Criminal Justice Policy Memo, Term Paper Example

Policy Memorandum – Criminal Justice Sector

Within our broader policy arena, Criminal Justice is split out into five key components: (1) Criminology  (2) Criminal Law  (3) Corrections/Penology  (4) Crime and (5) Law Enforcement.  This paper explores the sub categories under each of these headings and provides a broad update on policies within each of these area.

Criminology

This is essentially split into three  sub components that of i) School of Thought ii) Theories and iii) Victimology.   A definition under school of thought being ” The scientific study of crime as a social phenomenon, including its causes, prevention, types, consequences, and punishment, and its relationship to other forms of deviant behaviour such as alcohol addiction or drug abuse. It emerged during the 19th-c as part of a humanizing movement in which people tried to understand the nature of crime and to devise more effective methods of deterrence and treatment”  (encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com).

With theories of crime we probe deeper into underlying causation ” Criminology provides insight into crime and why people act in deviant ways. But policy makers and community leaders who seek to understand why crime is occurring in their community require more than just explanations, they require answers to the question – so what do we do now? What action steps follow from the proposed theory of crime?”  (Garrison). Criminal theory is comprised of three schools of thought 1) Classical  2) Positive and 3) Chicago. Two famous writers during the classical period were Cesare Beccaria (1778-1794) and Jeremy Bentham ( 1748-1832) both led the movement on human rights and freedom of will. The positive school seeks to explain the world around them . It creates an accumulation of evidence and objective fact within a deductive framework. The Chicago school focused on social and physician environment factors. Chicago criminologists saw pathology in the City which led to criminality. Hence the body of criminology theory is built upon this foundation of knowledge. (mediaone.net).

Victimology is a relatively new subfield within the broader category of criminology. ” The scientific study of victimization, including the relationships between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system — that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials — and the connections between victims and other societal groups and institutions, such as the media, businesses, and social movements”  (Stevens)

Criminal Law

Criminal law in the USA has been defined as ” Body of law that defines criminal offenses, regulates the apprehension, charging, and trial of suspected offenders, and fixes punishment for convicted persons. Substantive criminal law defines particular crimes, and procedural law establishes rules for the prosecution of crime. In the U.S., substantive criminal law originated for the most part in common law, which was later codified in federal and state statutes. Modern criminal law has been affected considerably by the social sciences, especially in the areas of sentencing, legal research, legislation, and rehabilitation”  (Encyclopedia Brittanica).  It is basically decomposed into two elements 1) Criminal procedure and 2) Theory.  Criminal procedure relates to .. ” Criminal procedure deals with the set of rules governing the series of proceedings through which the government enforces substantive criminal law. Municipalities, states, and the federal government each have their own criminal codes, defining types of conduct that constitute crimes. Title 18 of the U.S. Code outlines all federal crimes. Typically, federal crimes deal with activities that either extend beyond state boundaries or directly impact federal interests.”  (Cornell University Law School).   In February 2010 these rules are being substantially updated in the UK ” The Criminal Procedure Rules 2010 will come into force on 5 April 2010. The Statutory Instrument number is 60 of 2010 (L.2). These rules replace The Criminal Procedure Rules 2005 and subsequent amendments.”  (Ministry of Justice).

” Theories of criminal law’ could just be general theories of law applied to the particular case of criminal law: proponents of legal positivism, of natural law, of economic analysis of law, of Critical Legal Studies and other schools of legal theory will expect to be able to say about the criminal law what they say about law in general”  (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

The sub category of criminal defenses  relates to those defenses in criminal law that may negate the act of the crime.  This includes such items as pleas for insanity, automatism,  Intoxication, Mistake of facts, the doctrine of necessity, capacity of office, duress etc.

Corrections and Penology

Important new research has taken place in the area of Criminology and Penology. This has been carried out by Malcolm Feeley and Jonathan Simon  of the University of California and University of Michigan ” The new penology argues that an important new language of penology is emerging. This new language, which has its counterparts in other areas of the law as well, shifts focus away from the traditional concerns of the criminal law and criminology, which have focused on the individual, and redirects it to actuarial consideration of aggregates. This shift has a number of important implications: It facilitates development of a vision or model of a new type of criminal process that embraces increased reliance on imprisonment and that merges concerns for surveillance and custody, that shifts away from a concern with punishing individuals to managing aggregates of dangerous groups, and that affects the training and practice of criminologists.”  (SIMON).  The correctional system of criminology is the actual administration arm of the prison system ” Correctional officers in local jails admit and process about 13 million people a year, with nearly 800,000 offenders in jail at any given time. Correctional officers in State and Federal prisons watch over the approximately 1.6 million offenders who are incarcerated there at any given time. Typically, offenders serving time at county jails are sentenced to a year or less. Those serving a year or more are usually housed in state or federal prisons.”  (Bureau of Labour Statistics).

