Justice: The Way Ahead’, 2001, the claim was made that 100,000 persistent offenders are responsible for half of all crime. They shared a common profile: • more than a third were in care as children • half have no qualifications at all • nearly half were excluded from school • three quarters had no work or little legal income. It is unquestionable that social and economic deprivation plays a major role in criminality. Criminological theory indicates that British society is characterised by an under-class of socially excluded young people who feel they are without a stake in society and for whom crime is a means of survival. Failing community cohesion is clearly another factor but this is largely the result of cultural and social processes.
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Why do Miscarriages of Justice Happen?
Given that relatively few suspects are taken to court, one would hope that the guilty are being rightly convicted and the innocent duly acquitted. This is not of course always the case. No system is fail-safe and miscarriages of justice have been well publicised. But it has to be said that many recent reforms, although perhaps initiated by a desire to reduce the risk of wrongful convictions, may well have contributed to them by pitting the interests of victims and society against the fair trial rights of the accused. Three significant landmarks in criminal justice history were the Philips Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure 1981, the Runciman Royal Commission on Criminal Justice 1993 and the MacPherson Inquiry 1999.
The Criminal Justice System
The underlying policy thrust of the present government is to be tough on crime. The original mantra of the Labour Party election manifesto in 1997 before it came to power was to tackle the causes of crime but most commentators agree that this promise has received less priority.
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The first two investigated the causes of several serious miscarriages of justice: the conviction of three youths for the murder of Maxwell Confait and the cases of the Guildford 4, the Maguire 7 and the Birmingham 6, all Irish nationals who had been convicted for bombings and murders on mainland Britain of which they were entirely innocent. Some were not released from prison for 13–16 years . Other wrongfully convicted victims were incarcerated for even longer. These miscarriages were the result of systemic failings: inadequate defence representation in police stations, undue pressure to confess, police brutality, withholding of vital forensic evidence, fabricated confessions, the lack of an independent review of the decision to prosecute and a slow and cumbersome appeals procedure. The Royal Commissions enquired whether the prevailing system of checks and balances within the criminal justice system offered sufficient protection to individuals accused of crimes. Their reports were disappointing to those who hoped for fundamental reform. Management and efficiency characterised their recommendations and these were followed by a raft of legislation largely detrimental to the interests of the defendant, notably the erosion of the right of silence by s34 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. The only benefit was the Criminal Cases Review Commission set up in 1995 to refer appeals to the Court of Appeal on the basis of wrongful convictions. It now receives more than 900 applications annually yet refers only approximately 40 to the appeals court. The organisation ‘Justice’ in a report as long ago as 1989 estimated that up to 15% of defendants each year sentenced to more than four years’ imprisonment were wrongly convicted. No figures exist for the magistrates’ courts where more than 90% of cases are heard. The MacPherson Inquiry concerned the failure of the police to prosecute the death of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. It also addressed the violent racism in society and police inability to address it. The outcome was a finding of ‘institutional racism’ against the police and
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