importance of criminal justice system essay

The Importance of the Criminal Justice System and Today’s Professionals

In the current climate, there are many questions surrounding our criminal justice system. Some people have questioned the multiple roles that are played by our officers in blue. Some have defended the badge and others have called for reform and sweeping overhauls to city funding. No matter your political views, one thing is clear: The U.S. criminal justice system plays a big part in our society. Keeping communities safe should be the number one priority. If you want to help make your community a safer place, you may be considering a career in law enforcement or criminal justice.

At its core, there are three main components of the criminal justice system: law enforcement , courts , and corrections . Each of these branches must run properly to maintain law and order within a society. Now, more than ever, it is critical that we have educated, honest, and quality professionals working in these sectors. In this article, we will highlight the importance of the criminal justice system and all the professionals who are dedicated to standing up for justice.

Why is the Criminal Justice System Important?

The criminal justice system is designed to deliver “justice for all.” This means protecting the innocent, convicting criminals, and providing a fair justice process to help keep order across the country. In other words, it keeps our citizens safe. Without the criminal justice system, and all those who work within it, there might be havoc, violence, theft, and danger all around. But because of criminal justice professionals – those in law enforcement, corrections, and courts – we can trust that we can travel home, to work, and/or out in public, safely and securely.

Importance of Law Enforcement

Law enforcement officers are brave men and women that work to investigate crimes, gather and protect evidence, and respond to reports of various crimes. Officers are considered first responders. On a daily given basis, they respond to emergency calls, patrol assigned areas, conduct traffic stops, issue citations, and more. Police officers need to be fit – both physically and mentally – for their work. Officers may need to restrain suspects and even chase them on-foot. They also need to be prepared to see victims of violent crimes or fatal car accidents.

There is certainly a lot of stress involved in the work of law enforcement, and safety is always a big concern. But while it is a high-risk job, it is also one that offers plenty of reward. Successful police officers often feel pride in protecting their community. They are well respected, and are often considered role models for young children in a town or city. They also earn a decent living. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , police officers earned a median annual salary of $65,170 in 2019 – not including overtime.

Importance of Corrections

Correctional officers often face the same mix of stress and reward as those in law enforcement. The officers who patrol correctional institutions (i.e. prisons and jails) protect and guard the inmates and staff on-site. They work hard to maintain order and often need to restrain prisoners who get out of line. The role of correctional officer is important, not only in keeping criminals confined within prison walls, but in rehabilitating those who have committed crimes.

Importance of Court Professionals

The judicial branch of the court – and all the people within it – play an important role in keeping order across the United States. The court professionals, from judges to bailiffs, are responsible for understanding criminal cases, divulging the truth behind them, and deciding what should be done to correct it. Their goal is to provide a peaceful jurisdiction, to determine whether a person committed a crime and, if so, how they should be reprimanded.

Pursuing an Important Career with the Criminal Justice System

If you would like to pursue a career in criminal justice, you may be wondering where to start. While some of the jobs in the criminal justice system do not require much more than a high school diploma or equivalent, there are many benefits to earning a degree in criminal justice before beginning your career.

Studies show that officers who pursue an education are more effective at their job. According to a paper published in Police Quarterly back in 2010, police officers with a higher level of education are significantly less likely to use force during a civilian encounter than those with a high school-level education.

There are plenty of fields open to someone looking to start a career in criminal justice. Some of these career options include:

Border protection
Computer security
Corrections
Cybercrime investigation
Drug Enforcement Agency

Goodwin University has three programs that focus on the criminal justice system, and you can take your pick between pursuing these programs at the associate degree or bachelor’s degree level. You may choose between:

Criminal Justice (Associate Degree)
Public Safety and Security (Bachelor’s Degree)

There is no questioning the importance of the criminal justice system. It plays a crucial role in keeping our streets safe and our communities protected. It is also clear that the U.S. needs well-educated professionals to fill this important role. The only question left is: Which path will you pursue?

If you would like to learn more about why Goodwin University is a leading Criminal Justice School, call 800-889-3282 or click here to request more information .

Goodwin University is a nonprofit institution of higher education and is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), formerly known as the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). Goodwin University was founded in 1999, with the goal of serving a diverse student population with career-focused degree programs that lead to strong employment outcomes.

Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System

(21 reviews)

Alison S. Burke, Southern Oregon University

David E. Carter, Southern Oregon University

Brian Fedorek, Southern Oregon University

Tiffany L. Morey, Southern Oregon University

Lore Rutz-Burri, Southern Oregon University

Shanell Sanchez, Southern Oregon University

Publisher: Open Oregon Educational Resources

Language: English

Formats Available

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Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Darren Stocker, Professor, Cape Cod Community College on 5/27/24

The text covers a wide range of topics relative to the CRJS. It was nice to see the TOC cover the three pillars of criminal justice and further delineate police, courts, and corrections in a more detailed and comprehensive presentation. The... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

Content Accuracy rating: 5

Each of the topics provides an accurate depiction of criminal justice and is very inclusive of individuals, groups, communities, and agencies. Many of the examples provided align well with contemporary issues.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The text does a good job covering contemporary issues while including relevant historical events and applicable case law. There is a need to be inclusive of Treatment Courts, such as drug courts, mental health courts, and veterans courts. This should also include some mention of the drug court model that is currently employed throughout the country. The illustration of probation and parole was nicely done. The increased use of biometrics for identification should also be included.

Clarity rating: 5

Overall, this is an easy read and provides enough information to satisfy the student at the introductory level. The text does a great job creating a voice that portrays each of the three major topics, police, courts, and corrections.

Consistency rating: 5

Terminology was well defined and explained. There were good examples that supported this.

Modularity rating: 5

Each chapter is broken down into very readable sections, making the text comprehensive overall. Any of the sections would be seen as providing a solid foundation for a first-year student, or those interested in knowing more about criminal justice.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The organization of the text is very consistent with other introductory textbooks currently used at the college level. The information is clear and properly illustrated.

Interface rating: 5

There were no noted concerns with the means in which this is designed and presented. From an electronic presentation, it was very easy to navigate and find topics of direct interest.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

There were no issues that I was aware of, but I do think it should be formatted in APA. The use of "Understand" in the learning objectives is not consistent with the action verbs found in Bloom's Taxonomy.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I found nothing in the text to be offensive.

I would like to have seen the text formatted in APA. Some of the Critical Thinking Questions are not actually questions.

Reviewed by Meg Chrusciel, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin - Superior on 11/27/23

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

The textbook does an excellent job covering the wide array of topics relevant for an introductory level criminal justice class. Rather than digging in too deeply, this book really focuses on skimming the surface of each topic (as a strong introductory book should). What is especially noteworthy is the organization both overall and within chapters. There is a lot of information included and it can get confusing quickly without proper structure and organization. This book has both. Further, the use of text boxes including example and discussion questions are so helpful for the reader and could be useful for classroom discussions. I would like to see more inclusion and discussion of drugs embedded throughout, if not made into its own chapter. Drug policy has shaped so much of the criminal justice system, it seems to warrant a deeper discussion than is made here. It is worth noting, however, that the chapter dedicated to policy is one of the strengths of this textbook. The glossary is excellent, but an index page would be helpful as well.

There were no glaring inaccuracies in this book. It addresses some controversial subjects clearly and objectively.

Because this book takes such an objective stance, it sometimes brushes over, if not omits entirely, some key concepts related to crime (e.g., drug use, gender, race). This hurts its ability to remain timely, though its discussion of underlying systems will remain relevant. Because the book includes example boxes and news boxes, these will likely need updating as time goes on, but even when older, the examples still make for good discussions or thought pieces.

The clarity of this textbook is one of its greatest strengths. It avoids jargon without explaining and contextualizing the language. The definitions provided are written in simple terms and straightforward. The authors use terminology commonly used by practitioners and researchers and does so in a way that an undergraduate student can understand. It is easy to follow and clearly written.

There are difference in tone and writing style between chapters written by different authors, though they are subtle and likely will go unnoticed by most undergraduate readers. The authors did adopt similar language and word choice throughout which helps the book read more cohesively, while still capturing different perspectives.

The modular approach of this textbook is outstanding. The book is broken into sections which each include a number of chapters. Within each chapter there are subsections which further help structure the content in a way that is easy to follow and interpret. An added benefit is that the chapters feel a bit shorter (despite containing the same content and page length as a traditionally written chapter). This helps make the sections feel more manageable and likely less intimidating or overwhelming for students.

This textbook follows the traditional four section (overview, policing, courts, and corrections) structure of most introductory books do in this field. As noted above, its modularity makes this a very well organized book that is easy to follow and makes sense for someone brand new to learning in this field.

Interface rating: 4

The interface is excellent, however it is really unfortunate that there is no index that allows you to jump around more easily. It is a long scroll in its PDF format. The use of images, tables, charts, and other graphics is immensely useful and really strengthens this book.

I did not notice any grammatical errors, at least any that impeded my reading.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

I did not find any of this textbook to be culturally insensitive or offensive. However, it could make more effort at being inclusive and representing a more diverse breadth of experiences. In trying to avoid insensitivity, it almost felt afraid to talk about some of the more problematic realities of our CJ system (such as the racial disparity in mass incarceration).

This is a great alternative to the very expensive introductory books in our field. Just as with all textbooks, its needs some adjustments and contextualization by the course instructor to really be appropriate in a respective classroom, but it certainly offers a great tool for those teaching introduction to criminal justice courses.

Reviewed by Summer Diamond, Lecturer II, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on 12/21/22

I was impressed with the wide range of areas this text covers. It begins with the history and makes its way through to current issues, which I appreciate. The Learning Objectives and Critical Thinking questions at the beginning of each section are beneficial for students to know the "why's" of what they are learning and how to apply. I however, wish that there were more definitions in each section as this is an Introduction course and most students have not heard of a lot of these important terms being discussed.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

The content in the text is shown to be unbiased as it does come from different view points and authors. However, I found there to be some issues with accuracy of delivery of certain terms/subjects. Such as the dark figure or hidden figures of crime, the funnel effect and the delivery of jails and prisons. These particular points are crucial to teaching this topic and it was lacking in full details of each of these areas and only briefly touched the importance of them. Intro students and even higher levels need to know that jails and prisons are not interchangeable terms and although it did give a good list of the differences there could have been even more discussed to differentiate the two.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The topics covered in this text range from the history of the CJ System to the current times which will be easy to update with any current relative events dealing with these issues and topics as time progresses. The stats listed provided a historical context but also the current stats such as those listed in the probation section provide context to what is being discussed and can be kept up to date easily.

Clarity rating: 4

The text uses personal perspectives and stories from the authors and not strictly from an academic setting that helps student relate more to the subjects and understand the application of certain situations. This is helpful in not only a lecture setting but in online courses as well.

Consistency rating: 4

The text has a good flow between the chapters and subheadings. Since it is from more than one author some areas were less informative than others and could have had more content added.

This text will be easy to pick and choose certain topics to the relative sections being covered in a specific module of my course and will be a good addition to assigned readings.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The topics chosen are clear and in a logical order that is easy to read and assign to students.

The text is an easy read especially for undergraduate students.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

There were a few grammatical errors as the stories provided for better understanding were from personal perspective the tone and language used was appropriate for them.

The text seemed to provide more current issues/stories in the media and therefore more sensitive to certain hot topics that we are dealing with in our current society.

This will be a great up to date supplement to my current required textbook. It will be easy to assign students to read additional material without them feeling overwhelmed as the sections are shorter than most textbooks which students these days will appreciate.

Reviewed by Jessica Peterson, Assistant Professor, Southern Oregon University on 12/4/22

This book is a nice and easy-to-understand introduction to the criminal justice system. As a policing scholar, I wanted to see more of a historical and analytical overview of policing. Some chapters provided more detail/in-depth discussion than... read more

More than one perspective is provided in this book.

The field of criminal justice is constantly changing; at the time it was written, the stats/charts were recent. This text is still relevant and - as a new volume is soon to come out - will be a nice intro for students throughout the 2020s.

The book is written in a relatable tone - rather than strictly academic prose - that students appreciate.

The chapters are written by different individuals, so there are differences in tone throughout the book. However, there is consistency within chapters and components of the CJ system (e.g., cops, courts, corrections).

I was able to assign sections of the reading according to what I planned to cover, even if that meant dividing up chapters.

Again, it is relateable for undergraduate students.

This book reads pretty easily.

There are some noticeable grammatical issues, but the book is meant to provide undergrad students with an introduction to the system that is less academic in nature and more relatable. From that perspective, it does a nice job of remaining conversational.

Overall, the text - particularly certain chapters - tends to address diversity, inclusion, and the lack of attention to diverse perspectives throughout the study of criminology and the criminal justice system.

I survey my students on course materials and they appreciated the local examples and relatable content in the book. This book provides a brief overview of the US criminal justice system and allows a lot of room for faculty to lecture/cover what they would like to. Assigning readings does not feel overwhelming from a faculty perspective and allows you to provide other outside materials without overburdening students.

Reviewed by Frank D'Agostino, Professor, North Shore Community College on 11/3/22

This textbook covers all the major content areas required for an Intro to CJ class. Each content area is covered in a clear and comprehensive fashion. read more

This textbook covers all the major content areas required for an Intro to CJ class. Each content area is covered in a clear and comprehensive fashion.

The textbook cites legal sources which indicate that the text has been thoroughly researched and therefore is accurate.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

The textbook cites resources from within the last 10 years. My only comment here is that its unclear when the text was last revised, and in the Criminal Justice field the law/practice/procedures can change quite rapidly. This OER source may need to be updated.

Despite drawing on numerous authors, the textbook does flow and the prose is both lucid and accounts for any jargon used in the criminal justice field. e.g. specific terms like a "wobbler" (a criminal act in CA that could be charged as a misdemeanor or a felony) are clearly explained. I would give this category a 4.5 if allowed to.

Consistency can be an issue when relying on numerous authors (see comment to Clarity above) but this text does a good job blending the writing styles as well as the terminology/framework. Not an easy task when doing an overview of an entity as vast as the American criminal justice system. Once again, I would give this category a 4.5 if allowed to.

Perhaps the greatest strength/asset of this text is the ease within which the reader can move between different topics and subtopics. This makes initial reading easier, but also makes reviewing text passages (say while preparing an assignment or studying for a quiz/test) also quite facile.

This text employs the classic organization for an Intro to CJ textbook. In short, it works, and if it isn't broke then don't fix it!

I didn't find many interface issues, most links work well, and moving back into the text was efficient, in that it brought you back to the place in the text you previously were. However, I did find that in some cases additional software was required. For example, in 7.3 the structure courts section, the 360° virtual campus tour of The U.S. Supreme Court requires the Adobe Flash Player. Perhaps this requirement is disclosed to the user up front, but if it isn't, I suggest that the authors do so.

There were no grammatical errors that I found. Of course, I am not an English teacher!

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

While I don't think the text is offensive, it does miss the opportunity to examine cultural, as well as racial, gender and ethnic, issues in a more detailed and up to date manner. For example, in 5.9 Strain Theories, 5.10 Learning Theories, 5.11 Control Theories of crime, the author relies on the seminal works to explain the topics, but misses on the opportunity to use more recent research. Although, in 5.12 other criminological theories, the author does briefly mention critical thoeries.