One of the most significant trends in recent years is the swelling in the number of people incarcerated.  This has led to the need for more prisons and the building of more facilities in the private sector.  This containment strategy has proved to be extremely expensive ” Explosive growth in the number of people on probation or parole has propelled the population of the American corrections system to more than 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 U.S. adults, according to a report released today by the Pew Center on the States.  The vast majority of these offenders live in the community, yet new data in the report finds that nearly 90 percent of state corrections dollars are spent on prisons. ”  (Riordan)

The subcategory of sentencing relates to that of how sentecing is carried out within the penal system ” Judges often have great difficulty because of the complexity of the facts and sentencing law, the need to balance the various aims of sentencing, the range of options available to them and the widely differing personal circumstances of offenders. The ever watchful eyes of the media, the oversight of courts of appeal, the views of victims and the force of public opinion ensure that the sentencing process, while lonely, is never secret or unaccountable.”  (MacKenzie)

Crime

There are three sub categories associated with Crimes 1) Type  2) Crime types and 3) Crime data.  In its basic form crime might be defined as ” Crime, in its simplest definition may refer to any action that may be considered as the breach of law.  Committing a crime usually results to being arrested and being punished.”  (LA Criminal Lawyer).  There are some 32 categories of serious crime and the largest of these is Terrorism. The remaining big crime categories being Domestic Violence, Fraud, Homicide, and Sex Crimes.  There are also cross border types and these include piracy, hijacking, kidnapping and extortion.  The largest sources of crime data are as follows: ” the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, maintains one of the largest repositories of web sites devoted to criminal justice statistics.  NCJRS is probably the most extensive source of information on criminal justice in the world. It’s a group of clearinghouses supporting all the bureaus of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), the Office of Victims of Crime (OVC), and the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).”  (O’Connor).

The table to the right illustrates the number of crimes by category according to data collected in 2000. Source : NCVS

Another source of reputable data is the FBI ” The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet a need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the nation”  (Federal Bureau of Investigation).

Law Enforcement

Law Enforcement has three main sub categories 1) Arrests  2)  Forensics and 3 ) Technology.  The concept of arrests in the US falls under the jurisdiction of the law enforcement agencies. These broadly fall under the following categories: Federal Arrests i.e. FBI, Homeland Security, Police Arrests, State Police, Local Police or County Police, Citizens arrests.  The latter is on the increase for petty crimes in the USA and care has to be taken in differentiating this from vigilante action. ” citizens of Massachusetts were so fed up with crime that they have begun to intervene in petty street crime afflicting the streets of our cities. Thieves and pickpockets in Massachusetts should exercise caution in where and how they ply their craft as the chances that vigilantes pummel them and drag them to the nearest cop are definitely on an upswing”  (Gr “Forensic science is any science used for the purposes of the law, and therefore provides impartial scientific evidence for use in the courts of law, and in a criminal investigation and trial. Forensic science is a multidisciplinary subject, drawing principally from chemistry and biology, but also from physics, geology, psychology, social science ossack).”  (Anon).  The following types are covered: Computers, Accounting, Archaeology.Graphology, Medicine, Pathology, Psychology, Science. Toxicology.

Technology relates primarily to that of cyber crime.  The Internet Crime Complaints centre has identified the following graphical depiction of the types of cyber crimes. One of the most alarming aspects being the rise in credit card fraud.

Works Cited

Anon. What is Forensics. 2010. 8 3 2008 <http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0312020/whatisforens.htm>.

Bureau of Labour Statistics. Bureau of Labour Statistics. 7 12 2009. 8 3 2010 <http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos156.htm>.

Cornell University Law School. Cornell University Law School. 2010. 8 3 2010 <http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/Criminal_procedure>.

Encyclopedia Brittanica. Answers.com. 2010. 8 3 2010 <http://www.answers.com/topic/criminal-law>.

Encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com. encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com. 2010. 8 3 2010 <http://encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com/pages/5200/criminology.html>.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2010. 8 3 2010 <http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm>.

Garrison, Arthur. All academic research .com. 15 11 2005. 8 3 2010 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/3/3/5/8/p33587_index.html>.

Grossack, David C. Constitutional Business. 1994. 8 3 2010 <http://www.constitution.org/grossack/arrest.htm>.

LA Criminal Lawyer. LA Criminal Lawyer. 2009. 8 3 2010 <http://www.lacriminallawyer.net/types-of-crimes>.

MacKenzie, Geraldine. Federaton Press. 27 5 2005. 18 3 2009 <http://www.federationpress.com.au/bookstore/book.asp?isbn=9781862875357>.

mediaone.net. Criminology Theory. 1 10 2001. 8 3 2010 <http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/200/Diane_Demelo/diane.pdf>.

Ministry of Justice. The Criminal Procedure Rules 2005. 22 2 2010. 8 3 2010 <http://www.justice.gov.uk/criminal/procrules_fin/>.

O’Connor, T. Crime Data. 2 7 2007. 8 3 2010 <http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/1010/1010lect01a.htm>.

Riordan, Jessica. 1 in 31 U.S. Adults are Behind Bars, on Parole or Probation. 2010. 8 12 2008 <http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=49398>.

Simon, Malcolm M. Feeley Jonathan. “the New Penology: Notes on the Emerging Strategy of Corrections and Its Implications.” Criminology (2006): 449-474.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Theories of Criminal Law. 14 4 2008. 8 3 2010 <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/criminal-law/>.

Stevens, Marc. Victimology Theory. 19 6 2003. 18 3 2010 <http://faculty.ncwc.edu/mstevens/300/300lecturenote01.htm>.