Criminal Justice Perspectives Sociologists often speak of the purposes of social institutions as functions o Functions The goals served by a social institution Ex Schools serve the functions of education Manifest Functions The stated purposes of the institution o Ex Schools serve the manifest function of education through teaching students various academic subjects Latent Functions The unstated or hidden goals o Ex providing child care and controlling the workforce by otherwise occupying millions of young people Social Control The label given to the processes and structures that seek to limit rule breaking behavior or deviance o Most discussions of social control attempt to classify the different means by which conformity is achieved Types of social control o Formal social control Criminal Justice as a social control Includes those sanctions applied by some authorized body after a public finding of fault o Informal Social Control Refers to mechanisms that influence behavior without the need for public finding of fault or the use of group authorized sanctions o The primary function of criminal justice is social control o The components police courts and corrections Manifest functions controlling different kinds of deviance defined as crime mechanisms Most social control works through informal o Criminal Justice The formal institution designed to respond to deviance defined as crime Crime control is the primary purpose of the criminal justice system but also serves as other latent functions In general the criminal justice process is a formal social control mechanism The basic social control took available to agents of the criminal justice process is group authorized punishment o Community Justice An approach to social control as it sees the criminal process as an integral part of other community institutions Crime is a symptom of problems in communities The Comprehensive Communities Program 1994 o Based on the principles that communities must take a leadership role in combating crime and violence o Perspectives on Criminal Justice Criminal Justice has frequently been accused of being atheoretical or lacking a unifying perspective or set of perspectives in which operations of criminal justice agents can be understood They say criminal justice has not yet achieved theoretical integrity and coherence o Criminal Justice Theory Theory A logical explanation of something A statement about how things work to produce an outcome o Problem Finding or identifying the criminal justice theory is the complexity of the subject o Approaches to study criminal justice Disciplinary Each discipline contains as least an implicit theory of what causes or explains criminal justice A branch of study or learning Multidisciplinary Interdisciplinary Comparison Establish standards to which actual practices of justice agencies or an entire justice system are compared o Ex Suggested by packer through the application of ideal types of justice systems Crime control model operate on a presumption of guilt Due Process model vigorously protects human rights Process Focuses on case processing o Focus s less on the outcome and more on how the system runs Best Ex the American Bar Foundation Thematic Compares different points or aspects of the justice process with each other o Based on the various decisions that comprise the justice system decision The focus is on the characteristics of the Systems analyses of criminal justice Views the criminal justice process as a whole comprising the separate but interrelated parts of law enforcement courts and corrections o These work together to achieve the goal of crime control in our society o The big picture being more concerned with how their units of study fit into a larger environment System a set or collection of interrelated parts working together to achieve a common goal o Choosing an approach The book relies on the systems approach because of its flexibility Other approaches can be too restrictive Systems approach is broad enough to allow the analyst to employ any or all of the other perspectives within it Flexible enough to include many different disciplinary backgrounds o Forces the analyst to remember that many factors influence each decision o Provides a picture window through which to Systems theory and the systems approach view criminal justice Systems cannot be beaten because it reacts and adapts to maintain normal functioning The System of Criminal Justice Systems theory is sensitive to the interdependency of the part of the entire process o Walker 1992 observed that the systems perspective is the dominant scientific paradigm of criminal justice o Paradigm for understanding criminal justice Criminal Justice is complex involving much more than law enforcement The role of the police as a result is also very complex involving more than crime control The administration of justice is largely discretionary Discretionary decisions are not well controlled by law or The agencies of criminal justice are interrelated and form a formal rules system o Types of Systems For our purposes we need to only differentiate from open and closed systems Open Systems o Sensitive to its environment Closed Systems Often self contained General systems theory includes concepts of the whole system of the total system and of subsystems The whole system comprises everything Each system is composed of various parts o Subsystems A full system that is a component of o The nonsystem of Criminal Justice a larger system Robin 1984 classified criticisms of the systems approach to criminal justice into four categories Jurisdictional problems Differences in roles and goals Differenced in personnel Substantive issues o Criminal justice is not a model system Crime control is a manifest function or goal of each agency The criminal Justice process is an OPEN SYSTEM The environment of criminal justice is both material and ideological Material money personnel equipment and the like Ideological Comprises chiefly of values and beliefs about how the process should operate o Each system has three stages Input Throughput Output Raw Materials of the criminal justice system consists on criminal offenses o The system is affected by changes in nature and distribution of the crime o Examining Criminal Justice Study of criminal justice in the United States Themes in the approach to study criminal justice FIRST Understanding the notion of systems and understanding the operations of the justice process o Changes in the
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