This is a solid Intro to CJ book. While I didn't see an associated test/question bank, I assume there is one available in the Library (perhaps?) I would suggest including some more recent cases/examples from media sources to make the text more relevant to the reader. Otherwise, great job.

Reviewed by Bahiyyah Muhammad, Associate Professor of Criminology, Howard University on 1/31/22

This book cover an array of different topics connected to the American criminal legal enterprise. Readers can find all traditional topics that one would cover in an entry level criminal Justice course. For example, Introduction to Criminal Justice or Principles of Criminal Justice. Students who use this text will be introduced to all the classical and traditional works needed to comprehensively understand the legal system.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The content for this text is presented in an unbiased manner. Each of the chapters are written in prose that are easy to comprehend for dual-enrollment high school students and early year college students.

This book has relevance for now and can be used for the future. The historical components discussed about the criminal system have relevance for the contemporary and will still be relevant as the system progresses forward. The topics in each chapter serve to frame and contextualize the major themes of the system. Ultimately, these (police, courts and corrections) can be taught during any timeframe.

The text is very clear. It is written using short sentences, examples and without subject matter expert jargon. It is written in a format that many will be able to understand without confusion. Each chapter is broken into sub-sections. This makes the content easy to digest. It also gives readers an opportunity to gain full clarity before moving into a new topic. The chapter exercises are clear and connect to real experiences. This helps readers to triangulate course information with real life. This is also helpful because it allows the instructor/course facilitator to bring in additional resources to help explain concepts further.

Each chapter follows the same layout. This helps young readers and growing scholars know exactly what to expect in each section through the text.

The textbook modularity is GREAT! The information is broken in smaller topical sections that contribute to the larger argument. This is helpful for both the reader and instructor. This modularity helped me to break the syllabus into weekly content that was consist throughout the semester. With this format student success in the course was increased. Because they knew how much they needed to read each week in order to complete each section. The book format allows consistency in contact and number of reading pages.

The organization of the book flows logically.

Images and chart are available throughout the text. This is helpful for visual readers.

There were no grammatical errors that students brought up. I also did not pick up on any of these kinds of errors.

This text provides culturally relevant content. Students in evaluating the course requested to have more of such content. Specifically, to highlight the critical ways in which race intersects with the criminal legal system.

I have used this book for 3 semesters. It has worked well in my large and small classes. I have one section of Principles of criminal Justice with 50 students. I have another with 300 students. This book is a good choice for teaching introductory criminal legal/criminology courses.

Reviewed by Wendi Babst, Instructor, Clackamas Community College on 1/2/22

The text is an excellent introduction to a wide range of topics. The structure of the text walks the reader through the topics and explains the concepts in simple terms which are appropriate for students who are beginning a criminal justice course of study or those who are exploring the discipline. The index and glossary are adequate for navigating the information in each section.

I found the information to be accurate and unbiased. As an Oregon-based educator, I may not have noted information that was not applicable to another jurisdiction as was noted by other reviewers.

I appreciate that the information is succinct and covers the basics of each topic leaving room for the adopter to supplement with their own online or other content. There are several links to some good resources that are not controlled by the author, and I have some concern they may become inactive or direct students to the wrong information in the future. I know this can be a frustration for students. As an instructor using an OER textbook, I would anticipate spending time proofing these links each time I use the textbook and providing alternatives as needed. I would expect most instructors are constantly looking for current content to keep up to date with legal changes and to keep students engaged, so using this text as a starting point for each topic is a great way to compliment other more current and easily updated resources, such as internet content.

The format of the text should allow for updates to be easily implemented. I recognize it is a huge undertaking to maintain updates, but the basic framework is solid, and this would greatly expand the shelf-life of the textbook.

I found the textbook to be well-written and easy to understand. There are simple definitions for most technical terms, and these are also referenced in the glossary. The textbook is written in a conversational style that I believe students will find appealing. I know some reviewers commented about the informal style taking away from the credibility of the text, but in a time when textbook publishers are creating comic book format materials, there is clearly an expressed desire for more informal reference material. This textbook strikes a good balance between authority and approachability I believe my students will appreciate.

Overall, the material is consistent throughout the text, but it is clear there are different authors for each section. There are subtle differences in the style of each author, but this allows for students to understand they are getting some diversity of input and it also reflects the author for each topic has specific expertise in that area which lends to the credibility of the information.

Each section is very short and easy to follow. The modules were organized well and flowed nicely from topic to topic. Each chapter was labeled, and the sub-categories broke down the material well making it easy to locate information quickly.

The topics were presented in a clear and logical fashion. The learning objectives were clearly stated and met in the content of each section.

The layout of the text is simple with limited graphics and color use. This works well for use with accessibility technology. There were some graphics that appeared distorted but were still readable. I did note at least one graph that didn’t contain any date range information which was bit confusing, but overall, the graphics worked well and were well labeled.

I noted a few grammatical errors in the text sections and the glossary, but none that greatly impacted the content.

The text provides a good balance of examples that reflect the diversity of the community. It was especially refreshing to have the perspective of a female law enforcement officer in the policing section. There was nothing culturally insensitive or offensive in the text.

This is an excellent basic text for use in course providing an overview of the U.S. criminal justice system, but sections also provide an excellent basic framework for other more in-depth courses focusing on a particular topic or topics. My hope is to adopt sections of this textbook for focused courses on corrections and juvenile justice which will necessitate supplementing other references for most topics, but this is one of the best examples of an OER criminal justice text I have found. I am very appreciative of the work the professors at SOU put into this project.

Reviewed by Scott Bushway, Adjunct Professor of Criminal Justice, Massachusetts Bay Community College on 5/25/21

This text explains how a criminal case proceeds through the criminal justice system very effectively. Each of the three components of the criminal justice system - law enforcement, courts, and corrections - is fully covered. It explains the importance of data collection to measure crime, which is essential to effective resource deployment. The court system is explained in fairly simple terms for a rather complex subject. Jurisdiction, court structure, appeal process, and court staff are all described in detail. The chapters covering the court begin with a brief history of the court system, including the history and differences between prisons and jails, including the different types of each. Restorative justice is highlighted as well as alternatives to incarceration such as diversion, and community corrections. As a final topic, the components of juvenile justice are well defined, which include rehabilitation and the juvenile justice and delinquency prevention act of 1974.

Alison Burke, Ph.D. is co-author with five other subject matter experts who have provided research-based analysis of each subject.

This textbook is relevant to today's criminal justice system and addresses current issues and challenges with each component of the criminal justice system.

The textbook is written in such a way as to address each subject with clear and concise language. Each chapter is formatted so that each topic is easily located and easily explained.

There do not appear to be any contradictions of material.

This book is easy to navigate as each chapter is properly titled with each sub-section formatted clearly.

The text begins with an overview of the criminal justice system. Then, methodically addresses crime, criminal justice policy, and policing before moving into the second component of the criminal justice system, courts. The final sections address the third component of the criminal justice system, which is corrections.

There is nothing in the textbook to distract or confuse the reader.

I found no grammatical errors in this book.

This textbook address the criminal justice system, which is factual, therefore not culturally insensitive or offense.

Reviewed by Ziwei Qi, Assistant Professor, Fort Hays State University on 5/22/21

The overall structure of the textbook is comprehensive. The authors strategically design the book for readers who needs an overall introduction understanding on the American criminal justice system. It includes an overview on crime, deviance, and justice system, scientific measurement on crime and crime trend, legal aspects of the criminal/procedure laws, sociopolitical impact on legal policy, criminological theories, the three pillars of the criminal justice system (i.e., policing, court, and correction), and the juvenile justice system. In each of these sections, the authors were able to provide both case studies and statistical information to the readers. One drawback of the content is its information can be outdated due to some statistics were in 2017.

The information presented in the current textbook was accurate with empirical and theoretical evidences as backup.

As previously mentioned, the authors could update some of the statistical analysis and research results by incorporating most recent research. While updating the information, the authors could also consider to add an additional chapter on how the Covid-19 pandemic shifted the dynamic of criminal justice system.

The charity level of the current textbook was overall good. In some chapters, such as criminal trial procedure chapter, authors can consider to incorporate infographic for beginning learners.

Overall the text is internally consistent with minor terms discrepancies, which may due to multiple authorships.

Modularity rating: 4

The authors had done an excellent job in modularity. Each section has its own theme and content, and it can be taught in segment.

The organization of the current text is good with very detailed and professional edits in the fine details of the content matter.

The interface of the current text is good.

No grammatical errors were noticed.

No cultural insensitivity was detected.

I believe this is a great book for beginners in criminal justice, law, and political sciences. I applaud that the authors can combine both theoretical and empirical context in the current book.

Reviewed by Brittany Ripper, Adjunct Professor, American University on 2/26/21, updated 3/23/21

The book covered the core components of law enforcement, courts, and corrections. However, greater detail was needed in certain areas. For example, the book listed defenses to a criminal charge, but did not provide explanations of these defenses.... read more

Overall, the content is accurate, but key details are missing in certain chapters. For example, the book tells readers that judges sentence individuals convicted of a crime. While that is true in most cases, Kentucky still has jury sentencing, and Virginia only recently abolished this practice. Moreover, juries are used in death penalty cases. In regard to bias, one author claims that the defense attorney in the Ford Pinto homicide trial won the case because he was friends with the judge. This case could have been described in a more neutral way.

Many current events and pop culture references are made. These events were usually contained within text boxes, so they could be easily updated over time.

Clarity rating: 3

The book needs a significant amount of editing. There are several sentences that are missing words, particularly in the first few chapters. Jargon like "district attorney" and "Schedule I" is sometimes used without explanation. Bolded terms do not have clear definitions.

Consistency rating: 3

Chapters are written by individual authors and there is no standard chapter organizational framework.

I would definitely recommend assigning particular sections of this textbook, as opposed to assigning the textbook in its entirety. Each chapter is broken down into digestible sections.

The book is appropriately organized by topic.

Interface rating: 3

Pictures included within the text are often fuzzy or unusually large. Additionally, there is inconsistent use of text boxes separating chunks of text from the main body of the chapter. Several links to websites are broken.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

There are grammatical errors throughout the book, which affects its credibility and could inhibit students' learning.

The book does not go out of its way to be inclusive, but there are no insensitive or offensive statements within it. It would be nice if the term "offender" was replaced with "accused" or "individual convicted of a crime."

The chapters on policing are wonderful and full of practical information. They are written by a former police officer who discusses her firsthand experience. I will likely be using the chapter on police recruitment in my future criminal justice courses.

Reviewed by Riane Bolin, Assistant Professor , Radford University on 1/29/20

This textbook is comparable to most other introduction textbooks on the market in terms of the content. However, one topic included in this textbook that is often integrated into other chapters is criminal justice policy. I appreciate that there is a chapter specifically devoted to this topic as its importance is often understated in other texts. I also appreciate that there is a whole chapter on criminological theories as well. Several texts will either exclude this topic or will integrate it within another chapter, often not giving it the attention that it deserves.

I did not find any inaccuracies within the content. However, there are a couple areas throughout the text that I believe would benefit from further elaboration and explanation.

The textbook provides the "nuts and bolts" of the criminal justice system, including its history, development, and current issues. With that being said, the only information that will need to be updated with some frequency is the current issues facing the system and changes to the system as well as any current events and examples. This task should be relatively easy and straightforward and could be done every so often as opposed to yearly.

The book is easy to read and I think the content will be easily digestible for undergraduate students. The authors write in a conversational manner which I believe will be appealing to students. Unnecessary academic jargon is avoided and key terms are defined in ways in which someone new to criminal justice would be able to understand.

Overall, the text is relatively consistent in terms of terminology. Framework, on the other hand, varies by author. Some authors include lots of activities and external resources, while others include few to none. Another inconsistency is the tone and writing style of the different chapters. Some authors have a different writing style than others. A final inconsistency, which may not be of great concern, is the subsection length. There are some chapters (and even subsections) that are more detailed than others. One recommendation I would have for the authors is to make each subsection relatively equal in length. Most sections take up 3-4 pages, but there are some sections that are covered across 6-7 pages. This is not as big of a deal if the student has the print version, but online, the larger sections require a lot of scrolling, which may discourage them from reading all of the content.

The authors have done an excellent job of dividing each chapter into small reading sections. It would be very easy for a professor to tailor the textbook readings to meet the needs of how they teach the course.

The topics are presented in a logical and clear fashion and mirror the way in which information is presented in similar texts. However, I would encourage the authors to provide a more detailed table of contents for the online book. While the print version of the textbook, provides a detailed table of contents the online version provides only the title chapters.

Overall, I encountered few significant interface issues. However, there were places where the spacing was weird or there were inconsistencies in font type. There were also a few images that appeared distorted. In some cases, this was likely due to the age and quality of the original picture. Some graphs were also distorted (i.e., that appeared stretched out and disproportionate). While I did not click on every link available, I clicked on several and did not encounter any broken links.

Grammatical Errors rating: 2

I found a number of grammatical and typographical errors throughout. While most were minor and would not inhibit the student from understanding the information that was being communicated, they were still distracting. Also, there were numerous formatting errors with the references.

I did not find any of the content to be culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. However, examples from the book focus a lot on Oregon. While I understand this is where the authors are currently working, for those outside of Oregon, it would be nice to have examples from a wide variety of locations. There could be a more detailed discussion of the impact of race and gender within the criminal justice system.

This book has a number of strengths including that it is written in a manner in which an undergraduate or someone new to criminal justice would understand, it includes a number of links to current events and stories that could be used for class discussion, student activities are provided, and, most importantly, it covers the necessary content. However, there are some areas in which the book could be improved. Having a consistent tone throughout regardless of the author would make the book easier to read. Further, a thorough editing of the text is needed as there are a number of grammatical and typographical errors throughout. Additionally, adding more examples from states other than Oregon would make it more marketable to professors working in other states. Overall, I think the content is there, it just needs some editing and formatting.

Reviewed by Zerita Hall, Senior Lecturer, University of Texas at Arlington on 1/28/20

The authors of this book; "Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System", did a great job. Comparing it to my required textbook for purchase by other authors, this book covered most of the material and is comprehensive. This book is cultural and systemic relative to the topics of today. The glossary could be a little more expansive, but overall - good job. Although there is no index, considering this book is online a simple navigation of tabs - students can easily find what they are looking for.

Given the introductory text, it can be concluded that this book is unbiased. Dealing with Criminal Justice and its topics, I have it easy for authors to speak more from their view point than stats and facts. This book, however, gives actually data on issues that matter. For instance, in Chapter 6-Stereotypes in Policing; this could be guarded as opinion, but in this industry, they state the facts of groups as a whole. The reader can get a more realistic sense of how to view possible perpetrators as well as the police.

There is relevant information in the text. With current insight on gangs, juveniles, examples of immigration and genocide, to statistics, interviewing skills of police, surveys/studies - advances and updates to this text can easily be made. The examples given are contextualized so that whatever current event is going on a student will get the point being made. Additionally, because of the examples with hyperlinks, students/instructors can link more examples.

This book is an easy read and easy to follow and understand. Due to the nature of the criminal justice field, our terminology is steady and so is theirs throughout the book.

