Unit 1-5 Flashcards
Criminal Justice System
A set of government institutions (i.e., police, courts, corrections, and juvenile justice) that are responsible for arresting, convicting, and punishing individuals who break the criminal law.
Peer Review Research
Research that is submitted to a respectable and/or recognized peer-reviewed scholarly journal. If the paper holds merit, the editor then sends it out to three or more subject matter expert reviewers. The writer’s identity is concealed, as is the identity of the reviewers (also known as referees). This process of quality control, called “blind review,” is meant to guard against bias. Reviewers try to determine the merit of the research. Referees generally make one of three recommendations: accept, reject, or revise and resubmit). Peer-reviewed research is more credible than non-peer-reviewed research.
Assembly line Justice
characterizes the crime control model operates much like and assembly line
Burden of Proof
prosecutor has to make his/her case against a defendant with certain prerequisites involved.
Code of Hammurabi
was a comprehensive set of laws, considered by many scholars to be the oldest laws established; they were handed down four thousand years ago by King Hammurabi of Babylon. Although the Code of Hammurabi was essentially humanitarian in its intent and orientation, it contained the “eye for an eye” theory of punishment, which is a barbarian application of the concept of making the punishment fit the crime. The Code of Hammurabi recognized such modern concepts as that of corporate personality.
Common Law
Law that has been supplanted by statutes. Influenced by English traditions.
Conservative
Political ideology that stresses individual rights, small government, and minimal government intervention into the daily lives of its citizens.
Courtroom work group
Consists of the judge, prosecutor and defense attorney.
Crime Control Model
Emphasizes the suppression of crime in society. View that protecting the welfare of the majority of citizens is more important than protecting the rights or liberties of any single individual.
Civil law
relates to a person’s property interests and to relationships between or among private parties; it includes such mechanisms as contracts (verbal and written), business transactions, and family relations (marriages, divorces, child custody).
Criminal law
deals with behaviors that are perceived to be harmful to society as a whole, such as homicide, robbery, or sexual assault
Dichotomy
A two edged sword or contradiction.
Disproportionate Minority Contact
The realization that the criminal justice system primarily processes people from minority groups such as African-Americans, Hispanics and American Indians.
Due Process Model
Protects individuals accused of crime, by insuring that the constitution of the U.S, those of the states, and federal and state statuses are abided by.
Ideology
A way of thinking/a deeply held belief.
Interest Articulation
Process by which individuals and groups make their political preferences known to the political leadership of a country.
Liberal
Advocates greater redistribution of wealth and government intervention into the lives of its citizens in terms of education, health, welfare
Mala Prohibita Crime
An act that is criminal because the criminal justice system has identified it as criminal
Mala in Se Crime
Crime considered wrong in and of itself (i.e., morally wrong) i.e., murder sexual assault.
Marxism/neomarxism/ Elite Theory
A belief that power is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy or elite sectors of society and that they are able to get their preferences enacted into policies, practices and legislation.
Mobilization of Bias
Process by which powerful interests are able to exert their will by maintaining the illusion of transparency and inclusivity.
Packer, Herbert
Scholar that outlined the differences between the due process versus crime control model of the criminal justice system.
Pluralism
A system of representation where everyone has a likely chance of having their voice heard in the political process. .
Presumption of Guilt
As an individual proceeds through the criminal justice system, there is an increased tendency for actors (i.e., judges, juries and prosecutors) to believe that the individual was guilty of the crime.
Presumption of Innocence
Method by which most advanced industrialized criminal justice systems operate. Individuals to be innocent until proven guilty.
Procedural Law
outlines the steps that the government (i.e., criminal justice system) must go about applying the law.
Substantive Law
Certain behaviors must be present for the criminal justice system to get involved (i.e., stop, question, arrest, conviction)
State Theoretical Model
Model that places the power of political decision-making in the hands of the government bureaucracy.
Accreditation
A method to determine if a criminal justice agency meets standards established by a respected accrediting body (e.g., American Correctional Association, Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies).
