Fairness and Crime

Fairness and Crime

Author: Mark S. Davis

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-03-12

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0429679068

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Criminology, the discipline that informs our understanding of crime and justice, is facing an identity crisis. Long dominated by sociology’s view of crime and its causes, criminology has recently witnessed the rise of a new cadre of academics who feel free to explore other explanations. Fairness and Crime: A Theory offers a comprehensive new perspective on criminal behavior that will reinvigorate the field and help us understand why we consider some acts criminal as well as why and how society should respond to those acts. In this book, Mark S. Davis connects the challenges of understanding crime and administering justice to common norms that guide behavior in everyday life. He contends that the exchanges society defines as criminal work basically the way all other exchanges, and when offenders rob banks, bilk investors, or fabricate scientific data, they engage in a violation of fairness norms. Davis offers a theory that is informed by insights from game theory research, anthropology, law, industrial/organizational psychology, personality/social psychology, and sociology. He utilizes examples drawn from everyday life to illustrate the theory’s concepts in detail. Fairness and Crime: A Theory provides a platform from which to explore the purposes of the criminal justice system. What are we trying to accomplish when we prosecute criminal suspects? While one answer is that we are trying to vindicate the moral order and deter future offending, another is that we are attempting to restore equity for victims caused by offenders’ exploitative or retaliatory behavior. Davis contends that addressing unfairness is what the criminal justice system should be about. In rehabilitation, we should be trying to inculcate fairness norms where they are absent or where they have been compromised.


Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing

Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2004-04-06

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0309084334

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Because police are the most visible face of government power for most citizens, they are expected to deal effectively with crime and disorder and to be impartial. Producing justice through the fair, and restrained use of their authority. The standards by which the public judges police success have become more exacting and challenging. Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing explores police work in the new century. It replaces myths with research findings and provides recommendations for updated policy and practices to guide it. The book provides answers to the most basic questions: What do police do? It reviews how police work is organized, explores the expanding responsibilities of police, examines the increasing diversity among police employees, and discusses the complex interactions between officers and citizens. It also addresses such topics as community policing, use of force, racial profiling, and evaluates the success of common police techniques, such as focusing on crime "hot spots." It goes on to look at the issue of legitimacyâ€"how the public gets information about police work, and how police are viewed by different groups, and how police can gain community trust. Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing will be important to anyone concerned about police work: policy makers, administrators, educators, police supervisors and officers, journalists, and interested citizens.


Reforming Juvenile Justice

Reforming Juvenile Justice

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2013-05-22

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 0309278937

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Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.


Unfair

Unfair

Author: Adam Benforado

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0770437761

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A legal scholar exposes the psychological forces that undermine the American criminal justice system, arguing that unless hidden biases are addressed, social inequality will widen, and proposes reforms to prevent injustice and help achieve true equality before the law.


Comic Book Crime

Comic Book Crime

Author: Nickie D. Phillips

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2013-07-15

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0814764525

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Superman, Batman, Daredevil, and Wonder Woman are iconic cultural figures that embody values of order, fairness, justice, and retribution. Comic Book Crime digs deep into these and other celebrated characters, providing a comprehensive understanding of crime and justice in contemporary American comic books. This is a world where justice is delivered, where heroes save ordinary citizens from certain doom, where evil is easily identified and thwarted by powers far greater than mere mortals could possess. Nickie Phillips and Staci Strobl explore these representations and show that comic books, as a historically important American cultural medium, participate in both reflecting and shaping an American ideological identity that is often focused on ideas of the apocalypse, utopia, retribution, and nationalism. Through an analysis of approximately 200 comic books sold from 2002 to 2010, as well as several years of immersion in comic book fan culture, Phillips and Strobl reveal the kinds of themes and plots popular comics feature in a post-9/11 context. They discuss heroes’ calculations of “deathworthiness,” or who should be killed in meting out justice, and how these judgments have as much to do with the hero’s character as they do with the actions of the villains. This fascinating volume also analyzes how class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation are used to construct difference for both the heroes and the villains in ways that are both conservative and progressive. Engaging, sharp, and insightful, Comic Book Crime is a fresh take on the very meaning of truth, justice, and the American way.


