Chapter 3

The Criminal Justice System

 The Goals of Criminal Justice

 Doing justice

 Controlling Crime

 Preventing Crime
 Two Justice Systems

 The activities of national and state systems of criminal justice differ

in scope and purpose
 State systems handle alleged violations of state law

 The federal system handles alleged violations of federal law

 Expansion of Federal Involvement

 Federal involvement in the criminal justice system has slowly

expanded
 The geographical area of many crimes spans the jurisdictions of
many governments
 Disputes over jurisdiction, fragmentation, and duplication of services
sometimes result
 Many argue that the federal government has improperly inserted
itself in matters that should be dealt with at the state level
 Criminal Justice as a System

 Criminal justice in the United States is a system

 The main subsystems are:

 Police
 Courts
 Corrections
 Between the subsystems exists exchange.
 Characteristics of the Criminal Justice System

 Discretion

 Resource dependence

 Sequential tasks

 Filtering
 Figure 3.3 Criminal Justice As a Filtering Process

Decisions at each point in the system result in some cases being dropped while others are passed to
the next point. Are you surprised by the small portion of cases that remain?
Sources: Data from this figure have been drawn from many sources including Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1998 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1999) and Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bulletin, February 1988.
 Police

 Four major duties of the police:

 Keeping the peace

 Apprehending violators and combating crime

 Preventing crime

 Providing social services

 Courts

 Major responsibilities of courts:

 Adjudication

 Disposition

 Post-conviction remedies
 Corrections

 Major responsibilities of corrections:

 Provide custodial services for sentenced individuals

 Provide a range of community-based correctional programs

 Steps in the Decision-Making Process

• The CJS consists of 13 steps:

 Investigation  Arraignment

 Arrest  Trial

 Booking  Sentencing

 Charging  Appeal

 Initial Appearance  Corrections

 Preliminary Hearing/  Release

Grand Jury
 Indictment/Information
 Figure 3.4 The Flow of Decision Making
in the Criminal Justice Process

Each agency is responsible for a part of the decision-making process. Thus the police, prosecution,
courts, and corrections are bound together through a series of exchange relationships.
 Figure 3.5 The Criminal Justice Wedding Cake

This figure shows that different cases are treated in different ways. Only a very few cases are played
out as “high drama”; most are handled through plea bargaining and dismissals.
Source: Drawn from Samuel Walker, Sense and Nonsense about Crime and Drugs, 4th ed.
(Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1998), 30–37.
 Multicultural Concerns

 Many racial and ethnic minorities are subjected to the criminal justice
system more often than their white counterparts. Possible
explanations include:
 Minorities commit more crimes

 The criminal justice system is racist

 American society is racist

 The experiences of minority group members with the criminal justice

system may contribute to their views of the system’s fulfillment of the
goal of equal treatment
 The Differences Between Disparity and Discrimination

 Disparity is a difference between groups that can be explained by

legitimate factors
 Discrimination occurs when groups are differentially treated without
regard to their behavior or qualifications