Although some chapters could have been flushed out a little more, there is linear connection quantity and quality among the chapters. Content is effective applicable.

The text is broken down into small blocks within the titles. This makes for easy reading and following. Certain chapters are referenced in other chapters and it was easy to understand the thought process behind it. I do think, certain topics could have been more defined in terms of identifying more content for example sake.

The topics in this text are presented in a logical, clear an linear fashion, which is very helpful to the instructor and student. Looking specifically at the Wedding Cake Model as an example, the authors expressed clear descriptions, pictures and explanations of content. Other topics flow well also.

All images checked- charts, graphs, hyperlinks, gray-text boxes pink-text boxes and pictures are problem-free. Pictures such as examples of classical conditioning is animated and well-placed in such a way, a student can easily understand the concepts presented.

I found no grammatical errors in this text. The book is well written and formatted.

I found this textbook is not to be culturally insensitive or offensive. The examples and photos used of races, ethnicities and backgrounds are appropriate and relevant to the subject and content being presented. Considering multiple authors on this project, a good variety of perspectives are included in the text. The student learns from a varied perspective throughout the text.

Overall, good textbook, I plan to use it along with other resources.

Reviewed by Jennifer Dannels, Lead Instructor - Criminal Justice/Paralegal Studies , Northshore Technical Community College on 12/5/19

Considering this is an introductory course, I thought this textbook did a nice job of covering a vast amount of material. I really liked how the book covered policy - particularly how and why criminal justice policies are created and change. The textbook I am currently using does not cover fake news, myths, and how crime is portrayed in the media at all - so I am happy to see these topics covered here and I think my students will find these topics interesting as well.

While overall comprehensive for an introductory course, I did not see coverage of the following topics within each main category: (1) Police - their various duties including predicting crime through Compstat/crime mapping; 4th Amendment and how it relates to search/seizures and warrants; and police interrogations/Miranda warnings; (2) Courts - types of evidence, types of witnesses (lay and expert), and juries; (3) Corrections - eras of corrections and prison life/culture itself - such as prisoner's rights, security threat groups, discipline in prison, and grievance procedures. While I do think these topics should have been briefly mentioned, I do realize that other Criminal Justice courses cover these topics in great detail (i.e., Police Systems and Practices, Judicial Processes, and Introduction to Corrections). Thus, students will eventually cover these materials in great depth so these omissions do not necessarily concern me. However, I also would have like to seen a small section on drugs, terrorism, and cybercrime, in addition to a brief history of crime in the United States (i.e., prohibition and organized crime, increase in violent crime in 1960's/1970's, War on Drugs in 1980's, rise of white-collar crime and terrorism, etc.)

I also thought that some topics, while covered/mentioned, could have used just a bit more coverage - most notably, the pretrial (bail, arraingment, etc.) and criminal trial process itself. While briefly described in Chapter 1, I will probably spend a bit more time on this in my classes given that it provides a good overview of how the criminal justice system actually works. While this text dedicates a good amount of coverage to theory and policy, I thought it could have provided a bit more detail on the actual process itself. I also thought the "use of force" section was too short, but it would be easy enough for an instructor to find current examples in the news to discuss in class in more detail.

I am not aware of any substantive errors. Most errors I saw were grammatical and in the glossary (i.e., descriptions of new and older generation jails). Nothing major though.

This book has lots of references to current events which I think the students will find relatable. Of course, more relative events will continue to occur -- but the instructor will just have to be mindful of this fact and update as they teach the course. This is no different than with any other Criminal Justice textbook.

The writing was clear and to the point with lots of examples to help demonstrate concepts. Some reviewers found the text a bit too informal, but I think students will appreciate the straight-forward language.

The overall framework of each chapter was consistent, although the "voice" of the author differs between chapters. Some authors are more formal than others -- but I think it still flows nicely and works.

I really like how the chapters were divided up into smaller sections, making it easy to skip sections, add sections, or vary the order. Each section was also a relatively short size which makes it easier for students to identify the issues or put their notes into outline formats.

The topics are presented in a logical and clear fashion. Each chapter begins with learning objectives and critical thinking questions which could easily be turned into interesting assignments and class discussions.

I did not experience any interface or navigation issues. The Table of Contents made it easy to jump from section to section.

Overall, I did not see many grammatical errors (with the exception of a few minor grammar issues in the glossary).

The text was not culturally insensitive or offensive. While race and gender issues may not have been directly addressed in its own section, I think these issues can be easily inserted into other sections (i.e., police shootings, use of force, community policing, sentencing, death penalty, etc.).

Overall, I really like this text (more so than the book I am currently using), and I plan to recommend that my department adopt it. The writing is clear and will be easy for students to read and comprehend. I also think the examples and references to recent events will allow students to relate to the material and realize the significance of these events to their everyday lives. This textbook also includes several interesting assignments throughout the text that instructors can choose to assign (or not). I'm looking forward to developing my Intro to Criminal Justice course using this book. While some reviewers wished to see more supplemental material, the lack of it does not bother me. I have my own teaching style, and I like to create my own presentations/assignments/quizzes/exams anyway. This book gives me a great foundation on which to build.

Reviewed by Katie Cali, Instructor of Sociology and Criminal Justice , Northshore Technical Community College on 11/15/19

This textbook covers the major topics need for an Introduction to Criminal Justice course. Topics are not explained in deep detail, but seems to be decent descriptions for an introductory level course. I would like to see this textbook expanded to include a few more chapters, such as terrorism, cybercrime and drugs. Nonetheless, the book does seem to be written in a way that should be comprehensible for Intro-level students.

As far as I could tell from my readings, the information and content matter appears to be accurate; however, as stated above, the content could use a little extra clarity.

Currently, the textbook is up-to-date. As with all books, as new events emerge the book may need to be updated to accurately represent the issues in society. I like the "Current Issues" displayed in the text. This text would benefit from writing with inclusion to other races, nationalities, genders, sexual orientations, etc. As a Sociologist with a Criminal Justice background, I have found the best way to discuss the CJ system is by presenting the various experiences from a variety of lifestyles. Nonetheless, the style of the textbook provides a relatively easy structure for making updates/additions to the text.

Academic jargon is explained enough to educate students in an introductory course, though some areas lack crucial details to ensure the understanding. As mentioned before, some of the examples and/or topics could use a little more detail or explanation to make the text have a higher clarity level. I find the style of the writing interesting for a textbook, as the authors refer to themselves in parts of the text. However, this style of writing may attract the readers attention while providing a connection between the book and the students in a way that other books cannot.

I find the textbook to be consistent, even if the writing style of the various authors are not consistent. The additional incepts and discussion topics help to promote a consistent structure for the text.

I find the modular structure of the textbook to be concise and beneficial to the instructors as well as the students. The clearly defined learning objective and the questions to ponder engage the reader and prepares the brain for the topic at hand.

I find this textbook to be well organized. The topics are presented in a logical and clear fashion. One may easily navigate themselves through the book with little to no struggle. Organized similar to other Introduction textbooks.

Throughout my use of this book, I did not find any major interface issues to be concerned about. Images were clear and organized and the book was very easy to navigate.

I did see a few minor grammatical errors. Majority of the issues were in the glossary. One more editing session would clear these issues right up.

During this review, I did not find culturally offensive or insensitive writing. However, I do feel this textbook needs to strength its level of inclusion, as mentioned earlier. This textbook seems to obviously be written from a white perspective and could use diversity to culturally enhance this text.

As a pioneer into the OER world, I believe this textbook is a great beginning, As with all pieces of work, there is definitely room to grow, which could enhance the overall experience from this text significantly. I plan to recommend this textbook to the department as a possible adoption.

Reviewed by Chris Palmore, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Louisiana at Lafayette on 11/11/19

The text does a good job of covering the main issues of the American criminal justice system. There are chapters for the main topics, including crime, measuring crime, policing, courts, and corrections. There is also an interesting section on victimization, which many texts do not cover. Missing potential chapters like drugs and crime, mental health and crime, terrorism, bias-motivated crimes, cybercrimes, and comparative criminal justice. There is a discussion of Public Policy, which is great and something that I have not seen in any introductory text so far.

I did not see any accuracy issues, minus a few grammatical errors.

The text's omission of key social factors related to crime (i.e., race, sex) hurt the overall rating of content relevance. However, the organization of the text makes it so additions can be made with ease. The current issues boxes will need to be updated as time goes on, but that is also something that can be done easily. Some of the references were specific to a state, so a more multi-state approach could enhance the impact of the text.

The writing is clear and easy to understand. Jargon and technical terms are defined in easy to understand language. Overall, the authors used simplistic language suitable for an introductory course in Criminal Justice.

Overall the writing and framework were consistent throughout the chapters. It was a little clear that different people wrote different chapters by writing style, but I'm not sure how much that would affect the overall consistency of the text or if students would notice such a thing. Each module is set up similarly, and the overall critical framework remains in each section.

The modularity of the text is a strong point. Each section can be broken down into smaller chunks and lessons. The flow of information was nice and it laid out clear learning objectives from the start of each chapter. I also thought the critical thinking questions at the beginning of each section were a nice introduction to each module and got me thinking about the material prior to reading the material.

I thought the text was logically organized and easy to follow. Similar to other introductory texts.

I really liked the interface of the text. All the sources and links worked on my PC, but I did not attempt to pull them up on my phone or tablet. Overall, the interface made it really easy to navigate. The table of contents opened up into sections, which made skipping through to relevant sections easy.

Minor grammatical mistakes and would benefit from some copyediting.

The text is inclusive and does not alienate groups or individuals with specific backgrounds, however, it also pushes some of these major issues aside.

I did not see any teaching resources available with the text. Although many professors already have some made up, having some come with the text ensures that all the information is relevant. I thought this was a pretty good introductory criminal justice text and am considering adopting this for my Summer 2020 course.

Reviewed by Ami Stearns, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Louisiana at Lafayette on 11/11/19

The textbook covers many similar topics as other introductory textbooks in the field, particularly in the areas of courts, corrections, and police. However, it lacks attention to "emerging crimes" (global terrorism, cybercrime, hate crime) and victimization. While some of these concepts are introduced, such as victim typologies in Ch 1, I believe emerging crimes and victimization should be stand-alone chapters. The Theory chapter does not prioritize or attend to feminist criminology, which should be added to the canon of Very Important Theories. Further, the book could benefit from either a chapter introducing concepts of intersectionality issues, or at least incorporate concepts of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and ability, as these identities relate to crime and punishment, among the existing content. The chapters are short and concise, packing in critical information along with relevant links to outside media, outside readings, critical thinking exercises, and incorporation of current events/news to bring relevancy to the content. Overall, I believe the book is comprehensive enough for an introductory level class, although I wish it had supplemental materials for instructors.

I did not see any factual errors, yet much of the content and examples are geared toward Oregon culture, laws, and customs, which I know little about. I'm not sure if this is a matter of Accuracy, but please, please, please do not link to Wikipedia. To me, this is the book's most significant drawback. Wikipedia is not used as an academic source for papers, it should not be used as even a source of information about people, places, or phenomena. This reliance on Wikipedia negatively impacts the validity of the entire textbook.

The incorporation of news items as examples and links to online media, along with attention to current events in the content, means this text is relevant and up to date. If I had to complain, the textbook authors should make the examples more inclusive of the national criminal justice system overall, rather than concentrating on Oregon. As far as longevity, I have concerns about web links that may change, and wonder if the book would be better served by including links for each chapter as part of supplemental materials, as it is far easier to update supplemental materials than an entire textbook. While it is difficult to publish a textbook that remains up to date without a tremendous yearly effort, yet this book will certainly be relevant for the next few years.

The text is very accessible for first year university students, but sometimes the writing is so casual, it would be better suited to, for example, a blog. I have gone back and forth on my opinion about this characteristic of the textbook's language. On one hand, I really do not like the casual writing because it may diminish the validity of the content. On the other hand, the casual writing does lend an air of having a conversation with the reader, rather than relying on traditional textbooks' standard one-way information delivery. After considering the pros and cons, I believe that the casual writing helps distinguish this textbook from others in the field that are extremely dry (and they are all, almost without fail, extremely dry), and that this should be considered a strength. It is a very different approach to communicating with students and I would be interested to assess students' reactions to the writing style.

The presentation of content is consistent among chapters, but I do notice that some of the writers are more casual than others, so that there are stylistic differences among chapters, though it is slight. For example, some chapters use the "I" voice and some do not. Perhaps this brings up a teachable moment in class, though. I often point out to students that textbooks are not created in a vacuum, but rather are a product of real people. Some authors structure the chapters differently, which may be problematic for students who need consistency.

The modules are self contained and very easy to read. A significant strength of this book are the short modules. These are beneficial to work with students' short attention spans.

The book is organized, logical, and clear. The organization of information is similar to many other introductory textbooks in the field.

The textbook is extremely easy to navigate. I did not see any distortion problems on my monitor. Distortion may occur on different monitors, or on an e-reader, etc.

There are a few errors throughout, mainly typos or missing punctuation. The textbook would benefit from more copy editing at some point.

I do not see cultural insensitivity in this textbook, however, as I mentioned at the beginning of my review, it would benefit from inclusion of matters related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc. The individuals in positions of authority in the textbook photos are not always white, which has sometimes been a problem in older criminal justice textbooks.

I have decided to pilot this textbook next year in my introductory class. If I am able to update my review with information about student reactions to the textbook and my own impressions of its value and use, I will do so.

Reviewed by Jolene Sundlie, Sociology Instructor, Minnesota State University System on 10/27/19

This text does a great job of covering a great majority of topics one would find in a typical Introduction to Criminal Justice textbook. The book combines topics that might be covered separately in a 16-17 chapter textbook, which I think is great. Instructors can expand on the topics they choose. I do wish there was more coverage on specific types of crimes, and I did not see any inclusion of cyber crime at any point in the text.

I did not see any glaring errors or inaccuracies.

This textbook is extremely up-to-date. There are many sections labeled "Current Issues" and they are, in fact, current! My only concern is how often can/will this book be updated so it remains relevant.

I found the writing to be inviting and accessible and think my students at the community college level would agree. Terms are explained well and the book includes a glossary that offers concise definitions.

I found the content and style of writing to be consistent from chapter-to-chapter, even though the authors changed from section to section. Each chapter included boxes containing additional information and discussion questions or assignment ideas.

I really liked the way this book was divided into 10 chapters and within each chapter there were several numbered sections. This would make it much easier to break up reading in a larger chapter (e.g. Chapter 1) into sections, rather than by page number. If an instructor wanted to reorder the chapters, the material would still make sense.

This textbook follows the typical and expected organization of topics for an Introduction to Criminal Justice book. Some topics that would usually be found a separate chapters were combined under more robust chapter titles.

My only criticism is that I did not care for how references were cited. Sometimes, there was a link within the text and other times a footnote. I would prefer a consistent method. Though the links all worked fine.

I found no grammatical errors throughout the book.

I did not find any comments or references that I found to be insensitive or culturally inappropriate, but there is not much coverage of race or ethnicity other than in statistics.

I could not tell if there were any instructor resources for this book. Some Open textbooks have them, some do not, but it would be helpful if there was a clearer indication if there were any. I would prefer an academic book not use Wikipedia as a reference when many of us will not accept it from our students.

