- Introduction
- Student Topics
- Law Enforcement Approaches
- Approaches Beyond the CJ System
- Juvenile Crime Control
- Conclusion
- Digital Projects
Content
Content here.
Chapter 6: Prosectuors and Crime Control
Robbie Gibson and Emily Walz
There are four types of prosecutors in the U.S.
1.U.S. attorneys and their assistants
2.District attorneys and their deputies
3.Attorney general
4.City attorney
The U.S. attorneys are appointed while the district attorneys are elected. Attorney general whether state or federal have the chief role is legal advising rather than prosecution. City attorney is the legal advisors to city government.
Prosecutors have been all but forgotten. This is a troubling thought for three reasons.
•Prosecutors have more power than police they can decide whether a person is criminally charged or released
•Prosecutors have undertaken many interesting and creative approaches to crime problems that often go ignored, it is not the case that prosecutors file charges and go to court much is happen in this area of law enforcement
•U.S. prosecution is in the process of changing, prosecutors are increasingly adopting creative and strategic approaches to the crime problem
Strategic prosecution is refered to the shift that is taking place in prosecuting attorney’s offices across the nation. They are developing creative approaches to the crime problem. Prosecution is intended to shift prosecutors attention from individual criminal cases to them by the police to an overall strategy geared toward reducing crime. The hard side of prosecution implies a get-tough approach. There is a small amount of research and some anecdotal evidence—pertaining to get tough prosecution strategies. Prosecutors are arguably the most powerful criminal justice officials. They decide which cases go to court (or are pled out). Without their decisions to take cases forward, the term revolving door justice would be given new meaning.
Strangely, though, prosecutors have been all but ignored by criminal justice researchers.
Consequently, we know little about effectiveness of prosecutorial approaches to crime control in the United States. Plea bargaining is both time-honored and here to stay. Attempts to abolish it are unlikely to succeed, so it is doubtful that any positive effects in terms of crime control will be witnessed. Ad hoc plea bargaining is a relatively recent practice, so its future remains uncertain. Courts have slammed the door on certain types of plea agreements. That having been said, there is some promise in the world of prosecution. Various types of community prosecution have made improvements, mostly on micro level. Also, deferred sentencing coupled with drug treatment, as in the case of Brooklyn’s DTAP program, might be worth pursuing further.
In the flip side, the heavy-handed prosecution approach is either under researched or ineffective. There are few published evaluations that support no- drop prosecution policies, partnerships between prosecutors and other actors, or the most recent approach to crime in the world of prosecution: project safe neighborhoods. It will be interesting to follow developments in the prosecution literature over the next few years.
Crime Control through Legislation: Chapter 7
Emily Walz and Robbie Gibson
This chapter focuses on crime control through legislation, including legislative bans, gun control, sex offender laws, and laws aimed at more contemporary problems.
Legislative Bans
Legislative Bans are on of the most common approaches to crime control. It includes banning certain devices and substances that contribute to the growing crime problem. There are two legislative bans that really pop out.
1. Experimentation with banning certain guns and gun-related products
2. Using a large amount of resources the government has tried to ban drugs
When talking about drugs, we need to think in terms of supply and demand in order to understand why we have been unsuccessful in combating the problem. Our nation’s position has been more of a “supply-side-oriented, meaning that we have literally waged a “war on drugs”. At the core of this war, we focus on the economic aspect and how to raise drug prices, although research has shown that this type of enforcement doesn’t really effectively change the price of illegal drugs. In other words, we need to directly address the “demand side” of the illegal drug trade.
We have learned two historical lessons:
1. A ban that is not universally agreed on as constituting effective crime control policy will be circumvented by some, resulting in only partial enforcement.
2. Critics of bans where products and services will be provided by profit-seeking syndicates.
Gambling, prostitution and prohibition have all encountered similar problem solving strategies and failed as well.
Gun Control
As our text suggests, we are a “gun-toting” society. It is estimated that there are approximately 200 million guns in circulation in our nation today. (This number does not reflect the amount of unregistered firearms.) Studies also indicate that 30,000 to 40,000 people die by gunfire each year and the leading cause of violence-related injuries and deaths for 15-34 year olds was due to homicide by firearm. During the 1990’s, 930,700 handgun crimes alone were committed in only a one year period. It has not only cost people their lives, but gun violence costs our society over $100 billion a year.
So what attempts have we made to stop the problem? The Gun Control Act of 1968 banned the importation of chap, small, low-caliber pistols known as “Saturday Night Specials”. A similar attempt, The 1994 Violent Crime Control Act, outlawed the manufacture and sale of 19 types of assault weapons. Even with these bans, there was no major effect on violent crime.
Here are a few things we can do to deter the gun problem:
*Altering Gun Designs
*Regulating Gun Transactions
*Denying Gun Ownership to Dangerous Persons (Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act)
*Buyback Programs
The personal issue falls into the “Right to Carry Controversy”.
