Criminal Justice Reform

“The first five Criminal Justice Acts of the century were spaced out over nearly 50 years, from 1925 to 1972, whereas the last five have come in less than 20 years since 1972 and the current Act is the third in only five years” (Davies, et al., 2010:29). There have been many important legislative changes affecting the criminal justice system since the 1990s. Many of these provided numerous reforms to sentencing, creating a systematic process. There are three legislative changes that could be considered the most significant to the criminal justice system today: the Criminal Justice Act 1991, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, and the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
The Criminal Justice Act 1991 (CJA 1991) was introduced through the
This allows the court to “require an offender aged 16 or over to remain at the place or places specified for a specified period” (Card, et al., 1994:251). Relating to curfew orders, electronic monitoring was introduced in Section 13. However, specific facilities for tagging did not exist in all areas in the country; therefore these provisions were not brought into effect at the time.
The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (CJPOA 1994) was introduced by Home Secretary, Michael Howard. It contained many important reforms that affected the criminal justice system for many years to follow. The Act introduced many changes that mainly included the restriction and reduction of existing rights.
The most notable reform was to the “right of silence” of an accused person. Sections 34 through 39 allowed the court to draw inferences on a defendant’s silence during police questioning or in court. “These inferences may be drawn from a failure or refusal of a person under arrest to account for any object in his possession during the time of arrest or failure for an arrested person to account for his presence at a particular place where he is found” (Card, et al., 1994:158). This portion was widely criticized because it allows negative inferences to be drawn from silence in situations that are not subject to the safeguards of access to legal
Ultimately through the passing of each of these legislations in succession, the criminal justice system has evolved into a more “modern” system. The ultimate goals for all of these legislations are to maximize crime reduction by tackling repeat offending, supporting and improving public confidence, protecting the public, and taking in account the interests of victims. Although these legislations did not accomplish these goals fully, each one built upon the previous one, achieving more and