Transcript Ch14_LPPT - Napa Valley College

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Chapter 14:
Criminal Justice
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Creation of the Law

Clear expectations of behavior essential
for a functioning society
• All societies have created laws

Purpose of a legal code is universal:
• To define illegal actions and outline penalties
for those acts
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Consensus and Conflict Models

Two primary models describing how laws are
created:
• Consensus Model of Law
 Suggests laws arise because people see a behavior
they do not like and agree to make it illegal
• Conflict Model of Law
 Proposes that powerful people write laws and do so
to protect their own interests
 Conflict approach suggests that disparity in justice is
linked to a perpetrator’s wealth or position in society
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Punishment

Shaming:
• A deliberate effort to attach a negative meaning to a
behavior

John Braithwaite
• Shame can either stigmatize or reintegrate
 Stigmatized Shame
• A permanent label given to an offender
• Increases the likelihood of reoffending because guilty
person is labeled forever

Reintegrative Shaming
• Allows offender to reconnect to society after
punishment without further stigma
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Criminal justice system relies on deterrence
• Prevents person from doing something out of fear of the
consequences

Two types of deterrence
• Specific deterrence
 Seeks to prevent a particular offender from
committing that crime again
• General deterrence
 Seeks to prevent others from committing crimes by
making an example of a particular offender
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
The U.S. Criminal Justice System

Three branches of the criminal justice
system
• Police, courts, and corrections

Certain individuals within each branch
differ in opinions and exercise individual
measures of discretion
• Leads to social problems:
 Racial profiling
 Unequal sentencing
 Increased costs for the community
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Police




More than 18,000 law enforcement
agencies in the United States
More than 800,000 full-time sworn law
enforcement officers
Officer’s job best described as “hour upon
hour of boredom, interrupted by moments
of sheer terror”
Studies show that police directly protect
society less than 1% of the time
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued


Studies of increased police numbers show very
little impact on crime rates
Techniques such as target hardening
• Making an objective less attractive to a possible criminal
 More likely to have positive effects on crime rates

Police officers have initial discretion
• Ability to make decisions on whether or not a crime has
occurred
 Often used when they frequent “hot-spots”
• Areas regularly patrolled because they believe they will
find criminal activity there
• Usually these neighborhoods are poor areas
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued


This kind of discretion perpetuates
inequality in the system
Racial Profiling:
• Occurs when police target certain groups
based on race
 Increases odds that minority criminals will
get caught and makes it less likely that
white criminals will be brought to justice
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Courts

Judge
• Elected or appointed public official who presides over a
court of law

Court system consists of two opposing camps
• Prosecutors and defendants
• Judge’s role is to ensure that proceedings are held in
accordance with the legal system
 Exercise discretion over what should and should not
be admitted into the case
 May have power over the outcome, depending on the
state and situation
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Prosecuting Attorney
• Official duty is to conduct criminal proceedings on behalf
of the state or the plaintiffs
• Often elected or works for an elected district attorney
• In court system, no one has more discretion than
prosecuting attorney
• After arrest district attorney’s office decides what official
charges are
• They have power to accept plea bargains
 Out-of-court agreements between prosecutor and
defense attorney that involve concessions by
prosecution to obtain a guilty plea
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Defense Counsel
• Attorneys hired or appointed by the court to provide legal
defense for accused
• Right to a defense attorney is part of suspect’s Miranda rights
and guaranteed by the court
• Great disparity among types of defense counsels
 Private attorneys who specialize in criminal law and provide
good results are costly
 Public defenders paid to provide defense services to
indigent people tend to have large caseloads
• Conviction rates, including plea bargains, higher for public
defenders versus private attorneys
 Poor with public defenders more likely to be convicted than
the rich who can afford private attorneys
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Sentencing


Judge or jury can take circumstance into
account when sentencing
Aggravating circumstances
• Describe crime in which gravity is greater than
that of the average instance of the offense

Mitigating circumstances
• Circumstances surrounding commission of a
crime that may reduce blameworthiness of
defendant
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued


Models of sentencing
Indeterminate Sentencing
• Model of criminal punishment that allows judge
and corrections system discretion in length of
the sentence

Structured Sentencing
• Legislative system of a state enacts constraints
on judicial discretion in regards to determining
criminal sentences
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Proportionality sentencing principle
• States that the severity of sanctions should
bear a direct relationship to the seriousness of
the crime
• Offender given fixed-term sentence that may
be reduced by good time
 Time deducted from prison sentence for
good behavior
• Gain time
 Time deducted for participation in special
programs
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

“Truth in Sentencing”
• laws aimed at abolishing or limiting parole so that
inmates serve a set majority of their sentences

Mandatory sentencing
• Most rigid of the sentencing models
• Structured sentencing strategy that allows for no
discretion on the part of the judge

State and federal governments have become
more restrictive and harsher with sentencing over
time
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

U.S. prison system has grown
• Individuals serve longer sentences and have little
chance of getting out early for good behavior


Mandatory sentencing regulations such as Three
Strikes law raise serious questions about fairness
of justice system
Continues to be a racial and social class element
to sentencing
• 100:1 ratio
 Federal law requires mandatory five-year sentence
for crimes involving 500 grams of powder cocaine or
5 grams of crack
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
The Corrections System

Probation
• Sentence given in lieu of prison and requires conditions
that must be met by the offender
• Research supports increasing use of probation
 Probationers have lower rates of re-offense compared
to those sent to prison

Parole
• Correctional strategy that releases inmates from prison
early but supervises them in community
• Similar to probation conditions
• Violating conditions of parole can result in prison as well
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Prison

Last resort in criminal justice system
• Offender incarcerated for a period of time as
punishment for crime

