Penal Policy and Social Structure

Abstract

The preceding chapter suggested a range of differences within and between countries with respect to penal philosophies, penal policies and penal practices. As well as differences in the overall organisation of criminal justice (for example, common law or code; adversarial or investigative), there are differences in such things as the amounts of discretion given to various stages and various personnel such as arrest, prosecution, sentencing, as well as differences in the range of penalties available. Whilst all Western countries provide for discharge, fine and imprisonment, some but not all have probation, some but not all have community service, and whilst in most advanced Western countries today imprisonment is the most severe sanction, some countries, including of course the USA, retain the death penalty. Greater variation is introduced through differences in the way sentences can be served, for example, some countries (The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, for instance) have part-time imprisonment but others do not, and there are variations in whether or which sentences can be combined, and so on. Still greater differences occur in the actual usage of particular sentences, for example the high use made of suspended imprisonment in Greece and some other European countries; the low use of fines in the USA compared to Western Europe, and conversely the much higher use of probation in the USA. In its relative use of fines and probation England and Wales is, as often seems to be the case, somewhere between the American and Western European patterns.