Criminal Justice Take Home Exam Crime Control

¶ … Criminal Justice Take Home Exam

Crime control and due process are two underlying philosophies of criminal justice that are often presented as competing philosophies by the American media. For instance, to control crime, police officers in popularly televised series such as "Law and Order" are shown as circumventing the letter of the law and occasionally violating due process, because of their natural eagerness to put criminals behind bars. Even in the news, a non-fictional aspect of the media, police officers are often depicted as the heroes that apprehend dangerous criminals and therefore curtail crime. The due process that every defendant is granted, as well as the presumption of innocence is circumvented by such a black and white portrayal, especially when it is suggested that an 'obviously' guilty defendant, because of his or her demeanor or because of leaked information to a news source, is let loose upon society because of the police's oversight regarding a legal technicality. However, the control of crime and the right of all to due process under the law are complementary ideas to ensure a free society. All individuals have a right to be safe, safe from crime, but also from unjustified police intrusion into their lives when the police lack probable cause.

Question 2: Sex, race, age, and location all impact an individual's statistical likelihood to commit a crime as well as be a victim of a crime. However, this issue is never 'black and white,' although it is sometimes literally and figuratively seen as such. For instance, individuals who are poor and of an oppressed minority group are both more likely to be the perpetrators of crime but also the victims of crime, highlighting the role of social desperation and economic disenfranchisement in the spread and curtailment of crime. However, simple, physical vulnerability also increases an individual's likelihood of being a victim of crime, as women and the elderly are more likely to be targets of violence, in proportions larger than their tendency to commit crimes. Thus, social actions to emphasize self-defense amongst these populations might be valuable.

Question 3:Theories of criminal behavior include those of social process theorists, whom emphasize the cultural context of a society in terms of what is considered a crime, development theorists that view crime as products of alternative criminal subcultures that reward crime, as well as the point-of-view that crime is an act of individual deviancy. Given the current levels of mistrust of police in many communities, as well as the increasingly positive view of the organization after the police's role in curtailing the threat of terrorist events in recent years, a balance of blaming the criminal and blaming society must be adequately maintained within the organization of officers and within officers' own minds. Certain theories may be more appropriate to discussing and curtailing certain crimes -- for instance, the developmental theory of subcultures seems uniquely appropriate to the drug culture, where by uprooting the organizational structures that financially reward drugs, drug networks can be circumvented. Developmental theories of drug control also stress that while the control of sellers and users through the criminal justice system is necessary, rehabilitating and social procedures must be implemented so addicts receive treatment and the social, contributing causes to drug abuse such as poverty and hopelessness are eliminated or curtailed.

Question 5: Barriers to effective policing have long occurred because of abuses of police authority and corruption within the department that is not adequately supervised by internal affair reviews. But beyond a crisis of perceptions of public honesty, it is also important that police are seen as contributing to a safer community, rather than simply enforcing the law in a cold or worse, arbitrary manner. The best way to create an atmosphere of community policing is to intensify recruitment efforts from the community, and to ensure the police have a social as well as a technical understanding of the community they are overseeing. The responsibility they owe is not simply to their fellow officers, or even to individual victims, but to society as well, and to a community.