Criminal Justice 2000, Volume 3: Policies, Processes, and Decisions of the Criminal Justice System

• NCJ Number: 182410
• Author(s): Winnie Reed; Laura Winterfield
• Date Published: July 2000
• Length: 566 pages
• Agencies: NIJ
• Publication Type: Best Practice/State-of-the-Art Review

Annotation

These nine papers review the state of knowledge about issues relating to decision making in criminal justice in the context of policies made by persons both inside and outside the criminal justice system and in the context of emerging processes in policing, courts, and corrections.

Abstract

These papers form one volume of a four-volume series sponsored by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) through a competitive solicitation designed to produce a comprehensive, scholarly examination and analysis of the current status of criminal justice. Themes emerging from the chapters include minorities and criminal justice and how communities and criminal justice policies, processes, and decisions affect each other. The first two chapters examine the impacts of high rates of incarceration on communities and on informal social control and the blurring boundaries between the criminal justice system and the mental health system due to the deinstitutionalization of mentally ill persons. Additional chapters consider whether the shift toward higher incarceration rates and away from rehabilitation efforts has been justified and the changing roles of prison officials as a result of policy and cultural changes. Further papers analyze the increasing movement to establish community justice and restorative justice approaches through the use of restorative conferencing, the changes in police processes resulting from the shift to community policing and problem-oriented policing, and the potential impacts of new information technologies on police decision making and other criminal justice decision making. The final chapters examine racial discrimination in sentencing and the roles of gender, class, and ethnicity and their intersections in court decisions as well as in decision points such as arrest and prosecution. Tables, appended list of the contents in the other three volumes in the Criminal Justice 2000 series, chapter notes and reference lists