History And Crime Module In The Criminal Justice - Assignment Example

History and Crime Module in the Criminal Justice Introduction: Crime and the Law Criminal justice is essentially a system of legal practices which are undertaken by governments or institutions for reducing crime, providing rehabilitation for the accused or sanctioning penalties to the accused. Also, offering legal protections to the accused against abuses is another arm of criminal justice. The great Marxist Karl Marx said in one of his great sayings that the criminals not only commit the crime but also produces criminal law in the due process of committing the crime. It is generally the academic historians who were slow in recognizing the same. However, in the recent times the history books that are dealing with crimes and criminals are getting popular rather than being the academic books. These books are generally concentrated upon the literary or anecdotal sources that depict the most notorious personalities or events. The surveys showed that the most general textbooks for social, economic and political very rarely address the problem of crime (Emsley, 2010). However, in the last thirty years or so historians are mostly concentrating on the pattern of understanding of the society regarding the crimes and the way they deal with it. They made efforts to look through the police and court records that can give them some context how the change has happened and it also helped them understand the relation between those changes with the current political, social and economic scenario of the society. 1. Criminal Law Act 1826 In the year 1826 the Parliament of the United Kingdom has passed an Act called the Criminal Law Act 1826. This Act is regarded as the consolidation act. That means this Act consolidates a large number of Acts pertaining to the criminal procedures. This Act was possible because of the involvement of Sir Robert Peel. This Act is also referred as Peel’s Act. Formerly it was dealing with the preliminary examination and the reason for which the accused had committed the crime. It also used to handle the out-of-court testimonials along with the form of indictments. The cost of prosecution was also borne by this Act. Among many key questions about the most common questions were certainly were quantitative. For example how much was there? Was the quantity increasing or decreasing? What type of crime was most prevalent in a particular area or time? Though there were quantitative questions the there was a central question that was revolving around – has the social and economic changes played a role in fostering the criminality in the particular area? However, this needs a statistical evidence to foster an answer to this question, which is difficult and dangerous to gain the statistical data pertaining to this question (El Saadawi, 1983). Most of the criminologists who are engaged in gaining the statistical data take count of the population growth along with the changes in the age structure. Some of the historians during the 18th and 19th centuries have used this data but there was a question on the reliability of the data on population figure as it may not be accurate from the year 1801. 2. The Historical, Economic and Political Context The term “capital” is the most powerful word in criminology like that in economics. In criminological context the term capital denotes death whereas in the economics it denotes stock of life or a substance. These two are exactly the opposite in meaning to each other. When the term capital is used in criminology it is meant to push the offender with death penalty. However, when it is used in economics it means the production of wealth (Landau, 2002). The intensity of capital punishment increased from the mid 1970’s. Criminal law has its economic implications in the corporate world too. Rozenes and Davidson (1996, p.1) state ‘The criminal law has a limited, although important role to play in the enforcement of the standards of corporate governance. It provides the method by which the most severe sanctions to deal with corporate misconduct can be imposed upon those minded to abuse the system. Its force as providing an effective deterrent to criminal behaviour should not be underestimated. If the only sanction available to deal with corporate misconduct is civil action designed to disgorge illegally obtained benefits then the corporate criminal will simply factor the likelihood of being caught and penalised into the cost of doing business. It becomes a fairly straight forward mathematical equation to estimate the risks involved and the likely penalty.’ There were five countries that extensively used the capital punishment. Since the year 1980 South Africa has executed more than 100 offenders. In Iran the number has been tripled and the current number of execution is hovering in thousands. During the period of 1974 and 1977 Nigeria has ordered death penalty to the offenders involving in the crime with money. China has ordered execution for about hundreds of offenders in various crimes since 1980. However, in the United States the death penalty got resumes in the year 1977 after a 10 year moratorium. According to the study by Amnesty International since 1985 there have been more than thousand executions being taken place in a year (Landau, 2002). There have been no official records for many of these executions in the government registry. The study showed that these were unofficial executions and the people that received the penalty were regarded as the victims of the death squad. Hence the tendency of handing over the capital punishment has been clear, which was alarming and was specific to the historical period that has been reactionary in all sense. 