Sex Offender Laws
Sex offenses that target young people, are the most disturbing. This has prompted many states to enact various laws that harshly personalize sex offenders or try to keep tabs on them.
Megan’s Law (in memory of Megan Kanka who was raped and murdered by a twice-convicted pedophile who had moved into her neighborhood) differs from state to state. In response to this crime, the stat of New Jersey passed the Sexual Offender Registration Act. In 1996, Congress passed another extension of Megan’s Law. It required states to provide communities with information about sex offenders. Some states even have databases that show the offenders photo and other personal information. The controversy of this method of crime control is that it serves the ends of punishment. (For example: some sex offenders that return to the community may be lynched). The most common legal challenge is based on the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy provision. Finally, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 does the following things:
*Expands the National Sex Offender Registry
*Strengthens the Federal Penalties for Crimes Against Children
*Makes it Harder for Sex Predators to Reach Our Children on the Internet
*Creates a New National Child Abuse Registry and Requires Investigators to Do Background Checks of Adoptive and Foster Parents before They Are Approved to Take Custody of a Child.
Laws Aimed at Contemporary Problems
Even though crimes such as sex offenses, gun violence and illicit drug use are contemporary problems; today we are focusing more on white-collar crimes and terrorism. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was passed in an effort to target different types of white collar crimes. With the scandals surrounding companies such as Enron, there were many different types people that lost their savings, jobs, retirement benefits and even their livelihood.
The more grizzly sounding terrorism problem, and the controversy surrounding the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center resulted in the enactment of The Patriot Act. The main titles of The Patriot Act are as follows:
*Enhancing Domestic Security against Terrorism deals with measure that counter terrorism.
*Enhanced Surveillance Procedures gives increased powers of surveillance to various government agencies and bodies.
*International Money Laundering Abatement and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act of 2001
*Protecting the Borders
*Removing obstacles to investigating terrorism
*Providing for our victims of terrorism, public safety officers, and their families
*Increased information sharing for critical infrastructure protection
*Strengthening the criminal laws against terrorism
*Improved Intelligence
*Miscellaneous
In Conclusion, our nation faces many problems. All we can do is keep developing crime-prevention strategies and enforce the law to the best of our ability.
Ch. 7
Sex Offender Laws
Matthew Espinoza
Bev Johnson
Megan’s Laws
One part of the law that most anybody is interested in is the sex offender laws. Any sex offense is disturbing, but when the victims are children the offense becomes horrific and any parent’s worst nightmare. One of the most commonly known laws dealing with sex offenders is known as “Megan’s Laws.” These laws came about because of a seven-year-old girl by the name of Megan Kanka. In order to understand the full need for the laws we must first look at Jesse Timmendequas. In 1979 Timmendequas pleaded guilty to the attempted aggravated sexual assault of a five-year-old girl and ended up being imprisoned for six years at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center in New Jersey. Initially he was allowed to go free with a suspended sentence but since he failed to attend counseling he was imprisoned. While undergoing counseling at the diagnostic center one counselor noted that she felt that Timmendequas would most likely commit another offense once released. After being released from prison Timmendequas moved in with two other convicted sex offenders right across the street from seven-year-old Megan Kanka. Since no laws were in place at this time nobody in the neighborhood was aware of the men being there. One day, (July 29, 1994) Timmendequas lured Megan to his house by promising to show the seven-year-old girl a puppy. While Megan was still alive inside his home Timmendequas raped her, slammed her head into certain objects, covered her head with two plastic bags and then proceeded to strangle her to death with a belt. He dumped her small body in a nearby park by the name of Mercer County Park. The following day Timmendequas confessed to investigators and led them to the body. One month after Megan’s murder Paul Kramer proposed a series of bills that were passed by the New Jersey General Assembly that required all sex offenders in the state of New Jersey to register with a database that is tracked by the state and communities. This lets people know when a registered sex offender is moving into their neighborhood. It also gives a sentence of life in prison without the chance of parole for any sex offenders convicted of a second offense. Since 1994 similar laws have been passed in other states and they have collectively become known as “Megan’s Laws.”
In 1996 Congress came forth with its own Megan’s law which requires that states give information to communities about sex offenders as a condition for the state to receive anticrime federal funding. While it differs from state to state exactly how information is made available to the communities all of Megan’s laws have one common feature and goal: to provide the people notification of sex offenders. There are two major reasons that Megan’s laws, as well as other laws that have been passed, are so important. One reason is to provide communities with notification of sex offenders so that we can be better prepared to protect our communities, especially our children. The other reason for Megan’s laws is to keep offenders from reoffending once they have been returned to the community. Researchers are showing, though, that as of the year 2008 the laws had had no effect in reducing the number of sex offenders that re-offend or reducing the number of victims of sexual offenses. Others also argue that the information being provided to the public has caused some communities to harass and even harm sex offenders when they are reintegrated back into society. The people involved in the passing of all of the laws insist that they are in place to promote public safety and not to further punish offenders. It has been estimated that if an effective warning system is in place it has the potential to warn six out of twelve victims of stranger-predatory sex crimes. All communities need to be aware of their notification methods, though, in order to protect the communities. While some argue that the cost of the laws is not justifiable many others support the laws and believe that Megan Kanka would most likely still be alive today had these laws been in place.
