What Is the Criminal Justice Assembly Line?
The criminal justice assembly line was a term coined by justice expert Herbert Backer referring to the system acting as a funnel or conveyor belt “down which moves an endless stream of cases, never stopping . . . most people who commit a crime escape detection, and of those who do not, relatively few are bound over for trial, convicted, and eventually sentenced to prison” (). The funnel is wide at the top, and narrow at the bottom. View the entire process