3. The Historical Significances and Evidences At this time, in opposition to the world trend, there has been intense movement taken place against capital punishment. Due to this movement about 80 countries have abolished capital punishment either by law or by practice. In the year 1987 the USSR has announced the intension of the country to restrict the death penalty in the country. This led to intense public debate regarding this (Linebaugh, 1991). It was German Democratic Republic that abolished the death penalty on July 17, 1987. In the month of December of 1988 Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had executed more than 2000 death sentences in Pakistan. In the month of April of 1979 Benazir Bhutto’s father was hanged. In March 1988 Colonel Gaddafi has called off death penalty from Libya. However, in June he himself had taken the initiative to commute all the existing death sentences. In contrast to the 18th century London when news of hanging along with the last wishes of the condemned, their biographies and the descriptions of their behaviour have been widely published as books in many parts of the country (Cockburn, 1977). But interestingly there has been very little has been published about the behaviour or about the attitudes of their peers during the execution. It seems to be unusual that nineteen countries permit public execution. Though this has been an inhuman act the international press has kept their mouth shut and the national press too. However, there has been one Pakistani journalist who opened mouth following a public execution in front of 10000 people and suggested that this kind of punishment can hamper the image of the country and can also earn the title as perpetrator of violence for the country. Though there have been unequal forces this violence has met with violent responses. The classic example that can be cited here is the unsuccessful conflict of the prisoners of the Virginia State Penitentiary with the prison authority in order to prevent the execution of James Briley in April 1985. 4. Commentary Analysis From the above discussed points it has been significant that the judiciary system has played a significant role in coining the crime module and criminal justice. Since the historical ages there have been many instances taken place that has created the environment where people expressed their negative thoughts about the capital punishment. In the countries like United States, China, Nigeria, United Kingdom, Iran, Libya and many others capital punishment has ordered every now and then. In China the last words of the offenders receiving the capital punishment has not been recorded. This has been so in human and unethical. Moreover, the public execution in Pakistan has revealed how the government thinks about people of the country. They only want to keep the citizens of the country under their thumb so that they cannot go rebellious. 5. The Highlighted Important Ideas As discussed early in the essay there have been many instances where the capital punishment had to take a back seat. For example one of the important citations that is worth mentioning here is the conflict between the prisoners of Virginia State Penitentiary to prevent the unethical execution of James Briley. Though the riot was unsuccessful and the execution had taken place but the protest from the inmates and peers has given some shake to the judiciary system to think beyond and if possible abolish the same. Another highlighted idea in this essay is the idea of abolishing the capital punishment by Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. However, he himself has taken the lead of executing the pending capital punishment orders. This shows that not only the people of country but also the leader of the country also think to abolish the capital punishment from the country. 6. Summary of Values The social scientific knowledge and theory had developed not only within the minds of individuals but also in particular institutional domains, which have gained shapes from their surroundings (Maguire, Morgan & Reiner, 2007). The development of the surroundings have been developed based upon certain factors like organizational pattern of the institute, division and subdivision of the institute, emergence of disputes, funding of research studies and also the publication and usage of the findings. These values play a big role in shaping up the academic background of the institutes and also these values should be taken into consideration by the students while selecting their field of studies. In studying criminology the understanding of these institutional domains are especially important for the students, which would in turn help them in shaping up their knowledge base. This is useful not only in the academic world but also in the application world as well (Cohen, 1988). 7. Valuable Documents for the Students The book Crime and Society in England: 1750 – 1900 by Clive Emsley has clearly synthesises the recent works on crime and English society from the mid-18th century to close to 19th century. The book cites the references of crimes in the Wales where the legal system was indistinguishable from the rest of England. The book also has the references of criminal justice systems of Scotland, which had a different legal system and Ireland that had rural and nationalist rebels together with the para-military police. There will be four key questions to be discussed in this essay. Those questions are: what were the understandings of the contemporaries pertaining to crime during the 18th and 19th centuries? What were the patterns of crimes that the historians detected subsequently with the general findings? Who was the offender? What were the remedies in order to handle the crime and also the offender? The reports like The Death Penalty: Amnesty International Report (1979) and When the State Kills … The Death Penalty: A Human Rights Issue (Amnesty International, 1989) would be of great help in studying the scenarios of criminal justice. Dawn published in March 1988 and The Boston Globe published in April 1985 are the two good references that students of history and crime can refer to enhance their knowledge. References Amnesty International Report (1989) When the State Kills … The Death Penalty v. Human Rights, London: Amnesty International Publications Cohen, S. (1988) Against Criminology, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers Cockburn, J. S. (ed.) (1977) Crime in England, 1550 – 1800, London: Princeton Emsley, C. (2010) Crime and Society in England 1750-1900, 4th edition, London: Pearson El. Saadawi (1983) Woman at Point Zero, Trans. Dr. Sherif Hetata, London: Zed Books Landau, N. (ed.) (2002) Law, Crime and English Society 1660-1830, Cambridge: CUP Linebaugh, P. (1991) The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century, London: Penguin Maguire, M, Morgan, R, Reiner, R. (2007) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, London: Oxford University Press Rozenes, M. and Davidson, G (1996). Corporate Misconduct And The Criminal Justice System System, AIJA Seminar on The Courts and Corporate Law, Melbourne Business School, Melbourne University Read More