NCJ Number
221648
Date Published
2007
Length
784 pages
Annotation
This comprehensive introductory textbook, covering the important aspects of the criminal justice system: crime, police, courts, corrections and juvenile justice emphasizes the criminal justice system as part of a complex, interrelated, and dynamic social system based on checks and balances.
Abstract
This book describes the responsibilities of the agencies, the roles of the personnel, and the interrelationships of criminal justice to political agencies and social values, as well as other factors that influence the criminal justice system. It also focuses on change. The text is organized into 17 chapters in 6 parts. Part 1 has two foundational chapters on the criminal justice system and the criminal justice process. Part 2 has two survey chapters covering criminological theories and victimization theories and one chapter on criminal law. Part 3 has four chapters on the police, including a new chapter highlighting the affect of homeland security and the War on Terrorism on the criminal justice system; followed by three chapters on the court system in part 4 and three chapters on the correctional system in part 5. The last two chapters in part 6 are new and focus on juvenile justice and crime in America. Crime in America uses drug abuse, computer crime and identity theft, and child sex offending to examine in detail the complex and multiple-agency cooperation necessary to fight crime. Criminal Justice provides a balanced viewpoint that is both critical and admiring of the American criminal justice system, its roots, and its transformation. The textbook is intended to provoke critical thinking and debate. It introduces the history, influences, and related fields of knowledge that are connected to the criminal justice system, and presents a comprehensive, balanced, concrete description of how the criminal justice system works, why it works that way, why it is different from past systems and from systems of other cultures, and how it is influenced by scientific knowledge, social norms, and prevailing beliefs about justice. Boxed features, supplements, instructor and student resources, tables, figures, appendix A and B, glossary and indexes