Reviewed by Sarah Fischer, Assistant Professor , Marymount University on 7/26/19

This book has fairly comprehensive chapters, but lacks a conclusion or any acknowledgement of what it leaves out (gender issues in CJ, cybercrime, comparative criminal justice, etc.). It isn’t that the book needs a chapter on each of these... read more

Unfortunately, this book contains a few substantive errors (such as stating murder is the only crime for which one can receive the death penalty in the United States).

The text was finished in 2019 and consequently is very timely. It is most relevant for CJ classes in Oregon, as many of the examples and links are Oregon-specific (many pages link to State of Oregon police agency application websites, for example).

Overall, very clearly written.

Consistent in terms of terminology. The framework of the chapters varies by author—some of the co-authors here include links to great resources (podcasts, television shows, and TED talks) that could easily be the basis of assignments. Other include almost no links to outside resources.

Very easily divisible.

Well-organized chapters. Some chapters repeat information from other chapters. Chapters do not flow into each other or have ideas/themes that carry across chapters (depending on how instructor wants to use the text, could be useful or not useful).

Some image distortion in charts, graphs, and text.

Grammar and formatting errors appear in every chapter.

The book is aimed at readers with no or positive previous experiences with police and/or the criminal justice system as a whole. If that is not the experience of your students, I would recommend looking at the specific chapter of this book you intend to use—the chapters vary in their inclusivity.

Reviewed by Geraldine Doucet, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice/Juvenile Justice, Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, LA on 4/27/19

Extensive and thorough coverage of the three criminal justice segments, the functions, operations, interdependence and interrelation of the three are clearly addressed from the onset. The trends, current challenges, court cases, as well as Constitutional, legal, moral, social, political issues relevant in the criminal justice system are scholarly presented. The manner in which this textbook is written, actually ‘engages with’ and ‘talks with’ the students throughout the book using statements like— “let us go back to our example (p. 18) …. or “Imaging sitting in the college classroom with (p. 17)…”). Then there are the Internet links presented throughout the textbook making further connection to the discussions at hand. These activities are presented within the discussions and not merely at the end of the chapter presentation as is the case with some textbooks. This allows the student to stay engaged with the topic of discussion as it is occurring, thereby making the knowledge powerful and impactful.

The book’s appearance is not as attractive as its content, which is rich with various illustrations, exercises, critical thinking challenges, and other activities that engages the student throughout the book. The content is easy reading both in terms of the knowledge shared as well as on the readers’ eyes. The organization of the textbook is one of its’ greatest attraction. The chapter discussions are well integrated with examples and Internet sources that illustrate the point(s) being made. Moreover, the chapters are short yet powerful with knowledge that is presented in a clear, concise, and synchronized manner.

The language used throughout the book is applicable for an introductory level course in criminal justice/criminology that makes this book student-friendly and easy to read. The use of language is crucial in any discipline, and the authors did an excellent job in their communicative delivery. In addition to the glossary at the end of the textbook, each chapter presents an illustrative use of the key concepts for students’ understanding. The modular presentation of the material does not overwhelm the student with information. By instead, allows students to absorb an adequate amount of information per chapters/sections. The materials presented in the book are powerful, descriptive, well balanced with knowledge, pictures, illustrations, activities, and especially critical thinking that engages students in the discussions.

The textbook is well organized; starting each chapter with learning objectives followed by thought provoking “knowledge probes” or “assessments activities” leading into the discussion(s). Writing (i.e., a written reaction to a situation…p.45 or p.187) and critical thinking (i.e., critical thinking questions or “what do you think” moments…p. 160) skills are highly demanding in a Criminal Justice career/field and this textbook presents opportunities to engage the students in doing both. Our students upon graduating will need scholar writing, legal writing, and some technical writing skills; therefore, any form of writing is of value.

What is in the textbook seems accurate. The problem is what is also accurate may be missing from the Textbook. More of the popular criminological theories in Criminal Justice could be more inclusive, as restated in the Clarity section of this Review.

It looks like the textbook does not address cybercrime, terrorism, nor environmental crimes. Also, there is no mentioning of hate crimes. All these types of crime are prevalent today in America and throughout the world. You may want to add these types of crimes in the revised textbook or future textbook. The textbook can also benefit and Index section, which I also mentioned under the Organization section of the Review.

In addition, it may not be a bad idea to add a brief section/caption on the growth and expansion of criminology since its origin. Discuss the subcategories of criminology, such as penology, victimology, peacemaking criminology (i.e., restorative justice), convict criminology, and green criminology (i.e., environmental crime and harm). Explain how these came about. This information can be presented either in Chapter 1-Crime, Criminal Justice, and Criminology or Chapter-5-Criminological Theory, of the Textbook.

Chapter 6-Recruitment and Hiring Websites for Future Careers—This chapter could have been more inclusive by addressing a brief history on changes in the qualifications of police officers, such as educational requirements, the introduction of on-going professional development, and/or the growth of specialization due to technology and globalization. The presentation of the Website listing of law enforcement agencies could have been accompanied by more relevant ‘TEXT’ information.

Lastly, in Chapter 10—Juvenile Justice and particularly 10.6—Due Process in the Juvenile Court the textbook acknowledged due process related landmark court cases from 1966 to 1976. The authors may want to update the due process information on juvenile matters especially since there have been over 16 more landmark cases since that time.

The clarity issue in this textbook has more to do with the presentation of materials, such as p. 201 the “Father of modern law enforcement”, yet his name is nowhere on that page where his picture is. One would have to find it on a page before. This is the same with various Tables or Charts (i.e., Mendelsohn’s Typology of Crime Victim which is mentioned as a title on page 57 and the Chart itself is presented on page 58. There is also the presentation of the positivist school of criminology with limited acknowledgement of Cesare Lombroso contributions and no picture of him; yet, there are pictures of the other men mentioned. There is no acknowledgement of Cesare Lombroso being credited with being the “Father of criminology” and why. This is somewhat missing critical information. Chapter 5 is the chapter that probably needs to be improve with greater content information and illustrations, when possible, on theories that are popular in criminal justice, like Robert Agnew’s general strain theory; Gottfredson & Hirsch’s self-control theory/general crime theory; the developmental theories, such as latent theory by Moffitt or others, and life course theories (Aged-graded Theory) by Sampson and Laub.

The picture on page 340, which is labeled “People Incarcerated in the U.S.” and the same picture on page 353 (i.e., labeled “Correctional Control by Type 1975-2016) are the same, However, on page 353 the caption underneath the picture says 'Correctional Control by Type 1975-2016', with no years are being shown. It this a mistake or is this how it is meant to be?;

Another strength of this textbook is the use of a modular approach to present the materials. This approach is manageable and self-directed, which makes it easier for students to read and absorb the knowledge. Given the fact that criminal justice/criminology are interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary studies, the modular approach is excellent. The integration of knowledge is more effective and successful. This is great for the students’ course enrichment, which is what every author/textbook should strive to achieve. It is certainly what every instructors want--for students to READ the BOOK.

Except for grammatical errors and a few suggested additions needed, the organization structure of the textbook is good. There are some problems with the flow or transition of materials when referring to pictures, tables, and/or charts. They are not always synchronizing perfectly with each other. Lastly, the addition of an Index section in the back of the book would be useful.

Excellent job combining/blending the criminal justice and criminology knowledge together without sacrificing one discipline over the other. If there is one exception, it would be Chapter 5 when blending the criminology theory that are more popular in criminal justice as oppose to sociology or psychology, for instance.

Several minor grammatical errors that needs corrections, such as font size corrections (p. 37). Revisit pages 40 and 41 with the exception of the material written in the gray boxes (or illustration captions) the words on page 40 is the exact same as the words on page 41. However, the numbered footnotes are different (8 & 13). The word “Misdemeanor” could be placed on page 56 (to include the work with the definition. Bring the caption “Mendelsohn’s Typology of Crime Victims from page 57 to page 58—with the chart—it makes for a better connection of the material. Do the same with Table 1 title (Criminal Justice Frames and Examples of Narratives) on page 114, move it to page 115 so that the Title is over the Table?

There is room for some improvement by showing greater diversity beyond black and white. This textbook is about America’s criminal justice system; let that also reflect all culture/subcultures in this great country

Overall, this is a very good beginner’s textbook for an Introduction Course and can further be useful as a supplementary and resource book as the student continues to pursue their criminal justice/criminology education. Chapter 4-Criminal Justice Policy is uniquely presented as a separate chapter. This is significant because often policy in Criminal Justice is a topic that is given a low priority or put-on-the-backburner in an Introduction course, nonetheless is vital. Nearly everything about criminal justice impacts policy, whether it involves, reform, re-entry, community corrections, sentencing, to mention a few. Chapter 4 is a great selling point for this textbook. This textbook will be read by the student because of how the material is presented—student friendly, simple, easy reading, which is significant. As an instructor, I want a book that my students would pick up to read because it is quick and easy to read with clear understanding. Moreover, the student learning outcomes postulated in the chapters can be achieved using this textbook. Except for the minor criticism offered, I like the textbook. It is my opinion that it well suited when working with students enrolled in dual-credit programs (with criminal justice as a college major) as well as an entry-level college student majoring in criminal justice.

Reviewed by Raymond Delaney, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Southern University at New Orleans on 4/18/19

The book addressed the key areas of the criminal justice system. Each component (courts, cops, and corrections) were reflected of key elements essential to the operation of the justice system. Please provide more detail information in a nuanced form. For someone who may not be familiar with the operation of the system or an incoming majoring student, they may have more questions than answers for their curiosity. Subjects are briefly addressed and then the section abruptly ends. Definitions could be more defined, most of the key terms had one very brief but not concise definition.

Information in each section appears appropriate. The authors may want to consider providing more substantive and clarifying depth to the subject matter. After reading certain areas, I was looking for a follow-up example or closure to the subject.

Attempt to provide key cases that change public opinion. I reviewed the authors' insight on Michael Brown and the Ferguson incident. However, the author could have drawn parallels from other landmark incidents such as Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin. Consider including information that addresses the lack of reporting and tracking by law enforcement on excessive force. No mention of black lives matter existed.

Clarity rating: 1

Clarity would be an area or need for major or significant improvement.

The text is consistent in the subject matter. However, it is also consistently lacking depth.

The text is broken into readable and identifiable sections. Easy flow and follow through.

This section would be of great strength. The structure and flow of the text would align to most or traditional introductory textbook. The organization of the subject matter or key elements were notable.

No significant or major issues of concern.

The authors overuse too many pronouns. Perhaps, using clear subject-verb agreements as it relates to the topic could help minimize overly used terms such as “This.”

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

Cultural relevancy and sensitivity would be an area of strengthening. The text focuses heavily on the negative occurrences that affect African Americans. Rightfully so, since African Americans have faced such bigotry, hatred, and racism as an ethnicity. However, the authors may want to find leaders of significant roles in criminal justice. Search and include positive situations or stories that African Americans could be of a positivist in the criminal justice system.

I commend the authors attempt to provide a resource available to fragile collegiate students. However, the text overall lack clear and concise subject matters. The authors may want to focus on providing depth. If I were to include this in my syllabus, it would need additional resources or references that could potentially appear burdensome to an incoming freshmen/sophomore student. Please highlight major key cases and/or events that shaped and formed form public opinion and outcry.

Reviewed by Hollie Macdonald, Lecturer, Longwood University on 4/11/19

The book covers all areas and ideas briefly. The book could explain some concepts in more depth, and also explain them in a less casual way. The glossary is good but not extensive of all concepts and also lacks accurate punctuation. read more

The content is accurate but the examples are not always clear. The general idea that the author is trying to convey comes through in most examples but some of the examples leave the reader asking further questions that are never answered. The examples are great but seem like they should be added in a lecture to supplement the book, not in the book itself.

The content is up to date, uses data and resources that are relevant. If updates are needed, they will not be difficult to add.

Clarity rating: 2

The text is written clearly and with accessible prose but the author refers to themselves, "I", many times which I do not think should occur in a college-level textbook. She gives examples based on her own experience which is fine but makes the book sound like a transcribed lecture, not necessarily an academic piece.

The text is consistent but also seems very causal in its presentation of concepts.

The text is easily readable and is broken up into logical sections. The flow is good. The author does give examples throughout and makes an effort to separate examples from the concepts and chapter content.

The book is organized in a clear and logical way. The book's structure is similar to all other introduction to criminal justice textbooks that I have read and used in my courses. The book touches on policy and theory which is important in introduction to criminal justice classes because that is the material that the students will study in depth towards the end of their undergraduate education and in graduate school.

The interface was fine, no problems. The table of contents was helpful and navigation was smooth.

The glossary has inconsistent punctuation. Sentences started with the word "Because". Grammar is casual at best. Does not come across to the educated reader as professional grammar and word usage. This might be intentional to connect with less educated readers (potentially first year students taking an introduction course).

The author uses first person throughout the book which undermines the "seriousness". When students are reading this material we want them to feel as if the information is important and coming from an objective source. The book gives good information but does not seem objective with examples and stories about the author.

Overall, the book looks promising. It covers basic concepts that set the foundation for learning but there are things that could be improved. As an undergraduate level instructor in the field, who has read many similar textbooks, this one seems casual in its prose and explanations. The book could be great for a high school criminal justice class but I would not recommend as the only textbook in a college level class. If this book were to be used at the college level it would need to be accompanied by supplemental materials that provide a clear more professional explanation of the concepts.

1: Crime, Criminal Justice, and Criminology
2: Defining and Measuring Crime and Criminal Justice
3: Criminal Law
4: Criminal Justice Policy
5: Criminological Theory
6: Policing
8: Corrections
9: Community Corrections
10: Juvenile Justice

Ancillary Material

About the book.

There is a dearth of OER textbooks in Criminology and Criminal Justice, which made creating this textbook all the more exciting. At times we faced challenges about what or how much to cover, but our primary goal was to make sure this book was as in-depth as the two textbooks we were currently using for our CCJ 230 introduction course. The only way we were willing to undertake this project as if it was as good, or better than the current books students read. We have had very positive feedback about the required textbooks in the course but consistently heard how expensive the books were to buy. We also needed to ensure we met the learning outcomes outlined by SOU for a general education course, as well as the state of Oregon, to make sure this textbook helps students meet those outcomes.

About the Contributors

Alison S. Burke is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Southern Oregon University. She earned her Ph.D. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and her MCJ from the University of Colorado Denver. While in Denver, she worked with adjudicated youth in residential treatment facilities and group homes. She has published a variety of journal articles and book chapters related to juvenile justice, delinquency, and gender, and her primary research interests involve women and crime, juvenile justice and delinquency, and pedagogy in higher education. Her most recent book is titled Teaching Introduction to Criminology (2019).

David E. Carter joined the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department in 2008. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Dave served in the U.S. Army for 8 years as a linguist prior to attending school. He has published works in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency in the area of lifecourse research, as well as in the Corrections Compendium, where he wrote about U.S. inmate populations. He also works with local agencies (in a consultative role) providing evidence-based practices and evaluations for correctional programs in the area of effective interventions and evidence-based programming. At SOU, Dave has helped facilitate the Lock-In event and annual that provides students with a hands-on experience of the justice system.David E. Carter joined the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department in 2008. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Dave served in the U.S. Army for 8 years as a linguist prior to attending school. He has published works in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency in the area of lifecourse research, as well as in the Corrections Compendium, where he wrote about U.S. inmate populations. He also works with local agencies (in a consultative role) providing evidence-based practices and evaluations for correctional programs in the area of effective interventions and evidence-based programming. At SOU, Dave has helped facilitate the Lock-In event and annual that provides students with a hands-on experience of the justice system.