Broken windows theory
Developed by George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, who argued that small-scale deviance and neighborhood disorder (e.g., houses boarded up and in disrepair, lawns not cut, and graffiti) can have a big effect on neighborhood deterioration and thus crime.
CompStat
A relatively new management technique that includes weekly meetings of senior police personnel (especially the chief/commissioner and district commanders) to review crime that has occurred in their sector/district/borough to monitor responses to reduce crime in those areas. This concept usually involves crime mapping and was pioneered in New York City during the early 1990s.
Community (oriented) policing:
A cooperative effort between police and the communities they serve where both work together to solve crime and crime-related problems. Includes a number of strategies that bring the police closer to the community to reduce and solve crime and crime-related problems. It is often defined by the programs it subsumes, including bike patrol, store-front policing, and problem-oriented policing.
Day watch system
System of policing that predated modern policing whereby citizens were obligated to take turns patrolling the community during the day.
Due process revolution
A period of American legal history during which important supreme court cases [e.g., Mapp v. Ohio (1961), Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), Miranda v. Arizona (1966), Terry v. Ohio (1968)] reinforced the constitutional rights of suspects in cases of arrest, search, self-incrimination, freedom of speech, due process, and right to counsel.
Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA)
Formed during the late 1960s as one of the major recommendations that came out of the national riot commission. Established in the Department of Justice to provide grants and loans for police officers to improve their post-secondary education, extend research grants to criminologists, and offer funds to colleges and universities for the creation or enhancement of programs in criminology and criminal justice.
Modern policing
Period beginning with the establishment of the first police department in London (1812) to present day.
Night watch system
System of policing that predated modern policing whereby citizens were obligated to take turns patrolling the community during the night.
Posse Commitatus
Federal law that permitted local residents to assume temporary police powers and come to the assistance of the sheriff or marshal.
Problem-oriented policing
Getting police officers and departments to think creatively, recognizing connections across similar incidents that they may not have been able to see when they otherwise are responding to random incidents or reactively responding to calls for service.
Quality of life issues/indicators
Building upon Kelling and Wilson’s broken window identifying a number of visible cues in a neighborhood that would indicate the neighborhood was declining, including the number of abandoned homes, presence of homeless people, and vagrancy.
Progressives
Middle- and upper-class educated Protestants in the United States who were influential during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Theories on the development of police agencies.
Competing explanations underlying the reasons for the formation of municipal police agencies in the United States
Zero-tolerance policing
The aggressive enforcement of one or more criminal laws in a particular jurisdiction and/or during a specific period; no discretion is allowed on the part of officer.
Civilian Review Board
Internal or external body that reviews complaints of police misconduct. Depending on the laws governing their operations, they may or may not have the power to institute sanctions against police officers, and they may or may not be fully composed of civilians. In other words, they may need to have a requisite number of officers from the police department as employees or investigators.
Control
methods that either prevent or react to undesirable police behavior in order to minimize its occurrence.
Conventional controls
ones that are normally used by the police, public or political actors
Deadly force
the act of killing a person by a criminal justice system employee. Typically, this is by gun, but can include baton, other blunt force instrument, choke holds etc.
Death in police custody
when a suspect dies while under the supervision of the police. Can include in cruiser, in holding cell, etc. Can be the result of police violence/excessive force, substandard care, inadequate care, improper security
Early Warning Indicator System
“a data-based police management tool designed to identify officers whose behavior is problematic and provide a form of intervention to correct that performance. As an early response, a department intervenes before such an officer is in a situation that warrants formal disciplinary action. The system alerts the department to these individuals and warns the officers while providing counseling or training to help them change their problematic behaviour. (Swanson et al., 2008, p. 434)
External controls
controls that exist outside of the police department
Internal controls
controls that originate inside the police department
Police Riot
rampaging of police and use of excessive force against protesters during public demonstrations/protests.
