Extensive notes that will leave you confident to answer any exam question related to alternatives to imprisonment.
Contents:
- history of prison alternatives
- the current alternatives
- benefits of custodial sentences
- benefits of non-custodial sentences
- why are alternatives not being ...
Describe the history of alternatives to imprisonment in England and Wales and critically
discuss their success or failure.
Introduction
Numerous alternatives to imprisonment within the criminal justice system over the years.
The 1907 Probation Act anchors all subsequent discussion of non-custodial sentences. This
put the act of putting people on probation into legislation.
Acts purpose: give certain offenders deemed worthy of a 2nd chance a chance at reform
while avoiding the harms of prison.
Also avoid a criminal record as probation orders can be issued without a conviction.
1964 saw the introduction of the suspended sentence order, which was followed up
almost a decade later by the 1972 community service order.
The 1991 Criminal Justice Act reviewed many of the notions regarding probation, and
introduced two new non-custodial penalties.
These were the combination order, which permitted sentencers to combine requirements
for probation supervision and unpaid work within a single order.
And secondly, the Curfew Order, which required an offender to stay in one place for a
specified period of the day, usually with a requirement to wear an electronic bracelet to
ensure compliance with the curfew.
The 1991 act can also be viewed as an articulation of a fresh conceptual framework for the
imposition of community sentences.
Criminal justice scholars in the UK during the late 1980’s witnessed a quickening of interest
in Andrew von Hirsch’s theorisation about punishment, variously described as ‘desert
theory’ or ‘proportionality theory’.
Hirsch produced a very influential article which caught the attention of officials in the
Home Office.
The result was the subsequent White Paper, Crime Justice and Protecting the Public, made
explicit use of the concept of ‘just deserts.’
The Current situation – 2003 act
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 replaced all the existing range of options for community
penalties with a community order.
This allowed courts to include any or all of the existing measures (probation supervision,
unpaid work, curfew, drug treatment, exclusion, etc) as requirements of the new order,
imposed singly or in any combination.
This idea was originally proposed in the Halliday Report in 2001.
This report encouraged a more cohesive sentence due to the confusion which had been
created around non-custodial sentences in the statute books.
The gov essentially accepted Halliday’s proposal for a single community sentence to
replace all the different ones that had gone before.
Benefits of custodial sentences: (reduces prison population)
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