famous criminal cases in recent history. Criminal justice is examined as a system. That

Bohm, Introduction to Criminal Justice, 9e

© 2018 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.Chapter 1 Crime and Justice in the United States

Overview

The chapter begins by discussing crime in the United States. It briefly describes several famous criminal cases in recent history. Criminal justice is examined as a system. That system includes the police, the courts, and corrections. The police deal with crime, crime control, arrests, and bookings. The prosecution deals with charging the defendants. The prosecution also determines if the suspect has committed a misdemeanor, an ordinance violation, or a felony. It may file an information or an indictment. An arrest warrant may be issued by the court so that the police may arrest a suspect.

There are a variety of stages in a court that defendants may experience. They may have an initial appearance, an arraignment, and a bail set; a preliminary hearing may occur.Defendants may have a bench trial or a jury trial. They may participate in plea bargaining or simply plead guilty and receive their sentence.

Convicted defendants then become part of the correctional system, where they may receive probation, intermediate punishments, or incarceration. After serving a portion of their sentence, they may be paroled. Next, the chapter discusses how the criminal justice system is sometimes viewed as a nonsystem because of the differences among different jurisdictions of independent agencies within the United States and the conflict and confusion among them.

The chapter then presents the two models of the criminal justice system. The first, the crime control model, reflects traditional conservative political values. In this model, the control of criminal behavior is the most important function of criminal justice. The second, the due process model, embodies traditional liberal political values. In this model, the principal goal of criminal justice is at least as much to protect the innocent as it is to convict the guilty.

The chapter ends with a discussion of myths about crime and criminal justice. The chapter also uses the history of trial by ordeal as an example. Throughout the book, criminal justice myths are exposed and explained.

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Chapter 1 Crime and Justice in the United States Bohm, Introduction to Criminal Justice, 9e

© 2018 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.

• Crime in the United States

Every day people are confronted with reports of crime in newspapers, magazines, and radio and television news programs. Crime is a favorite subject of movies and novels.Unfortunately, some people encounter crime more directly as victims. No wonder crime is a top concern of the American public.

II. Criminal Justice: An Institution of Social Control

Like the family, schools, organized religion, the media, and the law, criminal justice is an institution of social control in the United States. A primary role of such institutions is to persuade people, through subtle and not-so-subtle means, to abide by the dominant values of society. Subtle means of persuasion include gossip and peer pressure, whereas expulsion and incarceration are examples of not-so-subtle means.

III. Criminal Justice: The System

Criminal justice in the United States is administered by a loose confederation of more than 50,000 agencies of federal, state, and local governments. There are differences in the ways the criminal justice system operates in different jurisdictions, there are also similarities. The term jurisdiction, as used here, means a politically defined geographical area.

Misdemeanors are less serious crimes generally punishable by a fine or by incarceration in jail for not more than one year. Felonies are serious offenses punishable by confinement in prison for more than one year or by death.

• Police

The criminal justice response to crime begins when a crime is reported to the police or, far less often, when the police themselves discover that a crime has been committed.Often, an arrest supported by witness statements and crime scene evidence is sufficient to close a case, especially with a less serious crime.

An arrest is the seizing and detaining of a person by lawful authority. Booking is the administrative recording of the arrest.

• Courts
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Chapter 1 Crime and Justice in the United States Bohm, Introduction to Criminal Justice, 9e

© 2018 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.Soon after a suspect has been arrested and booked, a prosecutor reviews the facts of the case and the available evidence. The prosecutor decides whether to charge the suspect with a crime or crimes.

Pretrial Stages

After the charge or charges have been filed, the suspect, who is now the defendant, is brought before a lower-court judge for an initial appearance. At the initial appearance, the defendant is given formal notice of the charge or charges against him or her and advised of his or her constitutional rights. In the case of a misdemeanor or an ordinance violation, a summary trial (an immediate trial without a jury) may be held.

Probable cause is a standard of proof that requires trustworthy evidence sufficient to make a reasonable person believe that, more likely than not, the proposed action is justified. Bail, usually a monetary guarantee deposited with the court, is meant to ensure that the defendant will appear at a later stage in the criminal justice process. In about half of all states, a preliminary hearing follows the initial appearance. A grand jury is a group of citizens who meet in closed sessions for a specified period to investigate charges coming from preliminary hearings and to fulfill other responsibilities.

In states that do not use grand juries, prosecutors charge defendants with a document called an information. An information outlines the formal charge or charges, the law or laws that have been violated, and the evidence to support the charge or charges.Once an indictment or information is filed with the trial court, the defendant is scheduled for arraignment—the primary purpose of arraignment is to hear the formal information or indictment and to allow the defendant to enter a plea. About 95% of criminal defendants plead guilty to the charges against them in an arrangement called plea bargaining—the practice whereby the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the defendant, and, in many jurisdictions, the judge agree on a specific sentence to be imposed if the accused pleads guilty to an agreed-on charge or charges instead of going to trial.

Trial

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Chapter 1 Crime and Justice in the United States Bohm, Introduction to Criminal Justice, 9e

© 2018 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.

If a defendant pleads not guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity, a trial date is set.Approximately 2% of criminal cases involve jury trials. The remaining cases that are not resolved through plea bargaining are decided by a judge in a bench trial—a trial before a judge without a jury. If the judge or the jury finds the defendant guilty as charged, the judge begins to consider a sentence.

• Corrections

Presentence investigation reports are used in the federal system and in the majority of states to help judges determine appropriate sentences. Five general types of punishment

are in use in the United States: fines, probation, intermediate punishments,

imprisonment, and death. Probation is a sentence in which the offender is retained in the community under the supervision of a probation agency rather than being incarcerated.Parole is the conditional release of prisoners before they have served their full sentences.

IV. Criminal Justice: The Nonsystem

First, there is no single “criminal justice system” in the United States. Second, if a system is thought of as a smoothly operating set of arrangements and institutions directed toward the achievement of common goals, one is hard-pressed to call the operation of criminal justice in the United States a system. Instead, because there is considerable conflict and confusion among different agencies of criminal justice, a more accurate representation may be that of a criminal justice “nonsystem.”

• Two Models of Criminal Justice

The crime control model reflects traditional conservative values, while the due process model embodies traditional liberal political values. The models are ideal types, neither of which corresponds exactly to the actual day-to-day practice of criminal justice. Rather, they both provide a convenient way to understand and discuss the operation of criminal justice in the United States.

• The Crime Control Model

In the crime control model, the control of criminal behavior is by far the most important function of criminal justice. The primary focus of this model is on the efficiency of the criminal justice process.

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