Police torture.
an act inflicting severe mental or physical pain by police officers to obtain a confession or as punishment for real or perceived transgressions
Premonitory
controls that are done before the act to be controlled. These would also be known as proactive controls
Public police violence
police violence that takes places where there are witnesses or it takes place or information about it is revealed in a public setting (e.g., court room).
Reactive controls
these take place after the action that will be controlled occurs
Shoot Team
A small group of police officers typically from the Criminal Investigation Division who respond after an officer involved shooting to determine if the shoot is clean (e.g., it conforms to policies and practices and the law).
Tennessee v. Garner
Landmark Supreme Court case during the 1980s that set the precedent that allows civilians to sue police departments for denial of their civil rights. In particular, when officers use deadly force against an unarmed real or suspected fleeing felon.
Unconventional controls
ones that are unusual or abnormal, that are rarely utilized
Use of force continuum
policy and practice whereby officer shall not use more force than is necessary to control or apprehend a suspect.
Assault Weapon
Semiautomatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns that are similar in appearance to military weapons. They can only fire one shot at a time.
Boston Gun Project
Also known as Operation Ceasefire. Originally started in Boston.
Brady Bill
Formerly known as the Handgun Control and Violence Protection Act was enacted to make it more difficult to purchase firearms from licensed dealers.
Child Access Prevention Laws
A strategy for firearms control that restricts how firearms may be used. To promote these policies many police departments give away gun safety devices such as trigger locks.
Demand-Side Interventions
An attempt to increase the cost of using illegally obtained guns typically through street enforcement.
Gray Market
Secondary firearms market (i.e., gun shows, private sales, etc.)
Harm Reduction
Recommendations for reducing firearms violence using supply side strategies making it more difficult to obtain firearms and reducing the number of firearms in circulation.
Operation Ceasefire
A federal initiative that attempts to reduce gun violence by youths and gangs. Originally started in Boston
Project Exile
Shifted the prosecution of illegal technical gun possession offenses from state to federal court, where they carried a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison
Project Safe Neighborhoods
Federal program designed to reduce gun violence. Involve prosecutors working closely with local law enforcement.
Aging out
Due to a variety of factors, as criminals age they commit less crime, “and presumably establish more positive bonds with the community” (Mays and Ruddell, p. 124).
Blended Sentence
a method that allows youths to be sentenced as either adults or juveniles.
Career criminals
Repeat offenders that commit a disproportionate amount of crimes.
Determinate sentencing
Specific penalty that an individual convicted of a crime must complete. Does not allow any discretion on the part of the judge.
Flagrante Delicto
Caught red handed
Good time credits
method by which inmates are given time off their criminal sentence if they obey correctional institutional rules.
Indeterminate sentencing
Penalty that specifies a range that an individual convicted of a crime must complete. Allows discretion on the part of the judge.
Indigent Defendant
person with no resources. They have less effective access to the courts.
Mass Imprisonment
a tendency to incarcerate everyone who is convicted of a crime no matter how minor.
New Penology
Feely and Simon suggest that starting in the 1980s crime control in advanced industrial democracies has changed to emphasize “risk management based on actuarial techniques (such as statistical distributions, probability calculations, and systemic goals) to minimize offending.”
Pre-Sentence Investigation
Report prepared by a probation or parole officer and given to a judge that reviews a number of factors relevant to the convicted persons’ circumstances including their criminal history. It makes a recommendation where the person should be sent. The document is given to the judge and shared with the defense attorney and prosecutor. The judge may or may not adopt the recommendation.
Selective Incapacitation
Only locking up individuals who are or might become career criminals or would benefit from incarceration receive jail/prison sentence as determined by a judge.
Sentencing Guidelines
Provide a proscriptive plan that judges use to determine the appropriate sentence for an individual convicted of a crime. Takes into account the offence individual was convicted for, and their criminal history.
Supermax Prison
Highest level security prison. Inmates are in their cells 23 out of 24 hours a day.
