Criminal Justice System Analysis

This assignment will critically explore to see how effective the criminal justice system is, by looking at the prison system in the United Kingdom. It will examine to see what types of groups end up in prison and if the criminal justice system in the United Kingdom is fair.
Historically, less people were put into prison. In the 1900’s only 17,000 people were in prison (Allen and Dempsey, 2016). There has been an increase of 68,000 people in just over a hundred years, it can also be calculated as 86 prisoners per 100,000 of the general population in England and Wales in 1900’s to 182 prisoners per 100,000 of the general population in 2015 (Allen and Dempsey, 2016). The population of prisoners in England and Wales as of March 2016, was just …show more content…
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) argue prisoners are more likely to be unemployed, been in care in their past, have HIV or been regular truants, compared with the general society. Prisons have been seen to have big problems with rising levels of violence, suicide, drug and alcohol problems and ill physical and mental health. There is a higher morbidity rate within prisoners compared to the general population (Singleton et al, 1998). It can be argued that “Prisons are sites of great power inequalities” (Bosworth and Carrabine, …show more content…
The population of prisons are increasing at a fast rate, but there is not enough funding to manage with the overload of population within the prisons, for instance Leeds prison is overcrowded by 174% (The Howard League, 2017). This is very like the way prisons are run in the United States, the United States in 2014 had just over 2.2 million people imprisoned (Eric Schlosser, 2015). The rise in the population of prisons in the United States can be explained due to the punitive political climate surrounding criminal justice policy which was formed in a time where there was a rise in crime and social change within society, this saw an increase in the length of individuals sentencing, and imprisonment for minor crimes (Travis el al, 2014). Eric Schlosser (2015) argues that much of the prison population in the United States is individuals from lower classes of

Show More