Penal Policy and Criminal Justice

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The last two chapters have examined the relationship between penal policy and other social configurations: the demographic and socioeconomic structure of populations, and other spheres of social policy. In this chapter, the focus will be on the relationship between penal policy and the criminal justice system itself. Questions will be asked about the impact of penal policy developments on various subdivisions of the criminal justice system such as prisons and the probation service, looking at implications for their goals, their personnel, and above all for their ‘clients’. Another focus will be the effects of the recent rationalisation of policy on the range of goals and purposes with which the criminal justice system must be concerned as a whole: control of crime, protection of the public, satisfaction of victims, as well as the punishment of offenders. As in the foregoing considerations of the interaction of penality with structural inequalities and social policy, my standpoint is that although penal policy cannot correct all the depradations or deficiences of other social subsystems, it ought at least to be cognisant of its interrelationships with them, it ought to acknowledge their aims, and it ought to endeavour not to undermine the goals set in other domains. In other words, I take seriously the proposition that if penal policy cannot be expected to do very much good, it ought to be organised so as to do the least possible harm (Gaylin et al., 1978).