Chapter 1

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Crime and Criminal Justice

A few questions to start

How long does it take to get results of DNA testing?

-A: Goes all over the place.

Who is responsible for examining pieces of evidence?

CSI effect”?

-Unrealistic expectations?

-Proof beyond reasonable doubt is enough for a conviction.

-Crime shows effect Jurys.

-Jurors have unrealistic expectations on what proof beyond reasonable doubt is.

-Victims have unrealistic expectations as well.

Is Violent crime on the rise?

-Examples: Armed Robbery,

-Compared to when?

-For whom?

-By what measure?

-Who cares?!?

-Homicides rates drastically change by different groups of people drastically.

-Two neighborhoods in Chicago effect entire US crime rates.

-What does it mean if something is just?

-Deserving.

When people claim they want justice, what are they asking for?

Having defined justice, discuss what you believe the purpose of the criminal justice system to be?

What is Justice?

-What does it mean if something is just?

-When people claim they want justice, what are they asking for?

-Having defined justice, discuss what you believe the purpose of the criminal justice system to be?

-What in your experience(broadly speaking) do you think has led you to your views on the criminal justice system?

-Fairness

-Equality

-Impartiality

-Apropriate rewards or punishments

What is the difference between criminal justice and criminology?

-Causes of crime

What is criminal justice?

-Way people are prosecuted.

Primary comment agencies of criminal justice?

-courts

-police

-corrections

How did these pieces come together.

-1919- Chicago Crime Commission

-Acted as an advocate group for citizens and tracked the activities of local justice agencies.

-1931- Wickersham Commission.

-1967- The Crime Commission

-President Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.

CJ AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

System- different indepent pieces that work together collectively.

Exchange

-Mutual transfer of resources among individual actors, each of who has goals that he cannot accomplishment on his own.

-The Subsystemds of the CJ system are tied together by the actions of the individual decision makers.

Plea bargains

-Defense attorneys

-Prosecutors

-Police

The Criminal Justice System

-What are the primary component agency of criminal justice?

-Law enforcement

-Courts

-Corrections

Charactereristics of the CJ system

Discretion

-Officials’ freedom to act according to their own judgement and conscience.

-Officials can act in the way they choose based on judgement can be completely different.

Resource Dependence

-CJ agencies depend upon others for funding

Sequential Tasks

-Decisions are made in a specific sequence.

-Can’t get to court unless you’ve been arrested.

Filtering

Some cases are screened out while others advance(Figure 1.2)

The CJ assembly line

The Formal CJ Process

Police

Initial contact

Investigation

Arrest

Custody

Prosecution

Charging

Preliminary hearing/ grand jury.

Arraignment.

Bail/detention

Plea bargaining

Courts

Trial/Adjudication

Sentencing/Disposition

Appeal/postconviction remedies.

Corrections

Corrections treatment

Release

Postrelease

The Informal CJ Process: Walkers Wedding Cake Model

Layer 1: The celebrated cases

Celebrity cases/cases that get a lot of attention

An example is the OJ Simpson trial.

Aaron Hernandez.

Casey Anthony Trial.

Layer 2: The serious cases

Look at his slides/internet

Layer 3: The lesser felonies

Large amounts of money

Example: Bernie Madoff

Tend to go through the same steps as the celebrated cases: but not as conveyed in the media.

Layer 4: The misdemenors

Make up 92-93% of the offenses in the Criminal Justice System

Dealt with very quickly

If it bleeds it leads: We want to hear about the most horrendous cases.

Side Notes

Most cases are dealt with informally

About Asignment

Find a case in the media that relates to each layer in the wedding cake: 4 Seperate cases.

Perspectives on Justice

Crime control

Due Process

Rehabilititation

Nonintercention

Equal Justice

Restorative Justice.

Principles of Crime Control Model

Repression of criminal conduct

Effects of failure

Criminal process

Efficiency

How quickly can we move through cases to get to convictions/sentencing.

If someone is caught and punished they won’t want to do it again/that is the idea/

Speed and Finality

Conveyor belt

Presumption of guilt.

Overall

If a couple people get punished that’s just the way it is.

Effects of this is an increase in crime.

Principles of Due Process Model

Possibility of error.

Finality is not a priority

Instences on a lack of mistakes

Efficiency is sometimes rejected

Protection of Process

Coercion.

Model provides us with protection.

Supporters

Okay with convincing a few innocent people, because it stops others from committing crimes.

No illegal searches

Supporters of crime control model, are not against illegal searches.

Efficiency is sometimes rejected.

Protection of the process is the most important thing.

Ethics in Criminal Justice

Law enforcement

Courts

Corrections

Ex: The death penalty, punishment in general, solitary confinement.

Chapter 2

What is Crime?

Whatever is illegal is a crime?

Crime is contextual.

Crime is what we consider as a society a crime.

Crime vs. Deviance

Norms.

Established standards of behavior

A rule in society

Social norms

Legal norms

Definition of deviance- any act that violates norms.

Legal norms- are laws, formalized standard of behaviors

All crime is deviance, but not all deviance is crime.

We use the criminal justice system as a part of social control.

