NCJ Number
101332
Date Published
1984
Length
63 pages
Annotation
This 1984 report by a committee of the Council of Europe (Committee on Crime Problems) explains a crime policy based on crime prevention and offender resocialization and examines the public's attitude toward such a policy, public participation in preparing and implementing the policy, and means of obtaining public participation in framing and applying crime policy.
Abstract
The crime policy predominant in Council of Europe member states gives increasingly less emphasis to retributive punishment and more to crime prevention and offender social rehabilitation. This approach includes social crime prevention (measures not connected with criminal justice), special penal prevention (measures applied to individual offenders), general penal prevention (general influence of the criminal justice system), use of noncustodial corrections, and attention to victim roles and interests. The public (all persons and groups having no official decision powers regarding criminal justice policy) generally has a repressive attitude toward crime based on an inaccurate view of crime and criminal justice, but this should not restrain a crime prevention-resocialization policy with a strong emphasis on public education. The report describes how the public at large as well as specific groups of the public (professional groups, offenders and their families, victims, and other groups) can participate in preparing and implementing crime policy. Discussions of related research roles are appended.