Miscarriages of Justice
“It’s a general problem not specific to the law of the United Kingdom a criminal justice system characterized by an emphasis on crime control rather than due process will inevitably produce miscarriage of justice.” In an imaginary world the law would always give the correct results but in a real world it’s the other way. When they don’t which way do they tend to err? Which way do we want to err? We want the law to err on the side of acquitting guilty people rather than convicting ones. It is generally accepted that the price of a fair Criminal Justice System will be acquittal on a technicality of those who have committed criminal offences or because of a failure of evidence, where as conviction of the innocent is never acceptable and should it arise speedy measures should be taken to rectify the injustice. The criminal law must be enforced efficiently by the agencies to police the criminal law. There are two main values that influence the criminal Justice System, the crime control model which focuses to free society from crime and the due process model which focuses on individual liberties to be protected. The crime control model ensures that a civilized society can protect all of its citizens from victimization by criminals. But whether this has happened is questionable because when the Criminal Justice System is tilted more towards crime control there is a chance of an innocent person being convicted of a crime he never committed thus forming a miscarriage of justice. In recent times countries like United Kingdom, America, Canada and Ireland have tilted more towards crime control mainly because of the terrorist attacks that shook those nations. Moreover the racial attitude in the police and also in the society has led the crime control to be harsh on the society. The miscarriages that happen maybe due to discriminatory police practices, it may be due to incompetent scientific evidence or the over-reliance of the