Sociology: Criminal Justice System

-Comprises the police, Ministry of Justice, Home Office, Courts, Crown Prosecution Service, Serious Fraud Office, Prisons.

-Functionalists argue it serves the people by upholding the norms, values and laws of society.

-Marxists argue that it reflects the interests of the Ruling Class and seeks to defend those interests.

-He emphasises that 'in addition to those who may be "suspects" (because of committing alleged offences) ordinary persons in everyday life - workers, consumers, citizens, travellers - find that their personal data are of interest to others' and that everyday life has become less 'private' and that ordinary people have become more vulnerable to monitoring and intrusion.

-He suggests that surveillance has become so pervasive and such a routine and inescapable part of everyday life in technologically advanced contemporary societies that it now makes sense to talk of 'surveillance societies' in which ICTs enable total social control.

-He suggested surveillance was a key means of monitoring, controlling and changing the behaviour of criminals.

-He saw surveillance as a form of disciplinary power, as the fear and uncertainty of whether or not they were being watched would encourage people to internalise surveillance and exercise self-surveillance and control their behaviour through self-discipline or self-control.

-He sees surveillance extending across many institutions in contemporary society, and penetrating ever more into every sphere of life, including the private aspects of our lives.

-He argued contemporary society has been transformed into a surveillance or disciplinary society, in what he called the 'age of panopticism' in which everyone is subject to the disciplinary gaze of the panopticon.

-The use of 'technologies of power' or 'disciplinary technology' has become a means for the state and other institutions to exercise disciplinary power and control by casting the net of surveillance over the entire population.

-He used the concept of a 'carceral archipelago' (prison consisting of a series of islands) to describe contemporary societies, with every public location like a small panopticon in which everyone is subject to surveillance.

-Some surveillance can be useful, for example for monitoring hospital patients, or for reducing crime and social disorder in communities where it is a real problem.

-Evidence suggests those living in the most deprived communities that suffer the greatest harm from crime and disorder welcome surveillance cameras as improving their sense of safety, as well as reducing crime in their neighbourhood.

-Surveillance also appears to be of growing assistance in the fight against terrorism and the threats it might pose to public safety, though some regard this as a convenient excuse by the state to undermine civil liberties and justify ever-increasing levels of surveillance over everyone.