Crime Control in American What Works; second edition
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Ch. 7
America’s War With Drugs
Bev Johnson
Matthew Espinoza
No matter where you stand on the subject one thing is clear to all; America does have a drug problem. It is estimated that about twelve point 8 million Americans aged twelve or older have used drugs within the past thirty days. While it is alarming that six percent of the average household aged twelve or older are currently using drugs the percentage is down by fifty percent from 1979 when the numbers were around twenty five million people using illegal drugs. Trying to put a stop to all of this illegal drug activity has become a major focus point for local, state and federal governments as the estimate for the amount of money spent by local, state and federal governments in their “drug war” is said to be around forty billion every year. A big part of America’s drug ban is making it illegal to possess, use or sell drugs. While many believe that drugs should be legalized, there are also those that feel that by legalizing drugs we would only be making America’s drug problem worse.
The toll that illegal drugs take on society cannot be fully measured by the amount that is spent on only drug crimes. The National Institute of Justice Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) does calculations on the percentage of people who are arrested for other crimes that have drugs in the systems. In 1995 it was estimated that with males that had been arrested 51% up to 83% of them had illegal drugs in the urine samples. With the female arrestees it ranged from 41% to 84%. While drug-related homicides have declined an estimated 10% of federal prisoners have committed their offenses to pay for drugs as well as 17% on the state level. A large amount of the money spent on America’s “Drug War” is spent on actually arresting drug law violators. In 1994 alone between state and local governments only around one point one four million arrests were made for drug law violators with 75.1% of those arrests being for drug possession. With all of these arrests drug offenders have accounted for almost three fourths of the total growth of prison inmates since the year 1980. Most of the drug offenders were caught possessing far too much of the illegal substances than one person could possibly consume, which is why they are termed “drug sellers.” The sales area has become so large in America that it is estimated that selling drugs to consumers generates an annual income of $60 billion to those who sell. This amount is about 1% of all total personal consumption expenditures in the United States of America.
Many people question is all of these steps being taken to stop all of the illegal drug activity are working. While in some ways the steps are helping the initial problem the approach has also resulted in at least four very significant problems. The first problem is that by making drugs illegal America has created black markets for the drugs where many people have gained much power and wealth by supplying the drugs to consumers. The second problem lies mostly in the inner-city communities. There has not only been a rise in violence that is directly linked to selling drugs but the approach has caused a massive reduction in good male, adult role models within the inner-city communities. The third problem the approach has brought about is that the corruption of law enforcement officials that the criminalization of drugs has brought about. The final problem is that since there are such aggressive lawmakers going after drug offenders they are providing their consumers with drugs that have increased potency at cheaper prices. The costs for treating drug addicts have also gone significantly up. The question of whether or not the criminalization of drugs is working to help America’s drug problem has not really been answered. Many feel that it is merely keeping the problem at bay.
Crime Control in American What Works; second edition
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Chapter 9: Sentencing
By: Brianna, Skyler and Autumn
Nonprison Sentences: There are several types of penalties that the criminal justice system imposes on people convicted of crime. Two categories of such penalties can be identified as monetary and non monetary penalties. Non monetary penalties include probation, prison, home confinement, electronic monitoring, and similar sanctions.
Traditional Fines: Fines are the most common type of punishment out there today. Fines are commonly used in minor offenses. If a fine is imposed than the offender has to pay a certain amount of money, usually in the conjunction with other punishments. However, there are two problems with fines facing society today. One is that in most jurisdictions, the fine to be imposed is defined by law, regardless of the offender’s financial status. And the last problem is an extension of the first. If you take a poor person and fine them a large amount of money, it becomes difficult for the state to collect the money.
Day fines: Day fines attach a unit of value to the seriousness of given offenses. These unit values are then multiplied by a fixed percentage of the offender’s income. The result is, ideally, a proportional fine, one that is unnecessarily burdensome on an offender.
Fees: Fees are relatively new sanction imposed by the criminal justice system. Some jurisdictions require that offenders pay fees for services as another way to hold them accountable for their actions.
Forfeiture: Forfeitures is another monetary sanction utilized by the criminal justice system. There are two types of forfeiture.
Criminal Forfeiture: Criminal Forfeiture targets people and can only follow a criminal conviction. If criminal forfeiture is sought, the prosecutor must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the offender is guilty.
Civil Forfeiture: Criminal Forfeiture targets property and doesn’t require criminal conviction.
Types of Prison Sentences:
Indeterminate sentencing gives the judge authority to set the sentence. This form of sentencing empowers the judge to set a maximum sentence, up to what legislature will allow, and sometimes a minimum sentence, for the offender to serve in prison.
