assignment
aalqa_10
ch_14_crime_and_punishment1.pptCrime
and Punishment
CH 14: Smith & Greenblatt
Private Wrongs, Public Justice
- Police enforce the laws and make arrests but they do not have the power to punish; that authority rests with the state.
- District attorneys initiate prosecutions; represent the state’s interests in criminal cases.
- If a case goes to trial, a jury decides the guilt or innocence of the accused.
- If found guilty, and most are, a penalty is given in accordance with relevant law.
- A defendant who believes he or she received an unfair trial may appeal.
- Criminal offenses are thought of as not just against an individual but against society as well.
- As a result, the state initiates punishment which can be imprisonment or probation.
- Punishment deemed “cruel and unusual” is not allowed under the Constitution but the death penalty is an option.
Crime in the States
•Crime rate is the number of serious offenses reported to police per 100,000 population, as tabulated by the FBI; FBI classifications: (1) violent crimes and (2) property crimes; crime rates have declined in 2000’s; vary greatly state to state and city to city; appear to be related to population growth, urbanization, and economic development.
•Juvenile offenders are generally processed in a separate juvenile court system regardless of the seriousness of their crimes; about 5% of all young violent offenders are tried as adults.
- Hate crimes are those offenses committed against individuals on the basis of their race/ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.
- Victimization rates are the number of people in surveys who say that they were victims of crime, in comparison to the population as a whole; many crimes go unreported.
Police Protection in the States
•State, county, and municipal governments are all directly involved in law enforcement; every state has a central law enforcement agency; size and influence of these agencies vary from state to state; make up a small number of law enforcement in the states; law enforcement in the nation is principally a local responsibility.
•3,083 sheriffs in the US; political office; every state but Rhode Island it is an elected position; principal enforcement and arresting officers in rural counties.
•Urban police (city police) departments are the most important instruments of law enforcement and public safety; vastly outnumber all other state and county law enforcement officers.
•More than 800,000 full-time police officers nationwide.
Police and Law Enforcement
•Police perform three important functions in urban society: (1) enforce laws, (2) keep the peace, and (3) furnish services; service function is far more common as is peacekeeping; police are on the frontline of society’s effort to resolve conflict.
•Common assumption that increased numbers of police officers and increased police expenditures can reduce crime rates; little firm evidence to support this assumption; many other factors that affect crime rates in cities.
•Most police activity is reactive; respond to something already happening; community policing more “proactive” approach.
Policing Models
- Professional policing model emphasizes professional relations with citizens, police independence, police in cars, and rapid responses to calls for service.
- Community policing model emphasizes police forming relationships with neighborhoods and engaging in collaborative problem solving as well as working relationships with local jurisdictions.
Community Policing 1990s - Today
- Broken windows policing model emphasizes maintaining public order, based on the theory that unattended disorder breeds crime.
- Compstat in the NYPD allowed the police to map crime in virtual real time, identify patterns or problems, and then shift resources and devise solutions.
- Today, nearly 70% of large police departments in the US use some form of this system.
- Anticrime efforts by private citizens has risen dramatically over the last decade; increase in private security guards; improved security devices; citizen patrol groups and town watch associations.
- Most crimes are never solved; “clearance rates”; nationwide, police solve about 13% of burglaries, 46% of violent crimes, and 62% of murders; only 47% of violent crimes and 40% of all property crimes are actually reported to the police.
Politics of Prosecution
•Enforcement of policies depends upon prosecutors (attorneys acting on behalf of the government in criminal cases); political pressures most obvious in the enforcement of controversial policies; public prosecutor sometimes called the district attorney or state’s attorney; 95% of all chief prosecutors are elected; often a stepping stone to higher political office.
•Political power of prosecutors comes from their discretion in deciding (1) whether or not to prosecute in criminal cases and (2) seriousness of charges; may decide to drop charges (“nol-pros”) if there is a lack of evidence; about ½ of all felony arrests result in dismissal of charges;
- Grand jury determines whether evidence presented to it by the prosecutor is sufficient to warrant the placing of a person on trial in a felony case; serves as a check on the district attorney; follow the recommendations of the prosecutors in over 98% of cases presented to them.
- About 90% of criminal cases brought to trial are disposed of by guilty pleas before a judge (plea bargaining), not trial by jury.
•Prisoner populations generally reflect the crime rate in the states; increased prison populations partially the result of states attempting to “get tough on crime”; legislating longer sentences and specifying mandatory minimum sentences for crimes.
•Prison not really meant to rehabilitate criminals; rate of recidivism (percent of convicts who return to prison for new crimes) very high.
•Indeterminate sentencing and discretion given to parole boards do not serve the goal of deterrence; deterrence is served by making prison sentences predictable and long. determinate sentences enacted by legislatures that limit the discretion of judges.
•Effect of longer sentences and higher crime rates is prison overcrowding; federal courts have determined that prison overcrowding is a violation of the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments.”
•As a result of overcrowding, states have resorted to early release programs; “85 percent solution” mandated that all convicted felons serve at least 85% of the length of their sentences; truth in sentencing laws (definitive punishments) leave judges no flexibility in assessing penalties; need to build more prisons but this is costly to taxpayers; twenty-four states have “three strikes you’re out” legislation for habitual offenders; parole and probation have proven ineffective in reducing crime.
Prison Nation
- The first aspect about the US system is how many people we incarcerate.
