Mick Cavadino - The Penal System: An Introduction

Michael Cavadino, James Dignan, George Mair, Jamie Bennett, 2020

First published 1992

Second edition 1996

Third edition 2001

Fourth edition 2007

Fifth edition 2013

This sixth edition published 2020

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019943592

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-5264-6068-4

ISBN 978-1-5264-6069-1 (pbk)

Editor: John Nightingale

Editorial assistant: Eve Williams

Production editor: Sarah Cooke

Marketing manager: George Kimble

Cover design: Francis Kenney

Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed in the UK

The Sample Syllabus helps instructors devise a course plan according to the books content to improve both teaching and learning experiences.

PowerPoint Lectures can be utilised as guidelines for course presentations and adapted as needed for the modules necessities.

A carefully curated list of Web links including blogs, datasets, and webpages provides students with the most relevant research material.

Annotated further reading for each chapter directly complements the subject matter for every chapter and supports further study.

Updated summaries of key legislation, White Papers, consultation documents and other official reports.

The penal system, which exists to punish those found guilty of crimes, is part of a larger entity known as the we deal with the criminal justice system as a whole.

There now follows a very brief and basic guide to the criminal justice system as a whole, to assist readers who may not be familiar with the system or its terminology..

In many cases when a crime is committed indeed, in most cases the agencies of criminal justice never respond at all. For the criminal justice process normally starts to operate only when a crime is reported to the police, and fewer than half of all crimes are reported. For the year ending March 2018, it was estimated that only around 40 per cent of all crimes uncovered by the Crime Survey for England and Wales were reported to the police (ONS, 2018). And the police fail to officially record about 29 per cent of those crimes that are reported (ONS, 2018). If an alleged offence is reported, or otherwise comes to the attention of the police, the police may then investigate it. The police have a wide range of powers (notably those contained in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984) to carry out searches and to arrest and question suspects in pursuit of their investigations. If there appears to be sufficient evidence to put a suspect on trial, the police may an arrested suspect with the offence. This is the first stage in the prosecution process, and it is now the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) a state agency independent of the police who instruct the police as to whether suspects should be charged in most cases of any seriousness. The police then normally take the suspect before the local magistrates court, where the prosecution is conducted by the CPS.