NCJ Number
164504
Date Published
1997
Length
0 pages
Annotation
This lecture gives a policy perspective on factors affecting the popular legitimacy and effectiveness of the criminal justice system and ways that criminal justice agencies can improve public support for the system.
Abstract
The speaker is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He noted citizens expect the system to control crime and fear of crime, ensure offender consequences, avoid unduly invading privacy and freedom, and help build community, all at low cost. To accomplish these goals, the system must focus on the quality of its encounters and interactions with citizens in their roles as clients and overseers of the system and as co-producers of justice. In the past, efforts to enhance the legitimacy of criminal justice agencies have been neglected. Decades ago the President's Crime Commission presented an image of the criminal justice system as a funnel leading to prison. However, it did not reveal the community role before and after the funnel, focused on serious cases, and gave a reactive view of crime control. This paradigm resulted in many efforts that have improved the criminal justice system, but its legitimacy declined, as indicated by laws reducing judicial discretion in sentencing and by the increasing role of private security. Efforts to restore the system's popular legitimacy need to recognize that contacts between citizens and criminal justice involve moments of truth that leave residues of experiences and feelings that affect legitimacy. Questions from audience, answers by the speaker, and introduction and overview of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) by NIJ Director Jeremy Travis