NCJ Number
210267
Journal
Journal of Crime & Justice Volume: 28 Issue: 1 Dated: 2005 Pages: 79-105
Date Published
2005
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This article develops the argument that the differential criminal justice processing of individuals who have committed similar offenses is due to policies designed to increase the efficient use of criminal justice resources by targeting high-crime areas and high-crime groups.
Abstract
Current criminal justice policies seek to maximize the effectiveness of crime control by focusing resources on places and groups that are statistically most likely to commit crimes that have high priority in the crime-control hierarchy. This usually means that individuals whose race, social background, employment status, income, and residence location put them at risk for criminal behavior are more likely to be arrested, held in pretrial detention, convicted, and sentenced to the most restrictive correctional option, because they come from a group with a high prevalence of criminogenic factors. Individual offenders who commit crimes similar to those who come from high-crime groups but are members of groups with relatively low crime rates are less likely to have their offenses detected in the first place, and when they are arrested and processed are likely to be evaluated as low risk for repeat offenses and thus will be treated less restrictively than an offender with a similar offense but with high-risk characteristics. Examples of this differential processing based on efficiency and the targeting of members of high-crime groups are identified and discussed in the practices of racial profiling, seizures of illegal guns, concentrated patrol, pretrial release, sentencing, and risk assessment in corrections and parole. The importance of examining and modifying efficiency policies that lead to differential processing of individual offenders is discussed. 73 references