Determinate Sentencing permits the judge to hand down a fixed sentence that cannot later be altered by a parole board. Determinate sentencing has the effect of treating all offenders similarly and has the effect of ensuring that criminal are incarcerated for longer periods of time than may be permissible under indeterminate sentencing.
Mandatory Sentencing is a form of determinate sentencing, but it differs insofar as it takes discretion away from judges. Three strikes laws require mandatory sentencing.
Sentence Enhancements are available for certain crimes. While this sentences usually mandate for a minimum term of incarceration like mandatory sentencing. Mandatory sentencing results in lengthy prison term for any number of criminal acts, but sentence enhancements increase one’s prison term because of, say, the offender’s decision to use a gun during furtherance of the crime.
Prison Strategies without Regard to Sentence Length: There is much concern with prisons and the sentencing length. However, there are some prison strategies that do not necessarily take sentence length into consideration.
Selective Incapacitation an approach to America’s crime problem that targets repeated offenders. At its core is conservative philosophy of specific deterrence. That is, selective incapacitation is intended to keep repeat offenders off the streets so they cannot commit more crimes.
Involuntary Civil Commitment has implication for multiple punishments, however, and, according to some critics, raises double jeopardy concerns. This is because it provided for the incarceration of certain individuals after they have served prison time.
Super Max Prisons:
Super max prisons have the highest level of prison security. More specifically, these facilities house dangerous inmates in single cells for twenty-three hours each day. Inmates are allowed minimal contact with other inmates, and few services are provided to them. This type of prison has been criticized on humanitarian grounds. They have also been criticized because they allegedly “constitute cruel and unusual punishment, are inhumane, and violate minimum standards of decency.”
Capital Punishment is known as the death sentence and is perhaps the most attention-getting form of crime control in America. It ignites the fires of debate and invariably occupies much discussion time in many criminal justice classed. Every aspect of the death penalty from its moral dimensions and constitutionality to its potential discriminatory effect and impact on public safety have been written about in great length.
Castration: Chemical Castration is a relatively recent method of dealing with sex offenders.
Methods of Castration: Surgical method involves removing a man’s testosterone-producing testicles and is irreversible. So once their gone they are gone for good and for this reason it is rarely used. Chemical Castration can be reversed because it relies on drugs. The most common method consists of weekly injections of hormone suppressors that inhibit testosterone production. However, the most obvious problem with this approach is that the effects wear off once they are no longer taken.
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Crime Control in America: What Works? By: John L. Worrall, Pearson Publications 2008, Boston, MA
Chapter 10: Probations, Parole, and Intermediate Sanctions
By: Brianna, Skyler and Autumn
Probation: Probation is one of the most frequent sentences handed down by judges and is best understood as an alternative to incarceration.
Parole: Parole is also a form of corrections in the community. Its main difference from probation is that it comes after someone has already served time in prison.
Probation: Probation departments play a dual role in the criminal justice system. Probation officers are charged with both protecting public safety and rehabilitating offenders. As protectors of public safety, probation officers act as law enforcement officers, responsible for monitoring probationers’ activities and ensuring that probations comply with court ordered conditions of probation.
Parole: The decision to grant someone probation is a judicial one. That is, judges decide whether an offender gets probation in lieu of prison or some other sanction. Parole, by contrast, is an administrative act of the executive branch of government. Parole decisions are made by either a parole board or a parole commission. Either entity consists of individuals who are authorized by the executive branch to make such decisions. As is often the case, the parole board or commission represents the interests of the state department of corrections. In addition to deciding who does and does not get paroled, parole boards also determine when revocation and return to prison is necessary.
Common Probation and Parole Conditions: There are two general types of conditions that are imposed on probationers and parolees. The first type of conditions is reform conditions, which are intended to facilitate the offender’s rehabilitation. The second type is Control Conditions, by contrast, are intended to ensure adequate monitoring and supervision of the probationer or parolee. Conditions that are attached to probation and parole are almost too numerous to list. However, some conditions are committing no additional crimes, working regularly, supporting dependants, submitting to random drug tests, continuing to reside in the same location, reporting to probation or parole officer on a constant basis, allowing the supervising officer to visit at any time, and discontinuing associations with other criminals.
Probation and Parole Issues: It can’t be said that probation and parole reduces crime but both can be crime control policies. It is strange to suggest that releasing someone from prison could have the same effect on public safety as locking up a dangerous felon. Because of this, there has been very little research on link between probation, parole, and public safety. Researchers have instead opted to channel their energies into discussions of several important probation and parole issues.
To Serve Or to Supervise: Many people think that probation and parole is one of diligent civil servants carefully monitoring offenders and providing them with the assister they need to get them back on their feet. However, things are not always how they are seen. In reality, there is a great deal of tension between the goals of service and supervision, and the latter goal usually wins out. This is so for three reasons. First, more and more people are being put on probation and parole. Second, funding for community correction has not kept pace with the needs of offenders. Third, caseloads have increased over time, making it difficult for probation and parole officers to put service first.
