Intro to Crim1/09/2013In every single society, criminal justice system that has and does exist. There are 3 main component of the criminal justice system:- Police – first arm of government as well as the most visible. Trust/Legitimacy is aproblem within police, it has been studied within segments and subsections of population and African-Americans have the most issues with trust and legitimacy followed by Latinos. Consequence of trust: not wanting to comply (may be animosity if white officer arrests black assailant). -So many different branches of police: local, state and federal. Local = TDP, FSUPD, Leon County Sheriff Department. All difference jurisdictions, but within the same county. State: Florida Highway Patrol, Fish and Wildlife, FDLE, DOT, Indian Police. Federal: FBI, CIA, DEA, ICE, DHS, IRS, SEC, Post Master, ATF, Border Patrol (CBP), TSA, Park Rangers, Dept of Education, Capital Police, DOC, Dept of Housing and Urban Development, Secret Service.Problems with having so many agencies: lack of communications between agencies from Federal companies to local or state ones. They compete for money and credit and to do that you must legitimize your agency which can cause some to withhold information from other agencies. A problem with TSA is that they are too big and yet they ask for more money every year to legitimize themselves. Another problem is that there is no security on the outside of an airport. All the security is located near the gates but not near the ticket counter. All of security is devoted to the middle of the airport not the front which leads to redundancy and a waste of resource.- Corrections – Main problem with correction: overcrowding which leads to redundancy, a waste of money. We have the largest prison population in the worldwhich leads to more money waste. For every person that we jail it is about $200 a day. Same problem as police: in order to get legitimatize, you need money. If the government has a budget of $10 million dollars, most of the time more than half the budget will go to the corrections which affects the other agencies such as education and infrastructure where we rank as a D-. We are deficient in 50,000+ bridges and they should not be used but most of the money goes to corrections.Money for education has also been affected: higher loan rates, less scholarship, eliminated subsidized loans, smaller pell grants. - Judiciary - Main problem: backlog by several hundreds thousand cases. Not enough money to support the judiciary system which backlogs cases. 95% of cases that enter the criminal justice system are pled. What’s the problem with that,to the individual level? You are essentially waiving your rights to a jury trial and other rights that are guaranteed under the constitution. We are the only country who uses this to such a maximum system. Most people that get arrested are usually less educated and young which leads to not understanding the criminal justice system. For example: when you drink and drive you have the right to not open your mouth when an officer asks you how many beers you have. You just sitthere and look pretty. Backlog occurs because of the lack of resources and resources are money. Public defenders make about $30-33 thousand dollars a year while paying $100,000s in loans. You would have to work around 60-80 hours a week with the average of a 100 case loads a week. What will happen to the 100 cases? The more cases you have, the less rights you have. Another component that needs to be addressed is the fact that public defenders have little or no experience when they start out, which adds to the correlations to the number of cases and the amount of time they will spend on a case. It’s a total disaster. We have a shit criminal justice system.1/11/2013Missed the first slideSources of Data:Nationally, crime statistics come from 2 major sources:- Uniform Crime Reports (also known as the UCR/NIBRS Program). Police dept. voluntarily report their crime stats which is the primary source of data that researches uses to track crime. The UCR is advantageous because anyone can access it, it is also very cheap/free. Another advantage is that it is a nation samplebecause it covers every state. – known as a secondary data. Though it is convenient, it comes at a cost. Police report voluntarily to the FBI which suppresses the actual number of crime. Another problem is that police dept do notreport crime the same nationwide. They can report a domestic violence case as a case of assault for example. If there is 5 burglaries that occur around the same time, only one will reported to the FBI. You have artificial suppression of the crime reports. Another disadvantage is that the UCR does not keep track of later education. If a case is labeled as a burglary and later disappears for whatever reason, it will still remain a burglary. There is no consistency in how this programworks.- National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) hopes to fill the gap of crimes that are not reported to the police. They call a random unbiased sample and it captures people that don’t report crime to the police, sometimes. The most under reported crime of all crimes is sexual assault/battery usually because the assailant is someone they know. If reported to the police, it is called survey data (secondary data). African-Americans are the most likely not to report crime with Hispanics asa close second. It also does not record people under the age of 12. Another problem with surveying a population is that people lie. They may lie to get through the survey quickly or they may embellish a story. Another problem is thatwe forget because we tend to have a shit memory. When you’re surveying people,as a researcher, you must jog their memory to increase response or even segmenting time (“since you graduated have you been a victim of crime” compared to “have you ever been a victim of crime”).- Additionally, date are available from professional organization such as PERF, offender self-reports, and regularly publicated journals.- Using secondary data is complicated because the researcher might have different interests than you own.UCR: Crime Index (NIBRS)- National Incident Based Reporting System- Incident driven rather than summary based- FBI started this program in 1998. City, county, and state and federal law enforcement agencies furnish- ?NIBRS- More detailed than old UCR- Takes in consideration: Place of occurrence, weapon used, type and value
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