Why is it important to define what is a crime and what is not?

Male is se- Crimes are considered wrong in themselves.

Mala prohibita- Crimes prohibited by the government or rule makers.

Example: Motor Cycle helmet laws.

What is Crime?

Whatever is illegal is a crime?

Crime I contextual

Crime Vs. Deviamce

Norms

-Established standards of behavior

-A rule in society

Defining Crime

Consensus view

are behaviors that essentially harmful to most people and are controlled by criminal law.

There is general agreement about which behaviors need to be prohibited.

Criminal law has a social control function.

We use criminal law to influence the way people behave.

Conflict view

The content of criminal law and thus the definitions of crime are controlled by the ongoing class struggle.

Criminal law is created and enforced by the haves to control the have-nots.

Interactionist view

The criminal law reflects the values/opinions of those who hold social power and use they influence to mold the legal process.

Moral entrepreneurs- mold the law to reflect their own views.

Criminal law defines the crime.

The definition of crime is constantly changing and evolving.

Social forces mold the definition of crimes.

Criminal law has a social control function.

Factors That Influence Trends

Age structure

Younger people are more likely to participate in criminal behavior.

Immigration

Historically, increases in immigrants mean decrease in crime.

Statistics support, first generation immigrants are not typically involved in crime.

Children however usually have higher rates.

Unemployment

Gun availability

More guns. Associated with more violent crime.

Gangs.

Drug use

Media

Policy

Measuring Crime

Units of analysis can be:

Offenders.

For a crime to take place there must be a motivated offender.

Victims

A wide variety of phenomenon can be victims of crime including individuals, businesses, or organization. Particularly difficult to define in the case of victimless crime.

Offense & Incidents.

An incident is the crime event itself, offense is 1 or more type of events that took place during incident.

Crimes Know to Police

Two primary sources of information

Direct observation by police

Crimes such as traffic offenses and victimless crimes (e.g., drug sales, prositution)

Reports from other people

Accounts for most other crimes.

Uniform Crime Report(UCR)

National data set collected since the 1930s

Summarizes local crime.

Very useful measure of crime trends although there are several important shortcomings.

Consists of two separate groupings of crime.

Part 1: More serious crimes such as murder, non negligent, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft.

Part 2: Shoplifting, drug sales/use, fraud, prostitution, simple assault, vandalism, receiving stolen property, and all other nontraffic.

Actual crime rate is lower than actually crimes.

But reported crime, can still be a good indocator of how many crimes takes place.

Problems with the UCR

Only counts crimes reported to and recorded by police.

For Part II offenses, only if an arrest is made.

States have varying definitions of crimes.

Missing or incomplete data.

Additional Issues with the UCR

Problems associated with clerical error, data processing problems, and even political problems.

Hierarchy Rule.

For Non-NIBRS agencies, only the most serious crime is recorded.

Moving Beyond Summary Measures

Problems with summary measures has resulted in a move to incident-based measures

Adavantages

Provide Substantially more detail of criminal events

Provide the ability to understand the relationships between aspects of events such as victim characteristics, offender characteristics, VOR, etc.

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Chapter 2: The Nature of Crime and Victimization

Crime Rates

# of offenses/population * 100,000

Moving Beyond Summary Measures

Problems with summary measures has resulted in a move to incident-based measures.

Advantages:

Provide substantially more detail of criminal events

Provide the ability to understand the relationships between aspects of events such

Supplemental Homicide Report (SHR)

Collected since 1961 as a supplement to UCR data

Data include Victom/Offender demographics, weapon information, VOR, circumstances surrounding the event.

NIBRS

National Incident- Based Reporting System

Represents MAJOR change for law enforcement agencies

Shift to NIBRS is extremely difficult

Implications for state and federal repositories of information

Bottom line: The need to manage an extremely large amount of information

Yet many advantages

No hierarchy rule, increased validity and reliability.

ViCTIM SURVEYS

The shortcomings of some official data sources make victim surveys particularly useful at times

Anticipated Advantages:

Can collect data on crimes not reported to police

Provide the opportunity to get additional data on victimization not available in other sources.

National Crime Victimization Survey.

Purpose was to illuminate the “dark figure of crime”.

Several important shortcomings

Community Victimization Surveys

While useful, NCVS cannot be disaggregated to understand patterns in individual cities (Except for the 10 largest states

Individual cities are increasingly conducting their own surveys do understand both city-level patterns but also patterns in individual neighborhoods.

Surveys of Offending

In addition to gathering information on victimization, surveys can also be used to gather information on offending.

Assurances of confidentiality are particularly important because people do not want to disclose illegal behavior.

Particularly good for certain types of crimes/behaviors (drug use, prostitution, other non-criminal deviant behavior)

Examples

National Household Survey on Drugs Abuse

Purpose is to obtain self-reports of drug use

Conducted since 1971, persons over age 12 are target population.

Records both any instances of use and some temporal ordering.

Takes place in the home: Problems?

Monitoring the Future

Purpose is to monitor the behavior; attitudes and values of your people

Survery is conducted in School.

Measuring Crime