Caseload Concerns: It is argued that smaller caseloads would result in more contact between probation officers and probationers. Increasing this contact would in turn decrease the likelihood of recidivism by increasing the level of supervision and access to rehabilitative services. Other simply believe that, as crime control policy, probation and parole are failures regardless of caseload size.
Probation and Recidivism: When a person on probation commits a new crime, this is generally known as probation failure. But the term failure has different meanings. Researchers who have defined failure as reconvictions have found that probation is quite effective. Probation looks more effective still for reincarnations. That is, relatively few probationers are sent back to prison.
Are Parolees Equipped to Reenter Society?: Presumable, criminals who are put on probation can go about their business and will not suffer many of the harmful and stigmatizing effects that are associated with being placed in prison. Not all probationers are upstanding, of course, and many go back to a life of crime even after being spared a term of incarceration.
Consequences to Society of Prisoner Reentry: There is nothing inherently problematic in returning prisoners to society. Many do indeed complete their parole term successfully. But parole can still have consequences for society. Four such collateral consequences have been identified. The first one is that parolees face an uphill battle when it comes to securing gainful employment. Second, is that when a person is sent to prison, that can have obvious consequences for families. The breakup of families that can result from a prison term means that the prisoner’s involvement with children in the home is minimized. Third, when parolees are cycled in and out of prison, this can have detrimental effects on the broader community. In particular, when more and more people are sent to prison, community bonds and informal social control appear to breakdown. Lastly, research shows that prisoners and parolees have significantly more health problems than ordinary citizens do.
Does It Work?: Probation and parole server two valuable purposes. First, they help to reduce burgeoning prison populations and the associated costs. Second, they are supposed to help criminals either escape the prison experience or ease back into society following a term of incarceration.
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Crime Control in America: What Works? By: John L. Worrall, Pearson Publications 2008, Boston, MA
Chapter 11: Rehabilitation, Treatment, and Job Training
By: Brianna, Skyler and Autumn
Criminals are not created equal: People say that some treatment programs work for other while others don’t. They base this accusation off of the offender’s level of risk, need, and responsively. And depending were the offenders level is at will define what type of treatment and rehabilitation that individual will need.
Risk: It is apparent that certain individuals are at a higher risk than other to do criminal activity in the future. What causes this individual to lie under this category is the person’s lifestyle both growing up and recent. Some effective factors are social attitudes, criminal associations, previous convictions and arrests, family problems, substance abuse and other afflictions. It is said that people with these problems tend to have more trouble with treatment than those with “clean” backgrounds.
Needs: Many criminals all have many different needs. Some criminals might need better social skills, an education, substance abuse treatment, housing and so on. And for an individual in this category, that individual must have their needs targeted for rehabilitation to work effectively.
Responsivity: It is said that some people are more responsive than others to treatment and rehabilitation. There are two categories when it comes to responsivity. The first category is General. General responsivity is concerned with external factors, such as treatment method (e.g., role-playing verses group discussions) and staff skills. The second category is specific. Specific responsivity, by contrast, is concerned with people’s internal characteristics. Differences in learning syles, intelligence, literacy, anxiety, attention, and the life can have important implications for the effectiveness of a treatment protocol.
Rehabilitation: Rehabilitation amounts to a planned intervention that is intended to change offenders for the better. There are four distinct rehabilitation methods used to rehab an offender. These methods target cognitive skills, anger management, improving victim awareness, and life skill training. All of these methods are used to target the enter workings of the criminal mind.
Cognitive skills: Cognitive skills are those skills that refer to how a person mental process perceives the world around them, solve problems, and make decisions. In this rehab method psychologists study the individual’s cognitive skills and then take what they’ve learned and try to develop an effective treatment regimen. Within this method of rehab reasoning training also takes place. Reasoning training assumes that there are some people who do not know how to make proper decisions that such people act impulsively without a thought to the possible consequences of their actions. Reasoning training further assumes that people can be trained to make proper decisions. Reasoning training attempts to improve people’s ability to make proper decisions, thus leading to more appropriate future behavior.
Anger Management: It is said that some people exhibit higher anger levels than others. Anger management programs have been used to teach offenders to keep their anger in check. However, anger management programs are rarely used as a rehabilitation program by itself. Instead, it is usually part of a larger rehab or treatment regimen. Most of the anger management courses have been used for domestic abusers and drug addicts.
Improving victim Awareness: It is safe to say that many criminals don’t give a second thought to the effects of their actions on victims. However, victim awareness programs have emerged to help with this factor. Victim Awareness programs plan to allow the offender to see the reality of it all by showing them their impact on the victim.
Life Skills Training: All people face difficult decisions and choices throughout their lives. However, it is very unfortunate that some people lack important skills to make the appropriate decisions. So, life skill training courses come in to play to help. These courses help the individual cope with these decisions and help the individual to make the right decisions.