Technical Violation
When an individual on probation or parole fails to abide by the conditions of their sentence.
Consent decree
When the US Department of Justice takes over all or part of a criminal justice agency. The USDOJ manages the system, facility or program until it meets identifiable standards or criteria.
Decision-making
a choice amongst two or more alternatives.
Discretion
a decision made by criminal justice practitioners to invoke the law/criminal sanction. In the case of police, it includes the decision to stop, question, search, arrest and to use deadly force against a suspect.
Full enforcement
a synonym for zero tolerance policing.
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
Area identified by law enforcement and criminal justice planners where a disproportionate amount of illegal drug dealing takes place.
Racial profiling:
Criminal justice system practitioners make important decisions primarily based on race or ethnic criteria of the suspect/accused.
Zero tolerance policing:
the aggressive enforcement of one or more criminal laws in a particular jurisdiction, or during a specific time period; no discretion is allowed on part of officer
Battered Woman Syndrome:
Legal defense used by women charged with murder of spouse or boyfriend. Notion that long term abuse leads women to kill their abuser.
Chivalry:
Actors in the criminal justice system are more lenient in their treatment of females who break the law.
Domestic Violence:
Physical abuse towards a partner while in a relationship. Typically men beating women.
Emotional Abuse:
Victim suffers extreme forms of verbal and emotional assault. Difficult to detect by outsiders as no physical marks are present.
Emotional Neglect:
When parents/guardians fail to provide psychological support (i.e., nurturing environment, no affection) to their children.
Feminist Criminology:
“challenges male power and the patriarchical structure.” Feminist criminologists believe that conflict is caused by differences between men and women (Henry and Lanier, p. 203).
Gender:
a persons classification into male or female. Also involves societies’ social construction of male and female roles in relation to society or a culture.
Physical Abuse:
Individuals are hit, kicked, slapped, burnt, etc.
Physical Neglect:
When a parent/guardian/caregiver who is legally obligated to provide for the needs of another human being (i.e., child, disabled, mentally incapacitated or senior) fails to provide vital necessities such as food, clothes, medical care and shelter.
Escobedo v. Illinois:
Preserves the right of felons who are being interrogated by police with a lawyer.
Gideon v. Wainwright:
A court case that preserves the right of felons who are charged in noncapital cases and are indigent to receive state funded legal counsel.
Indigent defendants: .
A person who is charged with a crime that does not have enough money to pay for council
Innocent project:
Investigates allegations of wrongful convictions and educates the public about miscarriages of justice.
Jailhouse snitch:
Convict who gives information about other inmates to correctional officers or other law enforcement officials with hopes that it will lessen his/her sentence or make his/her time behind bars more comfortable.
Junk Science:
Science that is not as sound as the normal/standard practices (e.g., poor forensic science used in court cases).
Miranda v. Arizona:
Supreme court case that upholds the rights of individuals who are arrested to right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, etc.
Prisonization:
When a prisoner accommodates to the norms and routines of the correctional facility.
Third Degree:
When an individual who is arrested is intimidated, threatened, and/or beaten during an interrogation.
Boot camp:
Military like, short term stay correctional facility. Started because some legislators and correctional practitioners believed that all that inmates lacked was discipline.
Correctional quackery:
Quick fix programs and practices that have been introduced in the field of corrections.
Faith-based programming:
Using the skills and resources of religious communities, especially evangelical Christian, to help in the reform of convicted felons.
General Education Development (GED):
High School Equivalency test.
“Inside-Out Prison Exchange” Program.
Program that brings college level students into the local prisons to teach a class. Based out of Temple University.
“Inviting Convicts to College” Program. Program Based out of University of Wisconsin-Osh Kosh.
Program Based out of University of Wisconsin-Osh Kosh.
Jailhouse lawyer:
Inmate, sometimes with formal legal training who assists other inmates in the preparation of legal documents and processes.
