Avenues to Justice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Avenues to Justice - Essay Example The term Victimisation derived from the notion of responsibility of a victim for the cause of crime. For example there is a school of thought that, in quite a lot of cases the victims are also partly responsible, like in case of theft from car where the driver keeps the door unlocked or in case of rape where the victim gives opportunity to the offender by visiting him alone etc. The public learns about crime from various sources, press being one of the very important one. One can learn about crimes from police records, crime survey and official statistics released by the Govt. They also release 'supplementary Statistics' where more detailed information on specific offences is given. Home office also releases 'Criminal Justice Digest', which gives summaries of the above statistics. They also release selected statistics in their website for Internet access. Home office also maintains 'Offender Index', which holds data on individuals convicted of serious crime. The compilation of data for the statistics to be made available is a very cumbersome process. It involves interaction of various agencies of the criminal justice systems including various police forces. ... The compilation of data for the statistics to be made available is a very cumbersome process. It involves interaction of various agencies of the criminal justice systems including various police forces. The department politics also can effect the compilation of data. Hence statistics can never be wholly accurate. Many offences like those recorded by agencies outside the home office are not recorded. As mentioned earlier, some offences gets diluted as they are perceived as lesser offences, and they are also not included. Offences like domestic violence, sexual offences, drug offences get omitted, as they are not readily detectable by the public or police. Offences like illegal gambling, drug abuse, pornography, prostitution etc. where there is no discernable victims, also gets omitted. It will be safe to assume that the official statistics reveals which crime public chose to report and the perception of the police of the seriousness of the crimes. (Word count 505) Pages 59-61, 75-79 (2) What are the aims of sentencing Is one more effective than any of the other The key element of a criminal justice process is sentencing. Hence first we need to find out the justification for sentencing: The sentencing will ensure that the offender is made to pay for his crime, it will give a sense of satisfaction to the victims, it will create faith in other possible victims and society in general on the law of the land, and create fear in the other possible offenders, which will in effect reduce crime and prevent private vengeance. Now what are the aims of sentencing As we see Sentencing has to address three sets of people: 1) Offender 2) Victim 3) General Public. Six Aims of sentencing is propagated in most