Criminal Justice Outline

In his book, Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text For The 21th Century, author Frank Schmalleger inform us that two social realities coexist in prison setting; the first, being the official structure of rules and procedures put in place by the wider society and enforced by prison staff, the second, being the more informal and intimate world of the inmate, namely the prison subculture (Schmalleger, 2001). Prison subculture, in its broad sense, refers to the customs, beliefs, attitudes, values and lifestyles of prison inmates (Dugger, 2017). Here, inmates develop their own myths, slang, customs, rewards, and sanctions; with their own values, roles, language and leadership structure (Clear, Cole, Petrosino, Reisig, 2015).

I grew up in a neighborhood which is riddled with crime. Unfortunately, people who I grew up with became involved in gangs and criminal activities. Those actions led to them having a criminal record. When looking through the options of the podcast, People who are involved in the criminal justice system is the one I thought would be most interesting. The person Bradley Jacobs discusses what he does in the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES).

When it comes to the criminal trial process, the last step those who are found guilty face before they are incarcerated is receiving their sentencing. There is more to a judge handing down a sentence than just giving the convicted person a time limit for how long he has to stay in incarcerated. When it comes to the different ranges of sentencing, there are five goals of contemporary criminal sentencing, the nature of structured sentencing must be understood and its positives explained, and determinate sentencing must be understood. Sentencing is not a cut and dry process. There is a lot that goes into it that many do not know about.

In the beginning of chapter one, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Florida v. J.L, a police officer may not search individuals based merely on an anonymous tip. The anonymous tip received was that a black man standing at a bus stop was carrying a concealed firearm. Out of the three black men at the bus stop, they searched the man wearing the plaid shirt, as described in the tip. Although public safety issues were recognized, the conviction was overturned. This unlawful search violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which states, in simpler terms, that the police cannot search an individual or take their property without probable cause.

This first week the assignment was to Define crime, its relationship to the law, and the two most common models of how society determines which acts are criminal, Describe the government structure as it applies to the criminal justice system, Identify choice theories and the their assumptions in regards to crime, Describe the components of the criminal justice system and the criminal justice process, Identify the goals of the criminal justice system.

To begin with, criminal justice is a system that is designed to maintain social control, which means it is a necessary aspect of every society since “Laws are the conditions under which independent and isolated men united to form a society” (Beccaria, 1764: 16). In order words, crime control deals with the methods that are taken by a society to reduce its crime. As a matter of fact, there are various crime control strategies from community policing to risk assessments. In addition to the different tactics for controlling crime, there are several theories that not only attempt to explain the causes of crime, but also outline different ways to handle offenders; for example, deterrence, rehabilitation, and even retribution.

The U.S. criminal justice system is made up of different but equally important divisions to ensure proper criminal justice functions are performed. This system is broken up into three different segments: law enforcement, the courts, and corrections These segments work together to enforce justice to all when a crime has been committed (Schmalleger, 2013).

sentencing is more than six months. When someone is arrested for a crime, the court

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws entail binding prison terms to a certain length for people who have been convicted of state or federal crimes. These intransigent, “universally adaptable” sentencing laws may seem like an easy and quick solution for crime. However, these laws prevent judges from suiting the punishment to the criminal according to their offenses. Mandatory minimum sentencing causes not only state but federal prisons to overcrowd, extortionate tax costs, and deflect from law enforcement funds.

Christopher E. Smith, Police Professionalism and the Rights of Criminal Defendants, 26 Crim. L. Bull. 155, 158 (1990)

2014). The official authorities in office that make legal decisions and judgments that are using indeterminate sentencing often employ statutes that identify clearly minimum and maximum terms (Siegel, L. 2014). Equally, they also permit judicial discretion to fix the actual sentence given within these guidelines (Siegel, L. 2014). Even though rehabilitation and parole have been under heavy attack by those who argue that criminals should be punished and not overprotected (Siegel, L. 2014). When said and done the indeterminate sentence is still the most widely used types of sentence the determinate sentencing continues to be favored in nearly one-third of the states (Siegel, L. and Bartollas, C.

Fred is drunk and driving his dad’s car. Fred is a 21 year old student at Columbia College. Fred rams into a parked car at 10th and Rogers. Thinking no one saw him; Fred moves his car and parks it on an adjacent lot. He sprints to his dorm room in Miller Hall. A neighbor saw the wreck and Fred running to the dorm. Police are called and they arrive ten minutes after the wreck. The officers see several empty beer cans and a bottle of tequila (half full) in the front seat. The tags are traced to Fred’s dad, who is called by police. Dad says that Fred is a student at Columbia College. Police run Fred's record and determine that he has two prior DWIs within the past five years. The third DWI in 10 years is a felony. Police contact

Even though the criminal justice system has guidelines to following when sentencing criminals, there are still sentencing issues. In other words, to make the sentencing more fair and equal, several issues have been addressed. These issues are proportionality, equity, social debt and truth in sentencing. Proportionality is a standard that deals with the punishment fitting the crime. The equity principle deals with ensuring that punishment for one crime is the same as punishment for a similar crime. Social debt is the next sentencing principle. With social debt, the judge reviews past behavior or criminal records in order to impose a fair sentence. Finally, the truth in sentencing ensures that inmates are not released from prison without serving the majority of his or her sentence. In other words, credit for good behavior or educational programs would not allow the inmate to be released if he or she only served a small portion of the sentence (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2011).

The article seeks to address the question of why there is so little criminal justice theory. The thesis of the article is that disregarded associations between the inconvenience of political power and authoritative structures in the criminal justice framework hold a vital component to understanding the tasks of this framework, in regular and additionally atypical circumstances. The article begins by discussing the absence of theoretical initiative in criminal justice research.

Components of the criminal justice system include the police, the court system and correctional agencies. The definition, the function and examples of each component of the American criminal justice system will be described. The criminal procedure and the processing of offenders will also be described in details.