Exercise two

Scenario

Millie Jones is returning to her house after having collected her pension from the local post office. As she walks down the street towards her bungalow she is spotted by two youths, Billy ‘biffer’ Jones aged 19 and Harry ‘tiny’ Neilsden aged 20.

Spotting Mrs Jones, they decide to steal her handbag which contains her purse and all the money she has to live on for the coming week. They approach her and in the act of stealing her handbag knock her to the ground. She suffers minor bruising from the attack and a cut over her left eye.

The attack is seen by a neighbour who comes to her assistance. He is also able to identify both of the attackers, who live locally, and they are duly arrested by the police.

In their statements to the police, Harry admits to the robbery but states that the crime was all Billy’s idea and it was Billy who knocked the lady to the ground. He apologises to the police for his actions and states that he would like to make amends to Mrs Jones for the crime that she suffered.

Billy claims that he was ‘off his face’ at the time and cannot remember any details of it.

The perpetrators and victim

Millie Jones is aged 66. She is a grandmother who lives alone, her husband having died two years ago.

Billy Jones is 6 foot tall and weighs 14 stone. He is well known to the police for minor crimes that include burglary and robbery. He has served one custodial sentence. He was permanently excluded from school for bullying, has no educational qualifications and is unemployed.

Harry is not known to the police and has no history of crime. He is 5 foot 6 inches tall and weighs 9 stone. He has six GCSEs and attends college, intending to go to university. He also has part time employment in a fast food outlet.

Your task

Drawing on material from today’s lecture, what do you think is the appropriate response to this crime that should be inflicted on:

• Billy
• Harry.

You have three main options:

• A custodial sentence
• A community penalty
• Restorative justice

and you can inflict different penalties on each of the robbers.

What you are asked to do, therefore, is as follows:

• Outline the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three sentencing options.

In doing this you should also consider:

• What purpose of punishment do you wish to see served by the penalty you will impose of the offenders?
• In the case of a community penalty, what appropriate requirement(s) might be imposed on the person(s) subject to it?
• In the case of restorative justice, outline how the principles underlying this process and how you think they might apply to this scenario.

Exercise three

Consider the following article that appeared in a recent edition of the local newspaper.

Residents Live in Fear of Teenage Gang

The peace and quiet of Hulmeville has been shattered in recent months by the actions of a gang of youths.

‘Lives a misery’

‘They’ve made our lives a misery,’ said one resident who wished to remain anonymous. ‘There’s about 20 of them – mainly boys, aged around 15, I’d say. They gather around the shops in the precinct where they drink alcohol, take drugs and threaten anyone who comes their way. They’re there until the early hours of the morning.’

Nothing police can do

‘We know it’s a problem,’ said local beat bobby, PC Inny Fective. ‘But there’s not much we can do about it. We have responded to 200 ‘999’ calls over the past six weeks. We move the kids on, but they return when we leave. We return, move them on, leave and they come back yet again. It’s like a carousel. A bit of a game to them.’

Lack of facilities

‘In a way, I feel sorry for them,’ said Mrs Wellin Tenchund, chair of the local residents association. ‘I mean, they’ve got nowhere to go and most of them aren’t really bad kids. Much of their bad behaviour is due to Billy Nobrane and Fistie Cuff – when they’re locked up, the problem isn’t anything like as bad.

Local Vicar, Rev. Iva Halo, agreed. ‘Much of the problem is down to poor parental control but the lack of amenities in the area is a problem. The local authority closed the youth club due to spending cuts and that worsened the situation.’

Vigilante action threatened

But not all local residents agree with these sentiments.

‘I blame that local supermarket, me,’ said former soldier Harry Smackham. ‘He sells them booze and fags even though they’re clearly underage. Close him down and the problem would go away. If the authorities don’t act soon, we’re gonna do it ourselves. There’s a group of us who are prepared to patrol the precinct and drive the kids away. Give ’em a good kicking like we were trained to do in the army and they’ll never want to return. Then we’ll sort that shopkeeper out. Hope he’s got good fire insurance !’

Firm action promised by police

We contacted Chief Superintendent B. Wildered of the local police force and asked her what steps were being taken to restore law and order to Hulmesville and to avoid the escalation of violence should angry local residents take to the streets. She promised that the local police would take ‘firm action’ to resolve the problem once and for all.

Watch this space!

Your task

The local police promised ‘firm action’ – but what would this consist of?