Brian Fedorek earned his doctorate at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Criminology. He has taught classes in Terrorism, Comparative Criminal Justice, Theories of Criminal Behavior, and introductory courses. His research interests include media and crime, criminological theory, and criminal violence. He has served on the board of the Western Association of Criminal Justice.

Tiffany L. Morey has an almost three-decade career in the law enforcement arena. She retired as a Lieutenant from a police department in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her expertise is in the law enforcement, crime scene investigation (CSI), and forensics fields. During her tenure in policing in Las Vegas she worked in patrol, the crime prevention division, community services, recruitment, special events, problem-solving unit (first ever unit/substation for her department in a high gang and drug area), undercover prostitution and narcotics stings, search warrant service assistance, mounted unit departmental work, CSI (crime scene investigator), forensics, Sergeant and Sergeant field training program and master trainer, Lieutenant and Lieutenant field training program, and finally Acting Captain. During this time, she was also chosen and paid by an independent firm to travel the country and conduct oral board interviews and assessment center testing and recruiting for law enforcement agencies and fire departments. She developed a ground-breaking class to assist candidates in the law enforcement hiring process and is now under contract to publish the related textbook/study guide. Tiffany continues to operate in the field of CSI and forensics as an expert investigator and witness on violent crime. She also runs a Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) business, offering citizens and owners of businesses CPTED reviews to ensure the safety of their homes and buildings. Finally, in her free time, she runs SOAR Wildlife Center (SoarWildlife.org), which is a non-profit organization, that rehabilitates sick, injured, or orphaned fawns and other baby mammals.

Lore Rutz-Burri is a 1982 graduate of Southern Oregon State College (now SOU) with a Bachelors of Arts degree in Criminology and Political Science. After graduating, she lived in Southern Austria until 1984. Upon returning to the states, she earned an M.C.J (Master’s degree in Criminal Justice) from the University of South Carolina. In 1985 she started in a Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland, College Park, but early on decided she would rather pursue a law degree. In 1989 she graduated “order of the coif” with her doctor of jurisprudence (JD) from the University of Oregon School of Law. Following law school, Lore clerked for the Superior Court of Alaska in Fairbanks for one year and then worked for 5 years as a deputy district attorney in Josephine County, Oregon. There, she prosecuted a variety of crimes, but mostly assault cases. In 1995, she began teaching criminology and criminal justice at SOU. Since 2015 she has been a part-time Circuit Court judge in the Josephine County courts. Lore has been married for over 27 years to her husband, Markus (a Swiss national). They have two sons– Severin (who studied at SOU and majored in psychology) and Jaston (who studied at U of O and majored in philosophy). She has both case books and introductory text on criminal law and criminal procedure.

Shanell Sanchez joined the Criminology and Criminal Justice department at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon in 2016. Prior to that, Shanell was an Assistant Professor in Criminal Justice at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Colorado. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln in Sociology in 2012. Her research and teaching interests are centered around social change and justice, inequality, and comparative crime and justice.

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What is the Criminal Justice System? Insights for Aspiring Legal Minds

As the criminal justice landscape continues to evolve, gaining a deep understanding of processes and principles of the field is crucial. Whether you are just beginning your educational journey or exploring specific areas of professional specialization, the insights offered below can help guide your decisions and shape your career in the legal sphere.

This article explores the system's goals and operational dynamics, diving even further into the criminal justice system's primary objectives to ensure public safety, administer justice, and rehabilitate offenders.

What Is the Purpose of the Criminal Justice System?

What is the criminal justice system, exactly, and what is its purpose? The criminal justice system serves a multifaceted role in society, primarily aimed at maintaining public order, ensuring justice, and upholding the rule of law. Its core purpose revolves around the prevention and punishment of criminal behavior, which is critical for the stability and safety of communities. Additionally, the system is responsible for rehabilitating offenders, offering them opportunities for reform and reintegration into society.

By balancing these goals, the criminal justice system strives to protect citizens, provide fair legal proceedings, and foster a safer environment for all. This fundamental understanding of purpose of the criminal justice system is essential for any student pursuing a career in related fields, as it shapes the framework within which they will operate professionally.

Protecting Society and Maintaining Order

The criminal justice system plays a central role in protecting society and maintaining order by ensuring that laws are enforced and justice is served as fairly as possible. It operates through three primary components that include law enforcement, the judiciary (courts), and corrections.

Law enforcement agencies take the initial step in this process by responding to and investigating crimes, thereby preventing criminal activities and ensuring public safety. The judiciary evaluates the evidence presented and administers justice by determining guilt and handing down sentences, while corrections facilities manage the rehabilitation and sometimes punishment of offenders. This structured approach helps maintain a stable and safe society, supporting the ultimate goal of the criminal justice system to protect the public and uphold the rule of law.

Ensuring Justice and Fair Treatment

The principle of ensuring justice and fair treatment within the criminal justice system revolves around the fundamental belief that everyone deserves equal treatment under the law. However, defining and achieving fairness is complex due to the diversity of viewpoints on what this actually entails and the numerous competing interests at play. According to an analysis in the Sociological Methods & Research (SMR) journal , the concept of fairness can often be controversial because it intersects with various societal factors such as gender and racial biases that influence legal outcomes. This can lead to discussions about whether equality of outcomes is achievable without compromising the equality of treatment, especially when statistical disparities suggest inherent biases in enforcement and sentencing.

In addition, initiatives like the Smart on Crime program launched by the Department of Justice exemplify efforts to tailor charges and sentencing to the specifics of each case, thus promoting fair treatment by avoiding excessive mandatory minimums for low-level, nonviolent offenses. These policy adjustments are part of broader efforts to make the justice system more equitable and effective, which also include enhancing the credibility of the system to maintain public trust.

Key Components of the Criminal Justice System

When answering the question, “What is the criminal justice system?” it is important to understand its main pillars. The criminal justice system in the United States is structured into three primary components that ensure the effective enforcement of laws and the administration of justice: law enforcement agencies, the court system, and corrections and rehabilitation services. Each component serves a unique function; law enforcement maintains public order, the court system adjudicates cases, and corrections and rehabilitation work to reintegrate offenders into society. Together, these elements uphold the rule of law and strive for a just society.

Law Enforcement Agencies

Law enforcement agencies are on the front lines, responsible for maintaining public order, enforcing laws, and preventing crime across local, state, and federal levels. This includes everything from routine patrols to criminal investigations and the apprehension of lawbreakers.

The Court System

The court system handles the adjudication process, where guilt or innocence is determined, and justice is served through fair and legal proceedings. This component is crucial for upholding the rule of law and administering justice equitably and efficiently.

Corrections and Rehabilitation Services

Lastly, corrections and rehabilitation services manage the aftermath of the court's decisions by overseeing the incarceration, rehabilitation, and reintegration of offenders. This segment of the criminal justice system plays a key role in attempting to reform offenders and prepare them for a return to society, aiming to reduce recidivism and enhance public safety.

The Process of the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice process encompasses several stages, each critical in ensuring justice while balancing fairness and societal safety. So, what is the purpose of the criminal justice system when put into practice?

From the initial investigation and arrest to trial and sentencing, each phase plays a pivotal role in determining the outcome for the accused and the community. Post-sentencing efforts focus on rehabilitation and reintegration, striving to transform offenders into productive citizens. This systematic approach seeks to protect individual rights while maintaining public order—highlighting the complex interplay between law enforcement, judicial decisions, and correctional strategies.

Investigation and Arrest Procedures

This initial phase involves law enforcement agencies detecting and investigating criminal activities. Officers collect evidence, interview witnesses, and follow leads to apprehend suspects. Arrests are made based on probable cause that a person has committed a crime. This stage is crucial as it sets the groundwork for the legal process that follows.

Trial and Adjudication

During this stage, the court system takes center stage. The process begins with pre-trial motions and discovery, where both prosecution and defense exchange information and prepare their cases. Trials are then conducted, typically involving a judge and jury. The prosecution presents evidence to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, while the defense aims to challenge this evidence and advocate for the defendant’s innocence. This phase culminates in a verdict, where the defendant is either found guilty or not guilty based on the evidence presented.

Sentencing and Punishment

If a defendant is convicted, the process moves to sentencing. Judges determine appropriate punishment based on the severity of the crime, the defendant’s prior criminal history, and the impact on the victims. Sentences can range from fines and community service to probation and incarceration, depending on the crime’s nature. This stage reflects the criminal justice system’s retributive and deterrent objectives.

Rehabilitation and Reintegration

Post-sentencing, the focus shifts to rehabilitation, especially for those incarcerated. Correctional facilities provide educational and vocational training, substance abuse programs, and mental health treatment aimed at addressing the root causes of criminal behavior. The goal is to prepare offenders for eventual reintegration into society, reducing the likelihood of reoffending and aiding in their transition back into the community.

Challenges Facing the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system faces a myriad of challenges that affect its efficiency and effectiveness. One significant issue is the growing concern over mass incarceration, which has led to overcrowded prisons and strained resources. This problem is compounded by the long-standing issues of racial disparities, where minorities are disproportionately represented in the system.

Additionally, there are challenges in ensuring fair treatment and due process in the face of public and political pressures, which sometimes prioritize quick results over thorough and fair procedures. Technological advancements—while beneficial in solving and preventing crimes—also bring new challenges related to cybercrime and digital evidence handling. In general, the system must continuously adapt to changes in laws and societal norms, requiring ongoing training and development for law enforcement and judicial personnel.

These challenges demand comprehensive reforms and innovative solutions to ensure the criminal justice system can effectively serve its foundational goal of administering justice while protecting society.

Issues of Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities

The criminal justice system is marked by significant racial and socioeconomic disparities that manifest at various stages, from policing practices to sentencing. These disparities disproportionately affect communities of color in the U.S., particularly African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Research highlights that these groups often experience higher rates of poverty and live in areas with concentrated socioeconomic disadvantages, which correlates with higher rates of certain types of crimes, such as violent and property crimes.

This socioeconomic context contributes to a higher likelihood of encounters with the police and subsequent incarceration. Moreover, practices like "stop and frisk" and the enforcement of drug laws have been critiqued for their uneven application, often targeting these same communities disproportionately. This has led to higher arrest and incarceration rates among these populations compared to their white counterparts, exacerbating the cycle of inequality and injustice within the system.

The Debate Over Punishment vs. Rehabilitation

The discourse surrounding punishment and rehabilitation in the criminal justice system reflects a fundamental question about the goals of incarceration. On one hand, proponents of punishment argue that it serves as a deterrent to crime and a method of retributive justice, ensuring that offenders face consequences for their actions. This approach is often justified by the need for public safety and the moral imperative of retribution for victims and society at large.

Conversely, advocates for rehabilitation emphasize the potential for reform and the long-term benefits of reintegrating offenders into society as productive members. Rehabilitation programs focus on addressing the underlying issues that may lead to criminal behavior (such as substance abuse, mental health disorders, and lack of education or vocational skills). The goal here is to not only punish but also prevent future crimes through personal development and support.

This ongoing debate highlights the tension between these approaches and the broader implications for recidivism rates and societal safety. The effectiveness of either strategy can vary significantly, influenced by factors like the nature of the crime, the individual circumstances of the offender, and the resources available for either punitive or rehabilitative measures.

Careers in the Criminal Justice System

Clearly, the criminal justice system is complex, so it makes sense there exists a diverse array of career opportunities across its three main branches of law enforcement, the legal and court system, and corrections and rehabilitation. These sectors provide a variety of roles tailored to different skills and interests, from front-line officers to behind-the-scenes legal experts and rehabilitative staff.

For those passionate about making a tangible impact on their communities, the criminal justice field offers meaningful and challenging pathways to pursue. Whether ensuring public safety, delivering justice, or aiding in rehabilitation, these careers are essential to a functioning society.

Law Enforcement Careers

These roles, which include police officers and detectives, focus on enforcing laws, ensuring public safety, and responding to emergencies. Specialists like transit officers enforce security on public transport systems. The work often requires physical fitness, strong problem-solving skills, and the ability to handle stressful situations.

Legal and Court System Careers

This sector features roles such as lawyers who advocate for clients, judges who ensure the fairness of trials, and court clerks who manage the flow of cases. These positions require strong analytical abilities, knowledge of the law, and the capacity to handle intricate legal processes.

Corrections and Rehabilitation Careers

In this area, professionals like correctional officers oversee incarcerated individuals, while rehabilitation specialists work on reformative programs aimed at reducing recidivism. This field requires strong interpersonal skills and a commitment to ethical standards.

Pursue Your Career in Criminal Justice Today

As you consider your future in the criminal justice field, University of the Cumberlands offers comprehensive degree programs designed to empower aspiring professionals. No matter if you're starting with a Bachelor of Criminal Justice , advancing with our online Criminal Justice Management Certification , or looking to master complex leadership roles with our online Master of Science in Criminal Justice Administration (MJA) , we help equip students with the tools and expertise they need to excel.

Apply today to level up your career prospects and join an academic community committed to justice and excellence.

Guide to the U.S. Criminal Justice System

Written by: Nalea J. Ko | Edited by: Cassie Muniz | Last Updated: April 2024

The criminal justice system includes the courts, corrections, and law enforcement.
Full-time law enforcement accounts for more than 700,000 U.S. workers.
The federal court includes 94 district courts, 12 circuit courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security comprise the federal law enforcement.
The first prison system in the country opened in 1891.

What Is the Criminal Justice System?

The criminal justice system in the United States consists of law enforcement, the court system, and corrections. These three subsystems encompass private and government agencies at the state, federal, and local levels, all of which work together to maintain public safety.

Each subsystem handles a different responsibility. Law enforcement does as their name implies: they enforce the law by making arrests. At the court level, defendants undergo the trial process that includes the opening statements, presenting of evidence, closing arguments, and sentencing. Convicted persons undergo rehabilitation as part of the correction process.

This comprehensive guide explores the complex network of subsystems within America’s criminal justice system.

Law Enforcement in the United States

At every level, the law enforcement branch of the United States criminal justice system attempts to serve the public by promoting safety and order. Law enforcement officers investigate suspected criminal activities and refer suspected criminals to courts.

The three main levels of law enforcement include federal, state, and local (e.g., county and municipal) policing. Each level tends to works independently within its own jurisdiction.

Each law enforcement level maintains internal hierarchies of individual departments and ranked officers who supervise and report to one another. To learn more about the structure, varying roles, and goals of each of these law enforcement levels, continue reading.

Federal Law Enforcement

The federal branch of law enforcement includes thousands of full-time officers working within dozens of federal agencies. The two main departments that employ law enforcement officers are the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Notable agencies associated with each department include:

DOJ Agencies

Federal Bureau of Investigation
Drug Enforcement Administration
U.S. Marshals Service
Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
Federal Bureau of Prisons

DHS Agencies

Transportation Security Administration
Secret Service
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Coast Guard

Local and state law enforcement handle the majority of crimes in the U.S., but the federal government steps in where states and municipalities lack jurisdiction, such as when perpetrators commit crimes on federal property .