Criminal Justice Forecasts of Risk

Criminal Justice Forecasts of Risk

Author: Richard Berk

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-04-06

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 1461430852

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Machine learning and nonparametric function estimation procedures can be effectively used in forecasting. One important and current application is used to make forecasts of “future dangerousness" to inform criminal justice decision. Examples include the decision to release an individual on parole, determination of the parole conditions, bail recommendations, and sentencing. Since the 1920s, "risk assessments" of various kinds have been used in parole hearings, but the current availability of large administrative data bases, inexpensive computing power, and developments in statistics and computer science have increased their accuracy and applicability. In this book, these developments are considered with particular emphasis on the statistical and computer science tools, under the rubric of supervised learning, that can dramatically improve these kinds of forecasts in criminal justice settings. The intended audience is researchers in the social sciences and data analysts in criminal justice agencies.


The Collapse of American Criminal Justice

The Collapse of American Criminal Justice

Author: William J. Stuntz

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-09-30

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0674051750

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Rule of law has vanished in America’s criminal justice system. Prosecutors decide whom to punish; most accused never face a jury; policing is inconsistent; plea bargaining is rampant; and draconian sentencing fills prisons with mostly minority defendants. A leading criminal law scholar looks to history for the roots of these problems—and solutions.


Americans View Crime and Justice

Americans View Crime and Justice

Author: Timothy J. Flanagan

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Published: 1996-06-10

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1452246491

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This book should be made a part of any college level library that features holdings in social sciences. . . . Americans View Crime and Justice presents a national public opinion survey and its results on the issues. These edited results of a survey conducted in 1995 examine such issues as gun control, capital punishment, and juvenile crime, offering public opinion along with the analyses of a panel of criminologists. --The Midwest Book Review Readable and carefully edited, Americans View Crime and Justice reports and analyzes results from the recent National Crime and Justice Survey (NCJS), the richest and most wide-ranging investigation of public opinion on crime and justice issues in more than a decade. Conducted in June 1995, the survey features responses from 1,000 adults in the United States on now-volatile issues such as fear of crime, gun control, capital punishment, juvenile crime, and additional related topics of national concern. A distinguished panel of criminologists analyzes the collected data in this volume to present a comprehensive report on the development and current status of public opinion on these timely issues. Divided into three sections—context and framework; findings; and opinion, policy, and science—this authoritative volume also analyzes the implications of the survey data. Providing interesting insights and timely quantification of Americans′ view of crime and justice, this volume offers a unique view of public opinion particularly important to the work of researchers, law enforcement personnel, policy makers, public officials, and students of criminology and criminal justice, law, and political science.


How Do Judges Decide?

How Do Judges Decide?

Author: Cassia Spohn

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2002-01-28

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780761987604

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The appropriate amount of punishment for a given crime is an issue that has been debated by scholars, philosophers and legal professionals since the beginning of civilizations. This book seeks to address this issue in all of its complexity by providing a comprehensive overview of the sentencing process in the United States. The book begins by discussing the overall concept of punishment and then proceeds to dissect individual aspects of punishment. Topics include: the sentencing process; responsibility of the judge; disparity and discrimination in sentencing; and sentencing reform. This book is an ideal text for introductory courses on the judicial system, criminal law, law and society. It can be an essential resource to help students understand patterns in the wide discretion and latitude given to judges when determining punishments within the framework of the United States judicial system.


No Equal Justice

No Equal Justice

Author: David Cole

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2010-10

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1459604199

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First published a decade ago, No Equal Justice is the seminal work on race- and class-based double standards in criminal justice. Hailed as a ''shocking and necessary book'' by The Economist, it has become the standard reference point for anyone trying to understand the fundamental inequalities in the American legal system. The book, written by constitutional law scholar and civil liberties advocate David Cole, was named the best nonfiction book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and the best book on an issue of national policy by the American Political Science Association. No Equal Justice examines subjects ranging from police behavior and jury selection to sentencing, and argues that our system does not merely fail to live up to the promise of equality, but actively requires double standards to operate. Such disparities, Cole argues, allow the privileged to enjoy constitutional protections from police power without paying the costs associated with extending those protections across the board to minorities and the poor. For this new, tenth-anniversary paperback edition, Cole has completely updated and revised the book, reflecting the substantial changes and developments that have occurred since first publication.