2007
• More than 7.3 million Americans were under
some form of correctional supervision

Today’s prison inmates
• 64% belong to racial or ethnic minorities
• 57% are younger than 35 years old
• 21% serving time for a drug offense
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Bureau of Justice Statistics Correctional Surveys
• One of every 15 people in US will be incarcerated in his
or her lifetime
• Blacks 3 times more likely to be imprisoned than
Hispanics and 5 times more likely than whites
• Nearly nine out of ten inmates are male
 Rate of female inmates increasing
• Southern states have higher incarceration rates
 They have more crime
 They sentence offenders to prison more often and
with longer sentences
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued


Idea that incarceration naturally decreases
crime difficult to support with
criminological data
Jeffrey Reiman
• As crime rates increase, politicians use “toughon-crime” strategies to entice voters
• Such policies have problems being funded
 Incarceration turns offenders from
taxpayers into tax drains
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Recidivism


More than 50% of all inmates return to
prison within 3 years of their release
Recidivism
• Tendency for former inmates to return to
prison

During current period of “get tough”
policies
• Recidivism rates have gotten worse
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Costs of Incarceration

States report a set cost per inmate
• Reported numbers often underestimate cost of
incarceration


Hidden costs associated with incarceration
make determining actual numbers difficult
Social costs almost never factored into
prison budget because other government
departments pay for them
• Taxpayers foot the bill either way
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Sociologists James Austin and John Irwin
• Determined it actually costs $30,000/year to
incarcerate a single inmate
 Significantly higher than what most states
report
• 2008 - Federal government reported paying
almost $26,000 per inmate in federal facilities
• Community corrections center costs were
estimated at nearly $24,000 per inmate
 Neither figure includes “social costs”
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Conflict Theorist Philosophies of Criminal
Sentencing



Conflict theorists focus on issues of
inequality and power relationships
Laws not written with interest of society in
mind, but with interest of wealthy
Considering income and incarceration are
linked, seems as though system benefits
rich
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

System of bail
• People not yet convicted of crimes are arrested and held
in jail unless they can “make bail”
• Process involves putting up money for release
• Person does not show up for trial, the bail is forfeited
• Not everyone can afford amount of money being asked
 Thousands of people remain in jail while awaiting trial
 Receiving punishment before being convicted
• Wealth affords good lawyers and bail money
• Poverty affords public defenders and plea bargains
 Clearly harms the poor at greater rates than it does
the rich
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

In criminal justice system, power exercised under certain
sentencing philosophies
• Philosophy of retribution
 Calls for punishment predicated upon need for revenge
 Power of state used to punish offender
• Philosophy of just deserts
 Criminal offenders deserve punishment they receive at
hands of the law
 Punishments should be appropriate to type and severity of
crime committed
• Both philosophies contend primary goal of criminal justice
system is to exert power over offenders and punish them for
their crimes
 Inequality of punishment falls firmly on the indigent
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Functionalist Philosophies of Criminal Sentencing


Functionalists see the world as interconnected
Propose incapacitation
• Use of imprisonment or other means to reduce likelihood
offender will be capable of committing future offenses
• Sending a person to prison, society ensures that the
only possible people they can hurt are other inmates
• Suggest incapacitation will naturally decrease crime
rates because inmates will be off streets
 Sentences relying on this theory are usually harsh
and lengthy
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Symbolic Interactionist Philosophies of
Criminal Sentencing



Interactionists suggest the power of a
symbol is linked to its meaning
Prison not for punishment, but for
correcting antisocial behavior
Rehabilitation
• Attempt to reform offender
• Ultimate goal of any correction method should
be to turn offender into productive,
contributing member of society
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Restorative justice
• Model of punishment that strives to restore
bond between perpetrator and society
• Perpetrators might pay restitution to their
victims
 Work in community as way to reconnect
with public
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Can Society Punish Too Much?


Increase of violence and rape within
prisons shows a problem in society
Incredible costs associated with rising
incarceration rates
• Currently imprisoning people 6 times greater
than Canada and 13 times greater than Japan
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Finland
• Fences with razor wire rejected in favor of cameras and
electronic networks
• Inmates live in areas that look like college dorms
• Guards are unarmed and do not wear uniforms
 Interact with inmates in effort to get to know them
as fellow citizens
• Results
 Finnish rate of incarceration is 0.05% in comparison
to United States’ 0.7%
 Crime and recidivism rates are both lower
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Mandatory Minimums

Mandatory minimums
• Force judges to hand out fixed sentences for specific
crimes
• Eliminating possibility of using mitigating circumstances
to decrease a sentence
• Increase length of time people serve in prison
 Result in overcrowding, health care issues, and
greater expense
• Some states built nursing homes within prison walls to
care for increasingly aging inmate population too weak
to care for themselves but cannot be released due to
these laws
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Rand Corporation
• Mandatory minimum sentences for drug
offenders not efficient use of tax dollars,
compared to drug treatment
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
The Death Penalty

Reserve death penalty (capital
punishment) for offenders who commit
most serious crimes
• Murder or treason


United States is only modern,
industrialized democracy on Earth still
using this form of punishment
Many states now include rape or sexual
assault of a minor (under 14 years of age)
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued



Thirty-eight states have death penalty sentences
Three states abolished practice
Supporters argue it is ultimate deterrent
• States with penalty actually have higher rates of murder
than states without it


Recent DNA testing revealed unjust conviction of
several deceased prisoners
Cost of prosecuting and executing offenders
higher than lifetime incarceration costs
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Continued

Opponents also criticize biased
applications
• Levine and Montgomery
 When victim was white, black offenders
twice as likely to receive death sentence as
white offenders
 Blacks convicted of killing whites four times
more likely to receive death sentence than
blacks whose victims were of same race
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.