More specifically, the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reserves all rights and powers for the states that are not expressly delegated to the federal government. States reserve the right to establish and enforce laws to protect public health, safety, and welfare.

Thus, federal police power typically extends only to situations involving:

Civil rights
Immigration
Offenses affecting interstate commerce
Crimes committed across state lines

State Law Enforcement

Most states operate law enforcement initiatives through agencies and departments extending from a few central government entities. For example, a state’s department of public safety generally sees to the services and duties of state police and highway patrol.

Each state has an office of the attorney general, which handles the criminal and civil detective work of a state’s bureau of investigation and works as the state-level equivalent of the FBI.

A variety of other departments within state governments can operate their own divisions of law enforcement, especially for security purposes. The most common of these include:

State capitol’s capitol police force
Universities employing campus police
State hospital security staff

When considering the role of state police, people commonly think of highway patrolmen, but the purpose and goals of state law enforcement extend beyond pulling over speeding cars.

State police conduct enforcement activities and investigations that fall outside the jurisdiction of a county sheriff’s office. Duties beyond highway patrol and enforcement of traffic laws may include:

Protecting government officials
Arresting suspects
Providing emergency assistance
Protecting crime scenes
Interrogating or interviewing people

Local and Municipal Law Enforcement

Among the various sections of the criminal justice system, local law enforcement is the branch that a majority of people are most familiar with. Unlike federal and state law enforcement branches, local law enforcement operates within specific counties, cities, and communities.

The structure of local law enforcement can vary greatly depending on the jurisdiction size. A small town — like Ellendale, Delaware or Little River, Kansas — may employ a single officer or town marshal, whereas major cities like New York City have a large police department spread throughout multiple neighborhood precincts.

Counties often establish a sheriff’s department and county police force with a wider jurisdiction and/or greater focus on jail and court services, rather than patrolling a specific town or neighborhood.

Depending on the size of a local police department, the hierarchy can include up to a dozen different positions. A police commissioner — also called the chief of police — stands at the top of the chain of command. This position is followed by an assistant chief, deputy chief/commissioner, inspectors, colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, detectives, and officers or deputies.

Court and Legal Systems in the United States

The United States criminal justice system consists of courts at the federal and state levels. Federal and state courts are independent of one another and differ in several key areas defined by their jurisdiction and the types of cases they hear.

State courts receive a broad jurisdiction, hearing cases regarding:

Family disputes
Broken contracts
Traffic violations
Criminal activities (assaults or robberies)

In contrast, federal courts commonly hear cases in which the U.S. is a legal party:

Federal law or Constitutional violations
Copyright and patent law
Maritime law

U.S. courts work closely with law enforcement and corrections in scenarios such as deciding whether or not to hear a case, sharing intelligence, asking law enforcement officers to testify during a trial, engaging in presentencing investigations, and determining alternative sentencing options.

US Court of Appeals and District Court Map

State Courts

The vast majority of criminal and civil legal cases in the U.S. are handled by the massive state court system . Each state divides its courts into a structure with three main tiers : trial courts, appellate courts, and state Supreme Courts.

Trial courts include municipal courts (limited jurisdiction). Typical cases include:

Traffic court
Misdemeanor crimes
Preliminary felony hearings

County courts (larger jurisdiction). Cases may relate to:

Probate law
City ordinance violations

State trial courts (largest jurisdiction). Cases may relate to:

Property disputes
Major felonies

When a losing party disagrees with a trial court’s decision, they can file an appeal. This prompts the trial court to send the case record to a state appeals court for consideration. To make a final ruling decision, the appellate court does not conduct a trial, instead relying on case documents, trial transcripts, exhibits, and attorneys’ written arguments.

An appellate court can either affirm the original decision, reverse the original decision, or send the case back to a trial court for further action.

A legal party unhappy with the ruling of their appeal can take the case a step further by requesting a final appeal with the state’s Supreme Court. At this level, appeals remain discretionary. The court decides whether or not to hear a case; if it declines, the lower court’s decision is considered final.

A state Supreme Court functions similarly to lower appeals courts. It reviews case documents, files, written briefs, and oral arguments rather than holding a full trial.

Upon reviewing a case, the state Supreme Court either affirms a decision, reverses it, or sends a case back to trial. Legal parties who do not receive their desired appeal result can strive for a final appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court .

Federal Courts

Three main levels make up the U.S. federal court system: 94 district courts, 12 circuit courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. District courts conduct civil and criminal trials within the federal system, with one or two assigned to each U.S. state or territory. Trial cases commonly heard in district courts include those dealing with federal laws and/or those involving parties from two different states.

Like the state court system, legal parties who disagree with the decision of their district court trial can file for an appeal. A circuit court acts as the first stop in the federal appeals process. Some appealed cases receive decisions based on a review of court records and written briefs alone; however, many are also selected for oral arguments, in which attorneys can briefly present spoken arguments before a panel of judges.

The circuit court decision remains final unless the case is sent back for trial or legal parties seek an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court by filing a petition for a “writ of certiorari” — simply put, a request for judicial review.

Each year, the U.S. Supreme Court receives thousands of requests for case review, but selects only a small fraction to hear. Cases most commonly heard by the Supreme Court include:

Cases with an unusually significant legal principle
Cases where at least two federal courts differ in the interpretation of a law
Cases interpreting the Constitution

Once the U.S. Supreme Court delivers a decision, it can be overturned only by a rarely granted request for a rehearing, a future Supreme Court ruling, or an amendment to the Constitution itself.

Corrections in the United States

While law enforcement and the courts work to identify and intercept people involved in criminal activity, the corrections system serves a variety of simultaneous functions :

Keeping criminal populations separate
Enacting punishments for wrongdoing
Promoting rehabilitation for the incarcerated

The U.S. corrections system is the largest system of its type in the world. Though home to less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. holds more than 20% of the world’s prisoners — the highest global per capita rate of incarceration among founding NATO countries, according to 2021 incarceration data.

The U.S. corrections system contains multiple state and federal corrections systems that act independently, although they follow similar procedures and protocols. Prisons can be publicly or privately operated, and state and federal corrections systems most commonly interact when transferring inmates. Corrections systems utilize incarceration, community service, parole, and probation to punish and/or rehabilitate criminals.

Incarceration entails the confinement of a person in a prison, and daily prison life severely restricts that person’s freedoms. In contrast, those sentenced to community service or those on parole or probation live beyond a prison cell.

If assigned to community service by a court, an individual typically completes a number of unpaid work hours for a nonprofit. Parole and probation both involve supervision and specific rules/guidelines regarding travel limitations, curfews, and required drug tests. Parole typically occurs when an individual gains early release from prison, while probation occurs before an individual enters prison.

The U.S. holds a high rate of recidivism, meaning the likelihood that a convicted criminal will return to prison is relatively high. This most commonly occurs because people violate the terms of their parole, and perhaps because the American rehabilitation system has inherent flaws.

There hasn’t been a large-scale recidivism survey conducted yet this decade, butfor 2019, BackgroundChecks.org places the U.S. recidivism rate of 70% within five years of initial incarceration.

Tribal Law in the United States

Federally recognized Native American tribes possess a form of sovereignty that preserves the inherent rights of each tribe to form their own governments, make and enforce civil and criminal laws, collect taxes, and establish and regulate tribal citizenship.

Some of the first federal recognitions of tribal sovereignty and law began in the early 19th century with a series of Supreme Court decisions, including the 1832 case of Worcester v. Georgia .

Though this case did not prevent the relocation of the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral homeland, it served as a foundation for the principle of tribal sovereignty, with the majority opinion calling tribal nations “distinct, independent political communities retaining their original natural rights.”

While federal Native American law concerns relationships between tribal, state, and federal government, tribal law governs a tribe’s members and territories. Tribal governments and tribal justice systems function in much the same way as state systems.

Tribal law is enforced by tribal law enforcement, and tribal courts that possess civil jurisdiction over tribal members and nonmembers who reside or do business within federal reservations. In 1978, the criminal jurisdiction of tribal courts became limited to violations of tribal law by tribal members only ( Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe ). Along with operating their own law enforcement and courts, Native American reservations house more than 90 corrections facilities .

Today, tribal governments, laws, and areas of jurisdiction often function in partnership with their local and state counterparts, working together to promote public safety and economic development. In some cases, however, the division between tribal and state jurisdiction can cause difficult legal complications .

How Does the Criminal Justice System Work?

A standard series of steps — including investigation, charging, initial hearing, discovery, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and appeal — helps streamline the process from law enforcement to the courts to corrections. The sections below explain those steps.

1) Entry Into the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice process begins when someone commits a crime. Law enforcement officers on patrol can witness a crime directly, or be dispatched to respond to a witness’s call about a potential crime.

When officers arrive on the scene, the second step involves filing a crime report, which includes logging information about the time, location, and details of the incident by speaking with witnesses and/or victims.

This process must be completed as accurately and precisely as possible, as it builds a foundation that can impact the subsequent investigation and arrest of a suspect. It may also determine who gets called to testify in a trial and the sentencing process.

After obtaining a crime report, law enforcement can begin the process of investigation, arrest, and/or citation. If the suspect remains on site, officers can provide a citation with a date to appear in court or they can arrest the suspect.

Otherwise, officers must pursue an investigation and attempt to identify a suspect and collect enough direct or circumstantial evidence to warrant an arrest. If officers complete an investigation, discover a suspect, and collect appropriate evidence, they can make an arrest or provide a citation, depending on the nature of the crime and other factors.

2) Prosecution and Pretrial

The decision to formally charge a person with a crime rests with a court prosecutor, who forms this determination by examining all assembled evidence and a suspect’s criminal history. If a prosecutor does not find a suspect guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, that suspect is released. Alternatively, if a prosecutor decides to file formal charges, they determine the severity of the alleged crime (e.g., a murder charge versus a manslaughter charge).

If a suspect faces charges, an initial hearing will typically take place within 72 hours. A first court appearance involves arraignment, whereby the court informs a defendant about their legal rights and the charges they face.

The defendant responds to arraignment by entering a plea of guilty, not guilty, or no contest (allowable in some jurisdictions). A guilty or no contest plea means the defendant receives a sentence without going through the trial process. A not guilty plea means a case proceeds toward trial.

Upon a plea of not guilty, the defendant and court make defense attorney arrangements, if this has not already been done, and the judge determines if the defendant will be held or released. Depending on the severity of the charges and other factors, defendants may be given the option to post bail.

3) Trial Process

Rather than going to trial, a majority of cases in the criminal justice system are resolved by a plea agreement. Arranged cooperatively between the prosecution and defense, a plea agreement means the defendant agrees to plead guilty to one or more charges in exchange for a recommendation of a reduced sentence, a lesser degree charge, or having one or more charges being dropped entirely.

If parties do not reach a plea agreement, the case proceeds to trial.

Defendants reserve the right to select a jury trial (decided by a group of civilians) or a bench trial (decided by a single judge). A majority of defendants select bench trials. Reasons for this may include a speedier process — no need for jury selection, minimized opening/closing statements, lower mistrial risk — and/or concerns that a jury may judge the case based on emotion rather than on evidence/the law.

In either trial method, the prosecution and defense present their arguments and witnesses testify and face cross examination. Trials close with the judge or jury deciding on a verdict. Not guilty verdicts lead to the defendant’s release, while guilty verdicts lead to a sentence. If a jury cannot deliver a verdict due to disagreement or other reasons, such as misconduct or illness, a mistrial is called and a new trial can be arranged.

4) Corrections

To determine the appropriate sentence for a guilty defendant, a judge can examine sentencing guidelines provided by the United States Sentencing Commission .

For situations involving less serious crimes and shorter sentence lengths, judges may decide to sentence convicted persons to probation or parole rather than incarceration.

Probation or parole come with supervision and other restrictions. For example, individuals may face limitations on where they can live and travel, requirements to hold steady employment or attend school, and/or requirements to attend therapy or rehab. Violating probation or parole terms can land an offender in jail or prison.

Though controversial, a sentence of capital punishment remains legal in 27 states. However, this sentence can only be handed down by the unanimous decision of a jury, and it is only applicable in cases of capital offense (e.g., murder and/or assassination, treason, and espionage).

Careers in Criminal Justice

Criminal justice careers encompass many law enforcement , legal , and correctional roles , including jobs that only require a high school diploma and on-the-job training and those that require years of college study.

A majority of criminal justice professionals obtain at least a bachelor’s degree. However, many schools offer criminal justice degrees at multiple levels, including master’s and doctoral programs for students interested in higher-level management, academia, or research.

Criminal justice professionals tend to be detail oriented, inquisitive, and highly organized and possess a natural affinity for leadership and problem solving. The list below details several criminal justice-related careers.

Police and Detectives

Police officers work to ensure public safety, patrol assigned areas, and respond to emergency and nonemergency calls. Detectives gather facts and evidence for criminal court cases. Although a high school diploma and police academy training may meet minimum job requirements, some departments prefer candidates with a college degree.

Median Salary (2023): $74,910
Projected Growth Rate (2022-32): +3%

Correctional Officers and Bailiffs

Correctional officers supervise individuals in jail awaiting trial or serving sentences in prison. Bailiffs work as law enforcement officers within a courtroom where they maintain order, assist judges, and provide general courthouse security.

A high school diploma is typically the minimum education requirement, though federal prisons may require a bachelor’s degree. Some states require correctional officers to hold state certification.

Median Salary (2023): $53,290
Projected Growth Rate (2022-32): -7%

Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists

Probation officers and correctional treatment specialists help to rehabilitate law offenders and reintegrate them back into society after being released. Correctional treatment specialists conduct psychological tests to assess inmates and they also administer other tests, such as drug screenings. A bachelor’s degree usually provides the prerequisites to secure a career as a probation officer or correctional treatment specialists.

Median Salary (2023): $61,800

Forensic Science Technicians

Forensic science technicians, or crime scene investigators , mostly work in local government, but also state government agencies, testing laboratories, and medical and diagnostic labs. At crime scenes, forensic science technicians collect evidence such as blood, footprints, and weapons. In the lab, forensic science technicians analyze physical and biological evidence.

Median Salary (2023): $64,940
Projected Growth Rate (2022-32): +13%

Lawyers conduct legal research and analysis, interpret legal concepts, and provide advice and representation during criminal or civil court cases and private legal disputes. Clients may include people, businesses, and government agencies. Those who want to become lawyers must typically hold a doctor of jurisprudence degree and pass a state bar exam.

Median Salary (2023): $145,760
Projected Growth Rate (2022-32): +8%

Sociologists

Sociologists study society and human behavior by examining processes by which groups, cultures, and organizations interact. Criminologists are sociologists who specialize in the study of crime, including its causes and effects. Finding employment as a criminologist typically requires at least a master’s degree.

Median Salary (2023): $101,770
Projected Growth Rate (2022-32): +5%

Postsecondary Teachers

Postsecondary instructors in this field teach criminal justice courses at colleges and universities. They create the lesson plans, following department curriculum, and also grade homework and exams according to set rubric. This job may also require publishing academic papers.

