CRJ 350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Adversarial System, Mandatory Sentencing, Innocence Project
8 Sep 2016
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Opposing views: serious criminals escape punishment through loopholes, system systematically discriminates against african americans. End result: loss of legitimacy for the justice system: leads to greater law-breaking. Evaluating system is too difficult: don"t have good data- ucr data, arrest data, case disposition problems, experts disagree over data. Effectiveness of system further complicated because there are over 50 separate justice systems with different legal traditions- federal system, tribal courts and police, military system. Most systems have a going rate : a predictable rate of outcome: predictable outcomes of cases dependent upon: Funnel: crimes reported, number of arrests, formal felony complaints, number sentenced, number sent to prison. About half of these plead guilty to misdemeanors. 69% of all adults arrested and 95% of those are prosecuted were convicted. Hidden issues impact chances of going to prison/jail: police discretion. Dismissed arrests leads to not reporting those arrests. Arrest is when on is stopped and detained.