Net widening:
The recognition that over time the instead of closing jails and prisons the criminal justice systems comes up with new ways to monitor and sanction individuals who break the law. Also includes the expansion of probation and parole to include things like urine tests, etc
No Frill Prisons Act:
Passed in 2001, barring such amenities as televisions and coffee pots in Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) cells.
Rehabilitation:
Programs and practices used to retrain convicts so they will give up a life of crime.
Responsivity:
individuals respond differently to how treatment is delivered; there is growing evidence that most offenders are generally responsive to cognitive-behavioral interventions.
Second Chance Act
Federal legislation, passed in 2008, which provides additional resources to states and private entities to help prisoners make the transition back to the community.
Aimee’s Law:
named after Aimee Willard who was raped and killed by a parolee. Forces states to be financially liable if they release an inmate and that person commits another felony in a different state.
Capacity:
the number of inmates a correctional facility can hold.
Clemency:
subsumes pardon, commutation, and amnesty.
Collective incapacitation:
a tendency to incarcerate everyone who is convicted of a crime no matter how minor.
Design capacity:
The number of inmates that a correctional facility was designed to hold (by planners, designers, architects, etc.)
Jail Barge:
a way of housing inmates on reconditioned ships. Popular in New York City during the 1990s. Boats would be docked around Manhattan (i.e., NYC) and moved if neighbors complained.
NIMBY (Not in my backyard):
the idea that residents, property owners in an area do not support having correctional facilities built near their homes, places of work, or children’s schools
Operational capacity:
the number of inmates can be effectively handled based on the amount of prison staff, programs, and services available.
Pardon:
“nullifies an original sentence and can occur while an offender is incarcerated, or white on probation or parole” (Ross, 2008, p. 157)
Rated Capacity:
“the number of prisoners or beds a facility can handle as judged by a qualified expert who is responsible for making the determination” (Ross, 2008, p. 152)
Selective Incapacitation:
Only individuals who may become a career criminal or would benefit from incarceration receive jail/prison sentence as determined by a judge (Ross, 2008, p. 159).
Zero Tolerance Policing:
When police arrest every individual whom they suspect of having committed an offence no matter how minor.
Benefit of Clergy:
In the past individuals who were convicted of a crime were allowed to either be supervised by the Church or join the clergy instead of being incarcerated or given the death penalty.
Commutation:
When the executive (i.e., president, governor, or board of pardons) reduces the sentence of a person convicted of a crime
Deterrence:
Method preventing individuals from committing crime.
Life without the Possibility of Parole (LWOP):
Sentence given to individuals in some states that while preventing them from giving the death penalty forces them to remain behind bars for the rest of their lives.
Retribution:
Harsh response by victim, their family, friends and/or the community to a person who is suspected of or has convicted of a crime.
Creaming:
Selecting offenders who have positive parental and social supports, limited prior criminal records, and a record of relatively minor crimes.
Graduated Sanctions:
Increased penalties for criminal offenses.
Houses of Refuge:
residential placements that emphasized schooling and work used to respond to neglect and delinquency.
Justice by Geography:
significant differences in the severity of sentences among urban, suburban, and rural counties in the United States.
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention:
Division of the USDOJ that acts as a clearing house for research and program development that affects juveniles in the United States.
Parens Patriae:
literally the state as parent. Notion borrowed from English law that the courts would act on behalf of orphaned or dependent children.
Public Order Offenses:
Minor crimes such as gambling, drunk and disorderly, peeing in public, vagrancy, and vandalism.
Restorative Justice:
After the commission of a crime, there is an attempt by the criminal justice system to move away from harsh justice and an attempt to restore balance among a victim and perpetrator.
Risk Assessment instruments:
Help correctional professionals determine the degree to which an individual convicted of a crime will reoffend and their potential to be rehabilitated.