Treatment: Treatment conveys the method of dealing with people who are “addicted” to crime. One of the more widely known addictions is drug addictions. It is difficult to dispute that people who are hooked on controlled substances, especially illegal drugs, need treatment to overcome their addiction. There are also other addictions like sexual addiction to. Here treatment programs for sex offenders sometimes mirror those for drug offenders insofar as they seek to alleviate the offender’s dependence on sexually illegal behavior.
Job Training: It is said that unemployed people tend to have more time on their hands than the employed do and thus might be more inclined to commit crime. It is also stated that not all unemployed people commit crimes. However, employment status has been a factor linked to crime, so it makes sense to provide job training to people who lack the necessary skills to secure good jobs.
Job Training for Convicts: Many criminals are undereducated, as a result, there has been a push to provide Adult Basic Education (ABE) and/or General Education Development (GED) training to convicts.
Vocational Training: Education clearly gives people a leg up, but education alone is not enough to secure gainful employment most of the time. So another method of training comes up which is vocational training. Vocational Training amounts to training a person in a specific job or skill.
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Crime Control in America: What Works? By: John L. Worrall, Pearson Publications 2008, Boston, MA
Chapter 14: Reducing Criminal Opportunities through Environmental Manipulation
By: Griffin Campbell, Ryan Beecroft, and Keith Carey
This chapter started off by situating its material within the border field of environmental criminology. This chapter then pointed out that environmental criminologists are not usually concerned with the goings on in the criminals’ heads. Instead, their explanation for the crime is that it is largely opportunistic. They commit crime when it is easy to commit a crime. Various theoretical perspectives behind this thinking, including the rational offender perspective and the crime pattern theory, were then introduced. This chapter also covered four broad methods by which environmental manipulation occurs. These four methods are access control, surveillance, activity support, and motivation reinforcement. The last major part of this chapter reviewed the effectiveness of various steps taken to reduce criminal opportunities by environmental manipulations. The crime control through environmental designs is one of the more effective strategies that has been talked about in this book
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Content
Chapter 12: Individual, Family, and Household Crime Control
By: Autumn, Brianna, Skyler
This chapter will cover crime control at the individual, family, and household levels. It will be covering all actions that individuals take to control crime; then it will shift the focus to crime control that occurs at the level of families and households.
There are three different methods that individuals attempt to prevent themselves from becoming victims of crime:
1.Buy a gun and have it available for use in self-defense
a.People believe having a gun in the house is a security blanket and that they can use it to defend themselves if an intruder enters.
2.Risk-avoidance behavior.
a.Examples are: staying inside at night, avoiding certain parts of a neighborhood, and steering clear of dangerous-looking criminals.
3.Risk management.
a.Occurs when individuals cannot stay inside all the time or avoid specific areas or people.
According to research the first problem with studying the effectiveness of gun use in self-defense is settling on appropriate measures of the phenomenon. With sources such as the Uniform Crime Reports and the National Crime Victimization Survey, there is no direct measure of gun ownership or gun use in the United States. Researchers have had to rely on survey measures to assess the extent of gun ownership. According to statistics in 1999, the survey revealed that thirty-six percent of households reported ownership of at least one gun. Recent study most reliable measure is the number of suicides that are committed with a gun. This measure has outperformed competing measures, including the percentage of homicides. Including the percentage of homicides that are committed with a gun, membership in the National Rifle Association.
A big question researchers have is how often are guns used in self-defense? In 1994 DataStat did a telephone survey and reported that more than 500,000 instances of gun use in self-defense were reported. Survey respondents also claimed that they had successfully fended off attacks nearly ninety-nine percent of the time. According to other researchers found that 3.6 million instances of gun use in self-defense each year. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey the estimate show that there were only 32,000 instances of gun use each year from 1979 to 1987, clearly a much lower number than those arrived at in the DataStat survey.
Which date source should be believed? Researchers put more faith in NCVS data, for two main reasons.
1.When both estimates are compared to the annual number of burglaries shown in the NCVS data, it becomes clear that the DataStat survey’s estimate of 500,000 uses of guns in self-defense is quite liberal.
2.NCVS estimates are more consistent with findings from other studies that used neither the NCVS nor DataStat estimates.
National Crime Victimization Survey sets its own limitations. These three limitations can result in a downward bias, leading to highly conservative estimates of the extent to which people use firearms to protect themselves from victimization.
•First, respondents are never asked about whether they have used a gun in self-defense if they do not first report victimization.
•Second, if a person prevents a crime by using a gun, then the prevented crime would not be reported in the NCVS because it did not technically occur.
•Third, people might wish to conceal gun use from the government employees who conduct the NCVS survey.
