NCJ Number
226165
Journal
European Journal of Criminology Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Dated: October 2008 Pages: 481-504
Date Published
October 2008
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This survey of crime, criminology, and criminal justice in Scotland focuses on core criminal justice institutions; statistical trends in crime and punishment over the past 40 years; the history and politics of criminal justice; and the emergence of a distinctively Scottish criminology.
Abstract
The premise of this review of criminal justice and criminology in Scotland is that the country has a criminal justice and penal system distinct from England/Wales. Between the late 1960s and early 1990s, Scottish criminal justice and penal policy resisted the punitive and/or more actuarial trend evident in a range of other jurisdictions, including England/Wales, as it embraced penal welfare values. Scotland’s Social Work Act of 1968 placed social work at the heart of the criminal justice enterprise by abolishing the older specialist probation service and transferring its functions to newly created local authority social work departments. This legislation further abolished the older juvenile courts and established the Scottish children’s hearing system, which focused on early and minimal intervention and the avoidance of stigmatization. The framing of key elements of adult and juvenile justice in terms of welfare values was a stable feature of Scottish policy for approximately 25 years. Since the mid-1990s, however, Scotland’s divergent path in criminal justice has stalled, characterized by a major retreat from welfare principles under a more punitive political rhetoric. Public protection and risk management have become major themes of policymaking and legislation. There has been an increased emphasis on victim services and involvement in case processing. This has been linked to an emphasis on restorative justice principles. This article reviews distinctive criminological research in Scotland over the past decade. Topics discussed are crime and community, youth crime and justice, resistance research, gendered violence, sentencing, and the politics and governance of crime control and punishment. 6 figures and 68 references