State-raised youths:
person who has been shuffled from foster care to group homes and juvenile detention facilities. By the time they are adolescents, they have little regard for conventional lifestyles or life in the “free world”
Status Offences:
Acts that are unlawful because of the individuals’ age (e.g., cigarette sales, underage drinking, and vagrancy)
Waivers:
transfers of juveniles charged with a crime from juvenile criminal justice system to an adult court.
Consensus Definition:
a definition constructed after reviewing and extracting the most important concepts from other definitions. Usually involves surveying experts definitions of particular concepts and then abstracting the most frequent referents.
Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice. Responsible for terrorism-related investigation in the United States, especially of domestic terrorism.
Ideology:
A way of thinking/a deeply held belief.
Left-wing terrorism:
Leftists typically integrate a distrust of government, concern for social class, desire to abolish or strictly control private property, want to alleviate oppression and discrimination, and the belief that governments support an elite group (especially capitalists) who benefit from the labor of the working class.
Schmid’s Definition of terrorism:
Terrorism is a method of combat in which random or symbolic victims serve as.. target[s] of violence…. Through [the] previous use of violence or the credible threat of violence other members of that group … are put in a state of chronic fear (terror)…. The victimization of the target … is considered extranormal by most observers … [which in turn] creates an … audience beyond the target of terror…. The purpose of [terrorism] … is either to immobilize the target of terror in order to produce disorientation and/or compliance, or to mobilize secondary targets of demands (e.g., a government) or targets of attention (e.g., public opinion).(Schmid 1983, 111, italics original
Weathermen/Weather Underground:
American based left-wing terrorist group that formed out of the Students for A Democratic Society. Prominent between 1968-1973. Bombed military recruiting centers, the U.S. capital and the office of the California Department of Corrections. During the 1980s most had renounced terrorism, were arrested and/or had died.
Crime reporting wave:
a sudden rise in the reporting of crime. May or may not bear a relationship to actual crime.
Department of Homeland Security,
Major federal agency created after 9/11 to respond to the threat of terrorism and other emergency matters.
PATRIOT Act:
The legislation significantly enabled the U.S. government to search its citizens e-mail communications and thus reduced constitutionally mandated provisions on Americans right to privacy.
Proximity to attack:
How geographically close an individual is to a terrorist event
Threat of the Week Syndrome:
rumors by media and government entities about terrorist threats that have the principle effect of initially scaring the public then later distrusting them. Similar to the little boy who cried wolf story.
Ethnography:
Qualitative methods that involves systematic observation and interaction (i.e., talking/listening) with the subjects and behavior under investigation.
Hawthorne Effect:
When those who are observed (typically by researchers) change their behavior.
Observation:
Qualitative study that only involves observation of subjects or behavior.
Participant Observation:
When the research partakes in the behavior under investigation to better understand the thoughts and motivations of individuals who do this.
Qualitative Research:
Research that does not involve the collection and analysis of statistics.
Black codes:
Laws that were discriminatory towards African-Americans and/or only apply to African Americans.
Civil commitment:
a process where an individual is legally detained by the government. This can include a mental hospital, juvenile institution, or correctional facility (e.g., jail or prison).
Constructive Perspective:
the way we understand the world.
Critical Criminology:
a perspective that emphasizes “[q]uestioning, challenging and examining all sides of various problems and issues. …delves under the surface… . . it dispels many myths and misconceptions . . . it demystifies the objectives, processes and outcomes … and offers alternative interpretations and solutions. (Welch, 1996: 6)
Jim Crow Laws:
Racially discriminatory laws (mainly aimed at African Americans) which prevented them from exercising the civil rights and freedoms enjoyed by most Americans.
Late Modernity:
the name given to the period of time starting in the 1900s in most advanced societies where there is a trend away from government support of such things as social services and increasing privatization.
Old wine in new bottles:
Old ideas/policy recommendations that are repackaged to appear as if they are new.
Pandemic:
An epidemic that expands beyond the borders of a country (i.e., flu).
Social Construction:
The method by which problems are defined and become part of the political agenda in societies.
Social Isolation:
when individuals are not attached to others in society.