Your task is to come up with a solution based on ideas put forward in today’s lecture.

There is a range of contemporary police methods:

• Preventative policing
• Reactive policing
• Neighbourhood policing
• Problem orientated policing
• Zero tolerance policing.

What method – or combination of methods – would you use to sort out the problems of Hulmesville, as outlined above, ‘once and for all’?

Exercise four

How we punish offenders

The following date chart can be used to promote discussion of the death penalty – is it a valid or a wrong response to serious crime?

Most of us have views about this and an exercise of this nature should be productive in terms of generating a discussion on the topic of punishment.

Some facts and figures about the death penalty

The UK

• 1820 – The last beheadings took place in Britain in connection with a political plot to overthrow the government (the Cato Street Conspiracy, led by Arthur Thistlewood).
• 1830 – Sailors George Davis and William Watts, who were convicted of murdering a ship’s captain, were the final hangings at ‘execution dock’ (Wapping, East London) on 16 December 1830.
• 1868 – The practice of public executions was ended.
• 1955 – The execution of Ruth Ellis (the last woman to be hung) took place.
• 1964 – The last executions took place in Britain (Peter Allen and Owen Evans).
• 1965 – Enactment of the Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act – this initially provided for a five-year moratorium on hanging but it was made permanent in 1969 (and in 1973 was made permanent in Northern Ireland).
• 1998 – Enactment of the Human Rights Act which removed the death penalty as a possible punishment for military offences committed under the Armed Forces Act.

Worldwide

• In France, since the French Revolution, capital punishment was carried out by the guillotione. The last person to be executed in France was Hamida Djandoubi who was guillotined September 1977. The death penalty was abolished in France in 1981.
• Currently, 58 countries retain the death penalty as a potential sentence.
• According to Amnesty International, in 2013, 778 executions took place across the world.
• On 1 October 2013, there were 3,088 prison inmates on death row in the USA (most of whom are under state jurisdiction with [in 2014] 62 persons on death row for federal offences).

Exercise

List five reasons in favour of the death penalty and FIVE reasons against its usage. This can be conducted as a group exercise.

In favour:

• ...........................................

• ............................................

• .............................................

• ..............................................

• ...............................................

Against:

• ...............................................

• ................................................

• ................................................

• .................................................

• ..................................................

Exercise five

The role of prisons

Consider the following material:

The Mission Statement of Her Majesty’s Prison Service for England and Wales is as follows:

‘Her Majesty’s Prison Service serves the public by keeping in custody those committed by the courts. Our duty is to look after them with humanity and help them lead law-abiding and useful lives in custody and after release.’

Prison statistics

‘In 1990 the prison population was around 158% greater than in 1900, an average annual increase of 1.7% per annum. Between 1990 and 2015 the prison population has increased by just over 90%, averaging 3.6% per annum’ (Allen and Dempsey, 2016: 4).

• In 2016 there were 117 prisons and two immigration removal centres in England and Wales.
• Fourteen prisons in England and Wales were managed by private companies – the remainder (termed public sector prisons) are administered by Her Majesty’s Prison Service.
• Ten prisons in England (and none in Wales) house female prisoners.
• On Friday 10 February 2017 the total prison population was 85,523. Of these, 81,533 were male prisoners and 3,990 were female prisoners.
• Imprisonment figures suggest that England and Wales imprison around 145 per 100,00 head of population.
• The official capacity of prisons was 75,665.
• Adults accounted for around 94% of prisoners, 18–20 year olds 5% and 15–17 year olds 0.6%.

Allen, G. and Dempsey, N. (2016) Prison Population Statistics. London: House of Commons Library Briefing Paper SN/SG/04334.

Then consider the following questions:

In your view, does England and Wales imprison:

• Too many offenders
• Too few offenders
• About the right number of offenders?

Why, in your view, did the prison population rise significantly after 1993?

• More crime was being committed.
• It reflected government objectives to get tough with criminals.
• It reflected government beliefs that imprisonment was an effective way to reform and rehabilitate offenders.

Austere prison regimes are designed to:

• Ensure that offenders will not wish to return and experience further unpleasantness in the future;
• Appeal to those members of the public who feel that criminals should be dealt with harshly;
• Save money by taking away facilities from prisoners.

What factors in your view serve to undermine the ability of prisons to reform and rehabilitate prisoners?

• The nature of the prison environment;
• The fact that prisoners are bad people who not want to alter their habits;
• Overcrowding.

