ABSTRACT
Patterns of recorded crime, types and numbers of offenders brought to justice, and the constitution of prison populations are largely determined by the actions of various criminal justice gatekeepers to report, detect, judge and punish criminal activities. This chapter provides an overview of the key stages of the criminal justice process with a focus on the United Kingdom, and describes the roles and responsibilities of the key actors and institutions involved: the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the National Probation Service and the judiciary. Historians and sociologists have examined how and why criminal justice processes and allied forms of, and ideas about, the control of deviancy underwent significant changes at a particular point in time in the development of Western nations. The filtering or ‘attrition’ of criminal cases out of the criminal justice process is the result of the decisions made by the various actors in the process.