Risk-avoidance behaviors are the actions that people take to avoid being victimized or coming face to face with criminals. Researchers have indeed found that such behaviors are commonplace. Surveys show that between twenty-five and forth-five percent of people have recently refrained from going out at night because of crime. According to Rosenbaum, “Unless one lives with a violent family member, staying at home behind locked doors and not venturing outside should lower a person’s risk of personal victimization because more violent crime occurs outdoors. Main problem with studying the effectiveness of risk avoidance is that when it works, a crime fails to occur, which means that there in crime to be counted.
Characteristics of victims are divided into two broad classes: those that can be changed and those that cannot be changed. Victim characteristics that cannot be changed include sex, age, and race. Men are more likely than women to become victims of crime. Younger people are victimized more frequently than the elderly age. Ethnic minorities are at high risk of victimization.
Risk-management behavior includes actions that people take when they know that they cannot fully avoid the potential for victimization. It can consist of preventive action that is designed to deter would-be criminals from attacking. Example of this is if a person hides cash, say, in a money belt, this action is taken to minimize the person’s potential for being robbed. The area of research is concerned with the second form of risk management: resistance. There are two different kinds of resistance:
1.Forceful resistance.
a.Forceful verbal resistance includes yelling and threatening the offender
2.Nonforceful resistance.
a.Nonforceful physical resistance can include attempts to push the offender away.
b.Nonforceful verbal resistance amounts to pleading for the offender to stop and/or reasoning with the offender.
Crime control in households and in families is relatively popular but difficult to evaluate. There are three reasons for this:
1.Consider the example of a program that is designed to educate parents about the wrongs of child abuse.
2.Crime control in household and families can be confounded by contextual factors, such as the neighborhood in which a family is located.
3.Criminal activity in private residences is inherently difficult to measure.
What is the focus of crime control in households and families? First, crime control is undertaken with the intent of minimizing abuse in the home, including conventional forms of domestic violence and child abuse. Second, household and family-based crime control is undertaken to discourage children from becoming criminals.
There are many difficulties of examining crime control in households and families. There is a wealth of available research, much of it from the field of human development. Crime control is categorized into four forms:
1.Parent training and education programs.
a.Strengthening families program started in 1983 is a drug abuse prevention program fir high-risk, drug using parents to educate them.
2.Family preservation therapy programs will be summarized.
a.John Bowlby theorized that children from broken homes are more likely to grow up delinquent.
3.Multisystemic therapy.
a.It is used well after families begin to experience problems with delinquent juveniles. The major goal is to empower parents with the skills and resources needed to independently address the difficulties that arise in raising teenagers and to empower youth to cope with family, peer, school, and neighborhood problems.
4.Family financial assistance.
a.Many families lack sufficient resources and therefore might become involved in criminal activity to obtain basic necessities.
In conclusion there are many ways that people try to protect themselves from victimization. People are faced with challenges everyday and have to keep themselves and families strong the make it through the difficult challenges of life.
Works Citied:
Crime Control in America: What Works? By: John L. Worrall, Pearson Publications 2008, Boston, MA
Chapter 13 Crime Control in the Community and Schools
By: Jake Cox, Bronson Scott, and Robbie Gibson
Community crime control assumes that communities can be improved in such a manner as to prevent crime. Such improvements can presumably come from financial assistance, efforts to mobilize citizens, anti-gang interventions, after-school recreation programs, and publicity campaigns appear to be associated with reductions in crime. With respect to after-school programs, however, more research is necessary before we will know for sure whether they reduce crime.
Although it might be difficult for communities on the whole to control crime, it appears that interventions taking place in America’s schools are quite effective. Interestingly, though, the most publicized of these efforts tends to be the least effective. Several lesser-known approaches that seek to alter the school environment, including how schools are managed, appear to be effective. Likewise, several interventions that target at-risk students, and even students who are not necessarily at risk, have shown demonstrable effects on crime. To be successful, though, such programs should either equip students with appropriate crime resistance skills or seek to modify their behavior through a system of rewards and punishment.
An operation cease-fire was implemented as a form of Anti-Gang Initiative. This was also known as the Boston Gun Project in 1996. This program made contacts between gang members and criminal justice officials and aggressive enforcement of firearms laws. To systematically address the patterns of firearms trafficking by research, the Working Group:
- Expanded the focus of local, state, and federal authorities to include intrastate firearms trafficking in Massachusetts in addition to interstate trafficking.
- Focused enforcement attention on traffickers of the makes and calibers of guns most used by gang members.
- Focused enforcement attention on traffickers of guns that had short time-to-crime intervals, thus, were most likely to have been trafficked.
- Focused enforcement attention on of guns used by the city’s most violent gangs.
- Attempted to restore obliterated serial numbers of confiscated guns and subsequently investigate trafficking based on those restorations.
- Supported these enforcement priorities through analysis of data generated by the Boston Police Department and ATF’s comprehensive tracing of crime guns and by developing leads from the systematic debriefing of hang-affiliated arrestees or those involved in violent crime.
The second strategic element, which became known as the “pulling levers’” strategy, involved deterring the violent behavior of chronic gang offenders by:
- Targeting gangs engaged in violent behavior.