It has been argued that the current prison system is in crisis.

• What evidence is there to support this claim?
• Do you agree or disagree with this claim?

Exercise six

Preparing a Police and Crime Plan

One key task of a Police and Crime Commissioner is to prepare a Police and Crime Plan which is designed to set the policing strategy for his/her police force area. It is the document used to hold chief constables to account for their performance.

The Police and Crime Plan should reflect the priorities of people who live in the police force area. However, they may not all have the same views as to what kind of crime problems should be tackled and as police resources are finite, the PCC will need to make choices as to what the police actually do.

This exercise is designed to illustrate this problem.

It works well as a class-based exercise.

First – each individual member of the class will list on a slide five key issues that s/he feels to be the key crime problems in the area where they live (this can be home or university). To do this, they prepare something in writing and then type it out as a slide.

Second – the class tutor then prints off all the slides.

Third – the class organises itself into groups. The role of this group is to look at all slides prepared by its members and come up with ten issues that collectively they feel are the key concerns that should be tackled.

Fourth – one member types up the ten priorities onto a slide which the class tutor then prints off for the entire class.

Fifth – discussion, including: What kind of issues are included? Are there differences and similarities between the groups? What considerations guided group selection of the final list of ten?

Exercise seven

Response to crime

Consider the following scenario:

Harry Ardnutt has a long history of committing crime and anti-social behaviour in the otherwise tranquil village of Hulmesville. He is 20 years old, and has been arrested by the police on 47 occasions for a range of offences that include actual bodily harm, affray, being drunk and disorderly and ‘mugging’. He has been given two custodial sentences in a Young Offenders Institution.

He comes from a troubled family: his father left the family home when Harry was 11 years old. There is a history of violence within the family and Harry’s mother served three prison sentences for assaulting her neighbours and customers in the local public house that she frequented. In these periods, Harry was brought up by his sister who is two years older than him. She has also been in trouble with the police and is currently serving a community sentence for criminal damage caused whilst under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Harry has a grandmother, who is currently serving a life sentence for murder.

On the night of 2 October 2016, Harry was staggering home from the public house at midnight when he noticed a laptop on the front passenger seat of a car that he was passing. He picked up a brick that was lying in the road, broke the car window and stole it. His crime was witnessed by a CCTV camera located on a nearby lamp post and next morning Harry was arrested and taken to the local police station, where he was charged with theft and criminal damage.

Your task (1): what’s to be done about Harry?

Harry’s defence for this latest charge was contained in his statement to the police: ‘I didn't intend to commit any crime: I saw the laptop and something inside me drove me to break the car window and steal it. When I realised what I had done, I was very sorry and was about to go to the police to turn myself in – but they beat me to it and came to my house and nicked me.’

Based on arguments derived from classicist criminology and positivist criminology, especially biological positivism, outline the arguments you would produce to suggest that:

• Harry was totally responsible for his actions and should be appropriately punished for them.
• Harry was not responsible for his actions – his free will was overridden by forces that were personal to him and over which he had no control: thus he needs treatment, not punishment.

Your task (2): Harry’s victim

Harry’s victim in the laptop theft was William Goodguy: he is 43, married with two children and works as a civil servant. He submitted a Victim Impact Statement relating to the laptop theft in which he stated that Harry had caused misery to the neighbourhood and deserved firm treatment.

On 5 October at around midnight, William went to the front door to let in his cat and saw Harry stumbling back from the public house. Harry (who was out on police bail for the laptop theft) was about 100 yards away. William went to his car and removed a club hammer from the boot. As Harry went by, William leapt out on him and smashed him around the head with the club hammer five times. Harry collapsed on the floor and was declared dead when he arrived at hospital.

Following the attack, William voluntarily went to the local police station to confess his crime. He is likely to be charged by the Crown Prosecution Service with murder, which, on conviction, carries a mandatory life sentence.

In his statement to the police, William stated: ‘I have never been in trouble with the law before. But Harry was making life intolerable for everyone in the neighbourhood. When I saw that he was walking around, a free person, I flipped. I meant to frighten him and certainly did not mean to kill him.’

As above, based on arguments derived from classicist criminology and positivist criminology, indicate the arguments you would produce to suggest that:

• William was totally responsible for his actions and should be appropriately punished for them.
• William was not responsible for his actions – his free will was overridden by forces over which he had no control: thus he needs treatment, not punishment.