NCJ Number
78656
Date Published
1977
Length
320 pages
Annotation
For students of criminology, criminal justice, and law, selected essays consider the sociology of law, crime control, and crime prevention.
Abstract
Included in the section on theory is an essay that provides an historical and empirical assessment of police 'stop-and-frisk' practices. Empirical findings show that judicial decisions tending to expand the practice have neither issued in crime reduction nor expanded police intervention into citizen privacy. A second essay examines the 'crime-control' and 'due-process' models for dealing with defendants and offenders, and a third presentation evaluates empirical evidence for arguments on gun control. An essay on criminology theory and ideology describes the functionalism, conflict, interactionist, and social learning theories of law development and criminal behavior and identifies the usefulness of each theory in criminology studies. A final theoretical essay discusses the labeling process in delinquency determination, the importance of knowledge of the law among the general public, and a program of decriminalization based on teaching law to all primary children. The section on practice includes an essay that reports on survey findings bearing upon clients' perceptions of the quality of their relationships with their attorneys and the defense services rendered. Other essays examine crime precautions taken by victims after victimization as compared with nonvictims, the role of the patrol officer in a metropolitan police system, the prosecutor's role in plea bargaining, and the bus driver and the management of deviance. Tabular data and references accompany most of the empirical studies.