- Reaching out directly to members of the targeted gangs.
- Delivering an explicit message that violence would not be tolerated.
- Backing up that message by “pulling every lever” legally available when violence occurred.
Works Cited
Crime Control in America: What Works? By: John L. Worrall, Pearson Publications 2008, Boston, MA
http://www.policeone.com/policeone/data/juvenile_topicpg.jpg
Chapter 14: Juvenile Crime Control
By: Griffin Campbell, Ryan Beecroft, and Keith Carey
Juvenile crime is a difficult problem. The main reason for this is that there are no ideal sources of data with which to gauge the extent of the problem. There is much speculation that juveniles are becoming more violent and that juvenile crime is on the rise. Few figures are available to support this contention. The most that we can say for sure is that juveniles commit a fair amount of the crime today. This chapter talked about how juvenile justice system was created not as punishment but to put juveniles back on the right track. The hope was initially that juveniles could be treated and otherwise corrected before they become hardened adult criminals. Recent development in juvenile justice seems to show that we are content to do away with the rehabilitation ideal of juvenile justice as it is originally conceived. Juvenile waivers, reduced privacy, and increased accountability, among other developments, signal a blurring of the lines between the adult and juvenile justice system. Reviewed in this chapter were two distinct methods of dealing with juvenile crime. One was purely preventive. The other, called juvenile crime control was more reactive. Evidence show that prevention is more effective than control. This chapter talked about University of Colorado’s Blueprints program has identified several methods of juvenile crime prevention. Crime control such as tough punishment, probation, and other traditional responses to juvenile delinquency, do not appear to make much of a difference.
Chapter 15 Juvenile Crime Control
By: Bronson Scott, Jake Cox, and Robbie Gibson
The juvenile crime problem is a difficult one. A key reason for this is that there are no ideal sources of data with which to gauge the extent of the problem. There is much speculation that juveniles are becoming more violent and that juvenile crime is on the rise. Few figures are available to support this contention, though. The most that we can say for sure is that juveniles commit a fair amount of crime.
The juvenile justice system was created not to punish juveniles but to put them on the right track. The hope was initially that juveniles could be treated and otherwise ‘corrected” before they became hardened adult criminals. Recent developments in juvenile justice, however, seem to show that we content to do away with the rehabilitative ideal of juvenile justice as it was originally conceived. Juvenile waivers, reduced privacy, and increased accountability, among other developments, signal a blurring of the lines between the adult and juvenile justice systems.
In this chapter, we reviewed two distinct methods of dealing with juvenile crime. One was, for lack of a better term, purely preventive. The other, which we called juvenile crime control, was more reactive. The evidence shows that prevention is much more effective than control. The University of Colorado’s Blueprints program has identified several methods of juvenile crime prevention, each of which was reviewed in some detail.
After-the-fact crime control, such as tough punishment, probation, and other traditional responses to juvenile delinquency, do not appear to make much of a difference. In fairness, though, researchers of juvenile crime control have mostly been concerned with treatment, and much of their findings suggest that juveniles can be deferred from committing additional delinquent acts.
In 1998, two researchers from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, in the U.S. Department of Justice, reviewed changes in state legislation resulting from heightened public concern over violent juvenile crime. Their research has not been updated yet, but they summarized a few of the trends and developments in juvenile justice, most of which are certainly ongoing to this day:
1. States continue to modify age/offense transfer criteria, allowing more serious and violent juvenile offenders to be tried as criminals.
2. State legislatures continue to experiment with blended and other sentencing options, while changes in purpose clauses affect juvenile court decisions.
3. States supplement continued emphasis on institutional programming with locally administered interventions that stress public safety and offender accountability.
4. States continue to deemphasize traditional confidentiality concerns while emphasizing information sharing.
Works Cited
Crime Control in America: What Works? By: John L. Worrall, Pearson Publications 2008, Boston, MA
http://www.rock.indiana.edu/publs/newsline/image2.gif
Chapter 16: Putting It All Together and Explaining Crime Trends
By: Griffin Campbell, Ryan Beecroft, and Keith Carey
Crime control in America takes place in a number of institutional settings. One such setting is the criminal justice system, families, and schools. In each of these institutional settings some methods are effective and some crime control is not effective. This chapter and throughout the whole book shows that a combination of justice system, individual, family, school, and community efforts help to make America a safer country. Others are a huge waste of money but they continue to flourish. Three important themes emerge in this book. One is that the solution to crime does not lie wholly within the criminal justice system. Much effective crime control does not have to rely on the police, courts, or corrections. Second the research that is reviewed in this book confirms that many of the most effective programs and initiatives targeted people before they become criminal. Early intervention is important. Last criminal justice is still in its infancy, much research is needed before we can develop a thorough understanding of what works and what does not work to control crime. Researchers will continue working tirelessly to explain past and current trends as well as to forecast what the future trends will occur.