the amount of punishment imposed on an offender should be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence