Understanding the Criminal Justice System and Crime Measurement

CHAPTER 1

• Criminal justice system: comprises institutions, policies, and practices with the goal of social control and deterring crime through sanctions and rehabilitation

• Law enforcement: investigates crimes and apprehends individuals alleged to have committed crimes

• Courts: interprets and applies the law

• Corrections: incarceration in jails or prisons, in some cases consisting of supervision in the community, parole, or probation.

• If prosecutor files charges: plea bargain and a plea is taken, or goes to trial, or nolle prosequi (dismissal).

• Mala en se: behavior that is immoral and inherently wrong by nature and we would have known not to do this activity even if there had not been a law prohibiting it.

• Mala prohibita: behavior that constitutes an unlawful act only by virtue of statute, as opposed to conduct that is evil in and of itself.

Chapter 2

• Official Measures of Crime

  • UCR (Uniform Crime  Reports) are the most widely used and cited official measurement of crime in the  U.S. The statistics are collected by the FBI.

  • The UCR represent the number of criminal offenses known to the police.

  • National Crime Victimization Survey(NCVS) is the best known of the victimization surveys it does panel survey of households, findings relative to official statistics have remained fairly stable. There is little question that victim surveys uncover more crime than official measures.

• Differential association theory points to criminal behavior that is learned primarily from parents peer groups

• Social bond theory argues that a person’s lack of attachment, commitment, belief, and involvement results in crime

• Rational Choice theories view temptation and opportunity as keys to understanding criminality

CHAPTER 3

• General deterrence: perceived negative consequences of being caught and thus, the threat of punishment will inhibit criminal behavior in all members of society

• Specific deterrence: directed toward the individual offender to stop bad behavior. It may be accomplished through restitution or incapacitation

• The common law: The law was created by judges as they heard cases and settled disputes. Judges wrote down their decisions, and in so doing, attempted to justify them by reference to custom, tradition, history, and prior judicial decisions.

• Stare Decisis: meaning “let the decision stand”—. It means that if an issue has been decided one way, it should continue to be decided that way in future cases.

• Judicial review: A higher court than the one that issued the precedent may reverse the decision of the lower court.

• Judicial Decisions and Customs/Common Law: Judge-made law from decisions of judges, as well as from customs