At the community college level, you can work with a master’s degree. However, you usually need a doctorate in criminal justice to get a tenured postsecondary position. Master’s degree-holders can also become adjuncts at four-year colleges.

Median Salary (2023): $69,030

Frequently Asked Questions About the Criminal Justice System

What is the criminal justice system in simple terms.

The criminal justice system adheres to policies and practices that exist to uphold justice and keep people safe. The criminal justice system operates to prevent crime and punish law offenders under the governing jurisdiction. The criminal justice system is the complicated network of legal subsystems at the federal, local, and state level in the United States.

How has the criminal justice system changed over time?

The criminal justice system and the policies that influence mass incarceration shifted during the War on Drugs that began nearly 50 years ago. In 2023, politicians enacted policies to reduce mass incarceration, including reforming sentencing for youth defendants, increasing parole eligibility, and changing policies to reduce punitive practices put in place during the War on Drugs. Some states are working on restoring voting rights to former felons.

What is the definition of “justice” in the criminal justice system?

Justice as it relates to the criminal justice systems means ensuring that all people receive fairness in the legal process. The United States Constitution protects every citizen’s right to justice. According to the Sixth Amendment, all citizens have the right to a lawyer and a fair and speedy trial in front of an impartial jury.

What is the purpose of the U.S criminal justice system?

The U.S. criminal justice system exists to enforce laws but also to protect all citizens and society. The saying goes, “crimes against an individual are crimes against the state.” The criminal justice system outlines penalties for criminal behavior with the aim of deterring crime. When the courts find criminals guilty, judges sentence them to prisons or jails for rehabilitation.

Is the FBI part of the criminal justice system?

Yes. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) operates under the U.S. Department of Justice. The FBI often works with other law enforcement agencies to share intel, especially in cases of national security threats. The Director of National Intelligence oversees the operations of the FBI, which reports intelligence to local U.S. attorneys.

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Reflections on Criminal Justice Reform: Challenges and Opportunities

Pamela k. lattimore.

RTI International, 3040 East Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, NC 27703 USA

Associated Data

Data are cited from a variety of sources. Much of the BJS data cited are available from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research. The SVORI data and the Second Chance Act AORDP data are also available from NACJD.

Considerable efforts and resources have been expended to enact reforms to the criminal justice system over the last five decades. Concerns about dramatic increases in violent crime beginning in the late Sixties and accelerating into the 1980s led to the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Crime” that included implementation of more punitive policies and dramatic increases in incarceration and community supervision. More recent reform efforts have focused on strategies to reduce the negative impacts of policing, the disparate impacts of pretrial practices, and better strategies for reducing criminal behavior. Renewed interest in strategies and interventions to reduce criminal behavior has coincided with a focus on identifying “what works.” Recent increases in violence have shifted the national dialog from a focus on progressive reforms to reduce reliance on punitive measures and the disparate impact of the legal system on some groups to a focus on increased investment in “tough on crime” criminal justice approaches. This essay offers some reflections on the “Waged Wars” and the efforts to identify “What Works” based on nearly 40 years of work evaluating criminal justice reform efforts.

The last fifty-plus years have seen considerable efforts and resources expended to enact reforms to the criminal justice system. Some of the earliest reforms of this era were driven by dramatic increases in violence leading to more punitive policies. More recently, reform efforts have focused on strategies to reduce the negative impacts of policing, the disparate impacts of pretrial practices, and better strategies for reducing criminal behavior. Renewed interest in strategies and interventions to reduce criminal behavior has coincided with a focus on identifying “what works.” Recent increases in violence have shifted the national dialog about reform. The shift may be due to the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 epidemic or concerns about the United States returning to the escalating rise in violence and homicide in the 1980s and 1990s. Whichever proves true, the current rise of violence, at a minimum, has changed the tenor of policymaker discussions, from a focus on progressive reforms to reduce reliance on punitive measures and the disparate impact of the legal system on some groups to a focus on increased investment in “tough on crime” criminal justice approaches.

It is, then, an interesting time for those concerned about justice in America. Countervailing forces are at play that have generated a consistent call for reform, but with profound differences in views about what reform should entail. The impetus for reform is myriad: Concerns about the deaths of Black Americans by law enforcement agencies and officers who may employ excessive use of force with minorities; pressures to reduce pretrial incarceration that results in crowded jails and detention of those who have not been found guilty; prison incarcerations rates that remain the highest in the Western world; millions of individuals who live under community supervision and the burden of fees and fines that they will never be able to pay; and, in the aftermath of the worst pandemic in more than a century, increasing violence, particularly homicides and gun violence. This last change has led to fear and demands for action from communities under threat, but it exists alongside of other changes that point to the need for progressive changes rather than reversion to, or greater investment in, get-tough policies.

How did we get here? What have we learned from more than 50 years of efforts at reform? How can we do better? In this essay, I offer some reflections based on my nearly 40 years of evaluating criminal justice reform efforts. 1

Part I: Waging “War”

The landscape of criminal justice reform sits at the intersection of criminal behavior and legal system response. Perceptions of crime drive policy responses. Perceptions of those responsible for crime also drive responses. And perceptions of those responses result in demands for change. To establish context for the observations that follow, this section describes trends in crime, the population of justice-involved individuals, and the expenditures supporting the sprawling criminal justice enterprise in the United States since the mid-to-late twentieth century.

But first, my perspective: Over the last nearly 40 years, I have observed justice system reform efforts since working, while a first-year graduate student in 1983, on a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) grant that funded a randomized control trial of what would now be termed a reentry program (Lattimore et al., 1990 ). After graduate school, I spent 10 years at NIJ, where I was exposed to policy making and the relevance of research for both policy and practice. I taught for several years at a university. And, for most of my career, I have been in the trenches at a not-for-profit social science research firm. Throughout my career, I have conducted research and evaluation on a broad array of topics and have spent most of my time contemplating the challenges of reform. I’ve evaluated single programs, large federal initiatives, and efforts by philanthropies to effect reform. I’ve used administrative data to model criminal recidivism to address—to the degree statistical methods allow—various dimensions of recidivism (type, frequency, and seriousness). I’ve developed recidivism models for the practical purpose of assessing risk for those on community supervision and to explore the effects of covariates and interventions on recidivism and other outcomes. I’ve participated in research attempting to understand the shortcomings of and potential biases in justice data and the models that must necessarily use those data. While most of my work has focused on community corrections (e.g., probation and post-release interventions and behavior) and reentry, I have studied jail diversion programs, jail and pretrial reform, and efforts focused on criminal record expungement. These experiences have illuminated for me that punitiveness is built into the American criminal justice system—a punitiveness that traps many people from the time they are first arrested until they die.

Crime and Correctional Population Trends

The 1960s witnessed a dramatic rise in crime in the United States, and led to the so-called “War on Crime,” the “War on Drugs,” and a variety of policy responses, culminating with the passage of the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Act of 1994 (“The 1994 Crime Act”; Pub. L. 103–322). Figure 1 shows the violent crime rate in the United States from 1960 to 1994. 2 In 1960, the violent crime rate in the United States was 161 per 100,000 people; by 1994 the rate had increased more than four-fold to nearly 714 per 100,000. 3 As can be seen, the linear trend was highly explanatory (R-square = 0.96)—however, there were two obvious downturns in the trend line—between 1980 and 1985 and, perhaps, between 1991 and 1994.

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US Violent Crime Rate, 1960–1994

Homicides followed a similar pattern. Figure 2 shows the number of homicides each year between 1960 and 1994. In 12 years (1960 to 1972), the number of homicides doubled from 9,100 to 18,670. By 1994, the number had grown to 23,330—but it is worth noting that there were multiple downturns over this period, including a drop of more than 4,000 between 1980 and 1984. These figures show the backdrop to the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Crime” that led reformers to call for more punitive sentencing, including mandatory minimum sentences, “three-strikes laws” that mandated long sentences for repeat offenders, and truth-in-sentencing statutes that required individuals to serve most of their sentences before being eligible for release. This was also the period when the 1966 Bail Reform Act, which sought to reduce pretrial detention through the offer of money bond, was supplanted in 1984 by the Pretrial Reform Act, which once again led to increased reliance on pretrial detention.

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United States Murder and Non-negligent Manslaughter Rate, 1960–1994

The 1994 Crime Act, enacted during the Clinton Administration, continued the tough-on-crime era by enabling more incarceration and longer periods of incarceration that resulted in large increases in correctional populations. In particular, the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing (VOI/TIS) Incentive Grant Program, funded by the Act, provided $3 billion to states to expand their jail and prisons capacities between FY1996 and FY2001 and to encourage states to eliminate indeterminate sentencing in favor of laws that required individuals to serve at least 85% of their imposed sentences.

Figure 3 shows the dramatic rise in the number of state and federal prisoners prior to passage of the 1994 Crime Act—the number of prisoners more than tripled between 1980 and 1994. 4 The increase in numbers of prisoners was not due to shifts from jail to prison or from probation to prison, given that all correctional populations increased dramatically over this 14-year period—jail populations increased 164% (183,988 to 486,474), probation increased 166% (1,118,097 to 2,981,022), and parole increased 213% (220,438 to 690,371).

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State and Federal Prisoners in the US, 1960–1994

So, what happened after passage of the 1994 Crime Act? Fig. 4 shows the violent crime rate from 1960 through 2020. As can be seen, the decrease in the violent crime rate that began prior to passage of the 1994 Crime Act continued. And, notably, it preceded the influx of federal funding to put more police on the streets, build more jails and prisons, and place more individuals into the custody of local, state, and federal correctional agencies. Even with a small increase between 2019 and 2020, the violent crime rate in 2020 was 398.5 per 100,000 individuals, well below its 1991 peak of 758.2. 5

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United States Violent Crime Rate (violent crimes per 100,000 population), 1960–2020

Figure 5 shows the US homicide rate from 1960 to 2020. Consistent with the overall violent crime rate, the homicide rate in 2020 remained well below the peak of 10.2 that occurred in 1981. (Rates also may have risen in 2021—as evidenced by reports of large increases in major U.S. cities—but an official report of the 2021 number and rate for the U.S. was not available as of the time of this writing.) The rise in this rate from 2019 to 2020 was more than 27%— worthy of attention and concern. It represents the largest year-over-year increase between 1960 and 2020. However, there have been other years where the rate increased about 10% (1966, 1967, 1968, 2015, and 2016), only then to drop back in subsequent years. Further, it is difficult to determine whether the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused massive disruptions, is a factor in the increase in homicides or to know whether the homicide rate will abate as the pandemic ebbs. Finally, it bears emphasizing that during this 60-year period there have been years when the homicide rate fell by nearly 10% (e.g., 1996, 1999). From a policy perspective, it seems prudent to be responsive to increases in crime but also not to over-react to one or two years of data—particularly during times of considerable upheaval.

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United States Murder and Nonnegligent Manslaughter Rate, 1960–2020

The growth in correctional populations, including prisoners, that began in the 1970s continued well into the twenty-first century—in other words, long after the crime rate began to abate in 1992. Figure 6 shows the prison population and total correctional population (state and federal prison plus jail, probation, and parole populations summed) between 1980 and 2020. Both trends peaked in 2009 at 1,615,500 prisoners and 7,405,209 incarcerated or on supervision. Year-over-year decreases, however, have been modest (Fig. 7 ), averaging about 1% (ignoring the steep decline between 2019 and 2020). The impact of factors associated with COVID-19, including policy and practice responses, resulted in a 15% decrease in the numbers of state and federal prisoners and a 14% decrease in the total number of adults under correctional control. Based on ongoing projects in pretrial and probation, as well as anecdotal evidence related to court closures and subsequent backlogs, it is reasonable to assume that some, if not most, of the decline in populations in 2020 was due to releases that exceeded new admissions as individuals completed their sentences and delays in court processing reduced new admissions. To the extent that these factors played a role, it is likely that in the immediate near term, we will see numbers rebound to values closer to what prevailed in 2019.

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United States Prison and Total Correctional Populations, 1980–2020

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Year-over-Year Change in Prison and Total Correctional Populations, 2981–2020

Responding with Toughness (and Dollars)

The increase in crime beginning in the 1960s led to a political demand for a punitive response emphasized by Richard Nixon’s “War on Crime” and “War on Drugs.” In 1970, Congress passed four anticrime bills that revised Federal drug laws and penalties, addressed evidence gathering against organized crime, authorized preventive detention and “no-knock” warrants, and provided $3.5 billion to state and local law enforcement. 6 Subsequent administrations continued these efforts, punctuated by the Crime Act of 1994. As described by the U.S. Department of Justice:

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 … is the largest crime bill in the history of the country and will provide for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs …. The Crime Bill provides $2.6 billion in additional funding for the FBI, DEA, INS, United States Attorneys, and other Justice Department components, as well as the Federal courts and the Treasury Department. 7

Much of the funding went to state and local agencies to encourage the adoption of mandatory minimum sentences, “three strikes” laws, and to hire 100,000 police officers and build prisons and jails. This funding was intended to steer the highly decentralized United States criminal justice “system” towards a more punitive approach to crime; this system encompasses all levels of government (local, state, and federal) and all branches of government (executive, judicial, legislative).

The nation’s crime rate peaked in 1992. So, this “largest crime bill in the history of the country” began a dramatic increase in funding for justice expenditures just as crime had already begun to decline. Figure 8 shows that expenditures increased roughly 50% in real dollars between 1997 and 2017—from $188 billion to more than $300 billion dollars (Buehler, 2021 ). 8 More than half of that increase-—$65.4 billion additional—went to police protection. Roughly $50 billion additional went to the judiciary and corrections.

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United States Justice Expenditures, 1997–2017

So, what did these increases buy? Dramatically declining crime rates (Figs. (Figs.4 4 and and5) 5 ) suggest that numbers of crimes also declined. That can be seen in Fig. 9 , which shows offenses known and an estimate of offenses cleared for selected years between 1980 and 2019. 9 In 1991, there were 11,651,612 known property offenses and 1,682,487 known violent offenses—these numbers declined 47% and 34% by 2019.

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Offenses Known and Cleared in the US, Selected Years 1980–2019

Declining numbers of crimes and dramatic increases in expenditures on policing and justice system operation would suggest that there should have been improvements in offense clearance rates during this time. This did not happen. Crime clearance rates stayed roughly constant, which means that the numbers of offenses cleared declined by percentages like declines in the number of offenses over this period—49% for property offenses and 33% for violent offenses. More than 750,000 violent offenses and more than 2 million property offenses were cleared in 1991 compared to about 500,000 violent offenses and 1 million property offenses in 2019.

Presently, as violent crime ticks up, we are hearing renewed calls for “tough-on-crime” measures. Some opinion writers have compared 2022 to Nixon’s era. Kevin Boyle noted:

[Nixon] already had his core message set in the early days of his 1968 campaign. In a February speech in New Hampshire, he said: “When a nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is torn apart by lawlessness, when a nation which has been the symbol of equality of opportunity is torn apart by racial strife … then I say it’s time for new leadership in the United States of America.” There it is: the fusion of crime, race and fear that Nixon believed would carry him to the presidency. 10

Responding to the recent increase in violent crime, President Joseph Biden proposed the Safer America Plan to provide $37 billion “to support law enforcement and crime prevention.” 11 The Plan includes more than $12 billion in funds for 100,000 additional police officers through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program. This proposal echoes the “100,000 cops on the street” that was a centerpiece of the 1994 Crime Act, which created the COPS office and program. Unlike the 1994 Crime Act, however, the Safer America Plan does not include funding for prisons and jails. Both the 1994 Crime Act and the Safer America Plan address gun violence, strengthen penalties for drug offenses, and provide support for programs and interventions to make communities safer and to address criminal recidivism.

