The Criminal and Judicial system are closely connected with the public, the public often
sees or perceives flaws in it and decides to campaign to make their demands heard, the
public often organise themselves in an active way towards a goal, Campaigns related to
crime will focus on an specific offence that the group of individual who started it feel
need more attention and awareness of the change, for every campaign there will be a
different purpose and aim, normally these include change in law, change in priorities of
agencies, change in funding, change in awareness and change in attitude of the public
or police towards that specific crime.
As said before, one common purpose in campaigns for change is the change in law, a
popular campaign of the early 2000s was “Sarah's Law” the aim of this campaign was
to provide a change in the legal system, that change will provide the legal right for
careers of a child to formally ask the authorities in regard if someone in their community
with access to their children had any record for child sexual offence, similarly regarding
child protection schemes, “Tonys Law” seek to introduce a change regarding tougher
sentences for those convicted for child cruelty, before this campaign the maximum
penalty for allowing or causing the death of a child was 14 years in prison, the
maximum for causing serious harm to one was 10 years, on the other hand “Max and
Keiras Law” aimed to make the UK a “out out” country, which means all adults are in
the system for donation of organs, in comparison with Tonys Law and Sarah Law, Max
and Keira Law did not seek for a change in the criminal system at all.
Frequently the campaigns are started by a member of the family of the victim of the
crime the campaign is aiming to change, in the case of “Sarah Law'' it was Sara Payne
(mother) that started seeking a requirement for the police to make information about
local sex offenders available for the parents or careers of children at risk that formally
asked for it. She insisted that if she knew someone with these convictions was in the
same area as them, she wouldn't let her children playing without supervision, similarly
“Tony's Law'' was started by the adoptive parents of Tony, Tony was attacked by his
biological parents when he was 41 days old, his parents received 10 years of jail for
causing serious harm to a child, with was the maximum sentence for this case, Tony's
adoptive parents thought about that sentence as too linear and soft for the horrendous
crime that was committed against their son, who was marked for life. Max Johnson and
his family started the campaing after Max had received a heart transplant, he was
diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy and needed a transplant with urgency, while he
was in the hospital he noticed how several people died due not receiving the transplant
they needed, so after he received his heart transplant, His parents and him started the
campaign to raise awareness of UK situation in relation of organ donation, currently
there is 6000 persons waiting for a transplant in the UK. Max and Keira's Law is the only
campaign that has a child involved in the process and the start of the campaign, in the