- In 2013, 2,220,300 million Americans were in jail or prison, an incarceration rate 5 times the average of the developed world.
- One estimate says that a ¼ of the World’s prisoners are housed in the US.
- Another 4,751,400 million Americans are on probation or parole.
- 41,000 prisoners in the US are serving life sentences.
- Prison use is expensive: in 2010, the US spent $80 billion on jails and prisons – about $280.00 per person.
US Correctional Population
Variation in punishment
- Political culture influences how states define and punish crime; Deep South imprisons people at a much higher rate than do other parts of the country.
- Political parties influence severity of punishment; states with more Democratic legislators tend to have less severe penalties than states with more Republican legislators.
- Geography and cultural differences.
Crime, Punishment, and the Essence of Modern America
- US prison system is rife with violence.
- Mental illness is common in the prison system; estimated 56% of state prisoners and 64% of local jail inmates suffer from mental health disorders; many are also addicted to drugs or alcohol; most prisons are not equipped to handle mental health issues of prisoners.
The Death Penalty
•Most heated debate in criminal justice today involves capital punishment (the death penalty); majority of Americans still favor the death penalty but support has slipped recently.
•Argument that the death penalty has been applied unequally; a large proportion of those executed have been poor, uneducated, and nonwhite.
•Innocence Protection Act passed to establish, implement, or improve an effective system for providing competent legal representation to indigents charged with capital offenses or sentenced to death.
- The death penalty is legal in 32 states today, the federal government, and the US military; 18 states do not have the death penalty.
- 1436 prisoners have been executed across the US since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976; 517 in the state of Texas alone.
- As of July 10, 2016, there were 2,905 death row inmates in the United States; in any single year 40-50 will be executed.
•In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that death sentences were being applied unfairly; violated 8th and 14th Amendments; after Furman case most states rewrote their death penalty laws to try to ensure fairness and uniformity of application.
•Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty but ruled it unconstitutional for the mentally handicapped (Atkins v. Virginia) or a juvenile (Roper v. Simmons); putting those persons to death is considered “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Race of Defendants Executed
| RACE OF DEFENDENTS EXECUTED | |||
| WHITE | BLACK | HISPANIC | OTHER |
| 797 | 495 | 120 | 24 |
| 55.5% | 34.5% | 8.4% | 1.7% |
| DEATH ROW INMATES BY RACE | |||
| 44% | 45% | 10% | 3% |
REGION
| EXECUTIONS BY REGION | ||||
| SOUTH | MIDWEST | WEST | NORTHEAST | TEXAS AND OKLAHOMA |
| 1169 | 178 | 85 | 4 | 649 |
EXECUTIONS BY METHOD SINCE 1976
| METHOD | NUMBER OF EXECUTIONS |
| LETHAL INJECTION | 1261 |
| ELECTROCUTION | 158 |
| GAS CHAMBER | 11 |
| HANGING | 3 |
| FIRING SQUAD | 3 |
LETHAL INJECTION
- 32 states plus the US government use lethal injection as their primary method; since 1976, 87% of all executions have been by lethal injection.
- Some states utilizing lethal injection have other methods available as backups.
- Though New Mexico and Connecticut (2012) had abolished the death penalty, their laws were not retroactive, leaving prisoners on the states’ death rows and their lethal injection protocols intact.
- However, in 2015 the Connecticut state Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional; the state has replaced the sentences with life without parole.
JUVENILES
- In 2005, the Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons struck down the death penalty for juveniles.
- 22 defendants had been executed for crimes committed as juveniles since 1976.
WOMEN
- There were 56 women on death row as of Dec. 31, 2014.
- This constitutes less than 2% of the total death row population. (NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Jan. 1, 2015).
- 16 women have been executed since 1976.
FINANCIAL COST OF THE DEATH PENALTY
- Defense costs for death penalty trials in Kansas averaged about $400,000 per case, compared to $100,000 per case when the death penalty was not sought (Kansas Judicial Council, 2014).
- A new study in California revealed that the cost of the death penalty in the state has been over $4 billion since 1978. Study considered pretrial and trial costs, costs of automatic appeals and state habeas corpus petitions, costs of federal habeas corpus appeals, and costs of incarceration on death row (Alarcon & Mitchell, 2011).
- In Maryland, an average death penalty case resulting in a death sentence costs approximately $3 million. The eventual costs to Maryland taxpayers for cases pursued 1978-1999 will be $186 million. Five executions have resulted. (Urban Institute, 2008).
- Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole. Based on the 44 executions Florida had carried out since 1976, that amounts to a cost of $24 million for each execution. (Palm Beach Post, January 4, 2000).
- The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level. (Duke University, May 1993).
- In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992).
SOURCE
- http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf
Decline in Death Penalty Sentences
Decline in Executions
Death Penalty Exonerations 2015
Death Sentences Imposed
Public Opinion
Source
- http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/YearEnd2015#graphic
Alternative Punishments
- Alternative punishments; early release of prisoners; goal is to return those inmates less likely to reoffend (decrease recidivism).
- Use of military style boot camps for juvenile offenders (proved unsuccessful).
- Drug courts have had more success – special tribunals that offer nonviolent drug offenders a chance at reduced or dismissed sentences for undergoing treatment or other rehabilitation; successful in both reducing recidivism and lowering long-term costs.
- Community or restorative justice movement emphasizes nontraditional punishment such as community service.
