How Fair Are Our Police and Our Courts?

Functionalists say the police’s essential role is to:

• Maintain social order and give the public confidence that complaints are handled fairly

• Represent minority interests against government policy

• Focus only on serious violent crime

• Protect big businesses from protestors

Community policing chiefly involves officers:

• Issuing instant fines for minor offences

• Building relationships with local residents and gathering intelligence about problems

• Using stop-and-search powers as often as possible

• Staying in patrol cars to deter street crime

Marxists argue the police concentrate their efforts on:

• Cyber-fraud by multinational firms

• Environmental offences committed by corporations

• Working-class crimes such as vandalism and street theft

• Elite tax evasion in offshore accounts

The 1989 Hillsborough disaster is cited as evidence that the police can:

• Lack resources for crowd control

• Overuse community-policing tactics

• Always accept blame for operational errors

• Abuse power, make fatal mistakes and then scapegoat ordinary people

Functionalists claim the principle of legal equality means courts:

• Treat everyone the same in the eyes of the law, whatever their class, gender or ethnicity

• Give lighter sentences to first-time offenders

• Refuse to hear disputes over medical decisions

• Base punishments only on public opinion polls

According to functionalists, courts discourage others from offending mainly by:

• Naming and shaming offenders online

• Imposing tough sentences that act as a deterrent

• Offering offenders free legal aid

• Encouraging jury members to meet victims

Marxists highlight class bias by noting that about (a)   of High Court judges attended Oxbridge.

• 30 per cent

• 50 per cent

• 75 per cent

• 95 per cent

Which 2017 case is used to show lenient treatment of an upper-class defendant?

• Mark Duggan

• Christopher Alder

• Damilola Taylor

• Lavinia Woodward, who avoided jail after stabbing her boyfriend

Marxists say the police ultimately serve the interests of the:

• Government and ruling class

• Trade-union movement

• Voluntary sector

• International courts

Functionalists praise courts for resolving sensitive disputes—for example, cases about:

• Copyright piracy on social media

• Whether doctors may turn off a seriously ill child’s life-support machine

• Shareholder disagreements in large firms

• Parking-ticket appeals