The previous 50 or 60 years witnessed reforms efforts other than these that largely focused on bolstering the justice system infrastructure. The 1966 Bail Reform Act sought to reduce pretrial detention through the offer of money bond, but subsequently was supplanted by the 1984 Pretrial Reform Act that once again promoted pretrial detention. 12 This century—as jail populations exceeded 700,000, with most held prior to conviction—there has been considerable attention to eliminate money bond, which disproportionately leads to pretrial detention for poor and marginalized individuals (and release for the “well-heeled”). Private philanthropy has led much of this focus on pretrial and bail reform. For example, the MacArthur Foundation has spent several hundred million dollars on their Safety and Justice Challenge since 2015 with a goal of reducing jail populations and eliminating racial and ethnic disparity. 13 The Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) took a different approach and has invested substantial sums in the development and validation of a pretrial assessment instrument (the Public Safety Assessment or PSA) that provides assessments of the likelihood an individual will fail to appear to court or be arrested for a new crime or new violent crime if released while awaiting trial. 14 Although assessment algorithms have been criticized for lack of transparency and for perpetuating racial bias, the PSA scoring algorithm is publicly available and has not shown evidence of racial bias in a series of local validations conducted by RTI for LJAF. New York and New Jersey are among the states that have attempted to reduce reliance on money bond. However, as violent crime has increased, these efforts have faced considerable pushback.

The bail bonds industry has been a vocal opponent of efforts to reduce or eliminate the use of money bond. This industry is not the only one that profits from the imposition of punishment. As Page and Soss ( 2021 ) recently reported, “Over the past 35 years, public and private actors have turned US criminal justice institutions into a vast network of revenue-generating operations. Today, practices such as fines, fees, forfeitures, prison charges, and bail premiums transfer billions of dollars from oppressed communities to governments and corporations.” Fines, fees, and forfeitures generally profit the governments and agencies that impose them—although supervision fees to private probation services benefit businesses, as do fees for electronic monitoring, and drug testing. The Prison Policy Institute reports that there are more than 4,000 companies that profit from mass incarceration. 15 Court and supervision fees can quickly add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars, burdening people with crushing debt and the threat of jail if they don’t pay. 16 There can be other consequences as well. After Florida passed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to individuals once they had completed their carceral or community sentence, the State specified that the right to vote would not be restored until an individual had paid all outstanding fees and fines. In addition, mistakenly voting with outstanding fees and fines is a felony. 17

Other work to reform pretrial justice includes early provision of defense counsel, and implementation of diversion programs for individuals charged with low-level offenses or who have behavioral health issues. The sixth amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees criminal defendants in the United States a right to counsel. In some jurisdictions (and the Federal court system), this is the responsibility of an office of public defense. In others, private defense counsel is appointed by the Court. Regardless, public defense is widely understood to be poorly funded. As noted by Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy currently working to improve access to defense, “The resulting system is fragmented and underfunded; lacks quality control and oversight; and fails to safeguard the rights of the vast majority of people charged with crimes who are represented by public defenders or indigent counsel.” 18

Mental health problems are prevalent among individuals incarcerated in local jails and prisons. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, in a report by Bronson and Berzofsky ( 2017 ), reported that “prisoners and jail inmates were three to five times as likely to have met the threshold for SPD [serious psychological distress] as adults in the general U.S. population.” Bronson and Berzofsky further reported that 44% of individuals in jail reported being told they had a mental disorder. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s GAINS Center has been at the forefront of efforts to implement jail diversion programs for individuals with mental health or substance use disorders and has also played a significant role in the establishment of treatment courts. 19 Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for law enforcement to improve interaction outcomes between law enforcement and individuals in crisis. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) notes that “The lack of mental health crisis services across the U.S. has resulted in law enforcement officers serving as first responders to most crises. A Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program is an innovative, community-based approach to improve the outcomes of these encounters.” 20 Non-law enforcement responses—such as the CAHOOTS program that was developed in Eugene, Oregon—to certain calls for service are also being tested in multiple communities. 21 Despite multiple efforts to identify appropriate alternatives to jail, individuals with mental health disorders continue to disproportionately fill the nation’s jails.

A Recapitulation

The 1970 crime bills that passed early in Nixon’s presidency set the stage for the infusion of federal dollars that has provided billions of dollars in funding for police and prisons. Between 1970 and 1994, the number of adults in state and federal prisons in the United States increased from less than 200,000 to nearly 1 million. In 2019, that number stood at more than 1.4 million down from its peak in 2009. Another 734,500 individuals were in jail and more than 4.3 million were in the community on probation or parole. Although representing a dramatic decline since these populations peaked about 2009, this still means that more than 6 million adults were under the supervision of federal, state, and local corrections agencies in 2019.

Thus, it is important to recognize that we are at a very different place from the Nixon era. Today, the numbers (and rates) of individuals who are “justice-involved” remain at near record highs. As the progressive efforts of the twenty-first century encounter headwinds, it is worth waving a caution flag as the “remedies” of the twentieth century—more police, “stop and frisk,” increased pretrial detention—are once again being proposed to address violent crime.

Part II: Finding “What Works”

The 1994 Crime Act and subsequent reauthorizations also included funding for a variety of programs, including drug courts, prison drug treatment programs, and other programs focused on facilitating reentry and reducing criminal recidivism. Subsequent legislation authorized other Federal investments that resurrected rehabilitation as a goal of correctional policy. The Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) provided $100 million (and some limited supplements) to agencies to develop programs that began in prison and continued into the community and were intended to improve outcomes across a range of domains—community reintegration, employment, family, health (including mental health), housing, substance abuse, supervision compliance and, of course, recidivism (see Lattimore et al., 2005b ; Winterfield et al., 2006 ; Lattimore & Visher, 2013 , 2021 ; Visher et al., 2017 ). Congress did not reauthorize SVORI but instead authorized the Prisoner Reentry Initiative (PRI) managed by the U.S. Department of Labor; PRI (now the Reintegration of Ex-Offenders or RExO program) provides funding for employment-focused programs for non-violent offenders. In 2006, a third reentry-focused initiative was funded—the Marriage and Incarceration Initiative was managed by the Department of Health and Human Services and focused on strengthening marriage and families for male correctional populations. In 2008, Congress passed the Second Chance Act (SCA) to provide grants for prison and jail reentry programs. The SCA grant program administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) was reauthorized in 2018; it continues to provide reentry grants to state and local agencies (see Lindquist et al., 2021 ). These initiatives all primarily focused on supporting efforts at the state and local level. The First Step Act of 2018 focused on reforms for the federal prison system. These efforts signified a substantial increase in efforts aimed at determining “what works” to reduce criminal behavior—and provided an opportunity to rebut the “nothing works” in correctional programming that followed the publication of research by Lipton ( 1975 ).

Elsewhere, I have summarized some of the research into Federal initiatives that I have conducted over the years (Lattimore, 2020 ). These studies comprise work in dozens of states, involving thousands of individuals and have included studies of drug treatment, jail diversion, jail and prison reentry, and probation. Some involved evaluation of a substantial Federal investment, such as the multi-site evaluation of SVORI.

These evaluations, as has been largely true of those conducted by others, have produced mixed results. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses focusing on the effectiveness of adult correctional programming have yielded findings of modest or negligible effects (e.g., Aos et al., 2006 ; Bitney et al., 2017 ; Lipsey & Cullen, 2007 ; MacKenzie, 2006 ; Sherman, et al., 1997 ). In an updated inventory of research- and evidence-based adult programming, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (Wanner, 2018 ) identified a variety of programs for which evidence suggests significant if modest effect sizes. As has been identified by others (e.g., MacKenzie, 2006 ), the most effective programs focused on individual change, including, for example, cognitive behavior therapy (estimated effect size of -0.11). Treatment-oriented intensive supervision programs were found to reduce recidivism by about 15%, while surveillance-oriented intensive supervision was found to have no demonstrated effects. Several types of work and educational programs (correctional industries, basic adult education, prison-based vocational education, and job training and assistance in the community) were found to reduce recidivism between 5 and 22%. Most non-zero treatment effect sizes were between about 5% and 15%. Lipsey and Cullen ( 2007 ) also suggest 14% to 22% reductions in recidivism for adult rehabilitation treatment programs.

Two thoughts about these small effects warrant consideration. The first, of course, is why reducing criminal behavior appears to be so difficult. Second, however, is that, in recognizing the first, perhaps we should adapt more realistic expectations about what can be achieved and acknowledge that even small effects can have a meaningful impact on public safety.

Challenges: Why Is Effective Criminal Justice Reform So Difficult?

One issue with most federal funding streams is “short timelines.” For example, typical of grant programs of this type, SVORI grantees were given three years of funding. During this time, they had to develop a programmatic strategy, establish interagency working arrangements, identify program and service providers, develop a strategy for identifying potential participants, and implement their programs. Three years is a very short time to develop a program that incorporates needs assessment, provides a multiplicity of services and programs within an institution, and creates a path for continuation of services as individuals are released to various communities across a state.

The “short timelines” problem underlies, and contributes to, a variety of other considerations that can plague efforts to identify “what works.” Based on my experiences, these considerations, which I discuss further below, include the following:

People: Justice-involved individuals have multiple needs and there is an emerging question as to whether addressing these needs is the best path to desistance.
Programs: Interventions often lack adequate logic models and are poorly implemented.
Methods: Evaluations frequently are underpowered and unlikely to scale the alpha 0.05 hurdle typically used to identify statistically significant effects.

First, it is important to recognize that justice-involved individuals face serious and complex challenges that are difficult to remedy. Many scholars have highlighted the myriad of challenges faced by individuals returning to the community from prison (e.g., see Petersilia, 2003 ; Travis, 2005 ; Travis & Visher, 2005 ). In interviews conducted with 1,697 men and 357 women who participated in the SVORI multisite evaluation, 95% of women and 94% of men said at the time of prison release that they needed more education. Nearly as many—86% of women and 82% of men—said they needed job training. More than two-thirds indicated that they needed help with their criminal thinking and three-quarters said they needed life skills training. They were somewhat less likely to report needing substance use disorder or mental health treatment but still—at the time of prison release—66% of the women and 37% of the men reported needing substance use treatment and 55% of the women and 22% of the men reported needing mental health treatment.

Half of these individuals had participated in SVORI programs while incarcerated and the proportions reported reflect their self-assessment of need after in-prison receipt of programming. Figure 10 shows the percentages of SVORI and non-SVORI groups who reported receiving a select set of services and programs during their incarceration. Several things standout: (1) The receipt of programs and services during incarceration was much less than the indicated need at the time of release; and (2) SVORI program participants were more likely to report receiving services than the comparison group members who were not in SVORI programs.

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Self-reported service receipt during incarceration for SVORI program evaluation participants. Note: * = p < = 0.05. Educ = educational programming, EmplSrv = employment-related services, CrimAtt = programs for criminal attitudes including cognitive behavior therapy, LifeSk = life skills, AODTx = substance abuse treatment, and MHTx = mental health treatment. Sample sizes were SVORI men (863), non-SVORI men (834), SVORI women (153) and non-SVORI women (204).

Source: Lattimore & Visher (2009)

More recently, Lindquist et al. ( 2021 ) completed a seven-site evaluation of Second Chance Act reentry programs that were a mix of jail- and prison-based programs. About half of the study participants reported having received substance use disorder treatment and about one-third reported having received mental health treatment. At release, they reported limited-service receipt. For example, there was no significant difference between receipt of educational programming (23% of SCA program participants compared with 17% for comparison group members). SCA program participants were more likely to report receiving any employment services (60% versus 40%), which included job assistance, employment preparation, trade or job training programs, vocational or technical certifications, and transitional job placement or subsidized employment. SCA program participants were also more likely to report receiving cognitive behavioral services (58% versus 41%). But, again, not all program participants received services despite needing them and some comparison subjects received services.

Limited access to treatment by program participants and some access to treatment by comparison subjects were also observed in a multi-site study of pre- and post-booking jail diversion programs for individuals with co-occurring substance use disorder and serious mental illness (Broner et al., 2004 ; Lattimore et al., 2003 ). Across eight study sites, 971 diverted subjects and 995 non-diverted subjects were included in this evaluation; the research found only modest differences in the receipt of services and treatment at 3- and 12-months follow-up. For example, at the 3-month interview, 26% of both groups reported receiving substance abuse counseling, and at the 12-month interview, 0.7% of those diverted versus no non-diverted participant received two or more substance abuse counseling sessions. At 3 months, 38% of the diverted subjects and 30% of the non-diverted reported mental health counseling versus 41% and 38% at 12 months, respectively.

The service needs expressed by these individuals reflect their lack of education, job experience, vocational skills, and life skills, as well as the substance abuse and mental health issues identified among justice-involved individuals. The intervention response to these needs is reflected in the variety of services prescribed in the typical “reentry program bucket.” These involve the services and programs shown in Fig. 10 , as well as case management and reentry planning to coordinate services with respect to needs.

The identification of needs followed by efforts to meet those needs underlies the Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) approach to addressing justice-involved populations (e.g., Andrews & Bonta, 1994 , 2006 ; Latessa, 2020 ). The RNR approach to addressing criminal behavior is premised on the assumption that if you address identified needs that are correlated with criminal behavior, that behavior will be reduced. In other words, recidivism can be addressed by providing individuals the education and job skills and treatment they need to find gainful employment, reduce substance use, and mitigate symptoms of mental illness. Latessa ( 2020 ) recently discussed the RNR approach, reiterating the importance of assessing individual criminogenic and non-criminogenic needs to improve reentry programs. He also reiterated the importance of focusing resources on those identified as high (or higher) risk by actuarial risk assessment instruments—pointing to important work he conducted with colleagues that found that interventions reduced recidivism among high-risk individuals and increased it among low-risk individuals (Lowenkamp & Latessa, 2002 ; Latessa et al., 2010 ). This approach to reentry programming is reflected in the requirements of most federal grants—like the SVORI and SCA—that require programs to incorporate reentry planning that includes needs assessment and services that address criminogenic and non-criminogenic needs.

As noted, most justice-involved individuals have limited education and few job skills, and many have behavioral health issues, anger management issues, and limited life skills. But if addressing these deficits is the key to successfully rehabilitating large numbers of individuals caught in the carceral and community justice system, the meager results of recent research suggests two possibilities. First, this is the right approach, but poor or incomplete implementation has so far impeded findings of substantial effects (a common conclusion since the Martinson report). Second, alternatively, this approach is wrong (or insufficient), and new thinking about the “what and how” of rehabilitative programming is needed. I address the second idea next and turn to the first idea shortly.

MacKenzie ( 2006 ) and others (e.g., Andrews and Bonta, 2006 ; Andrews et al., 1990 ; Aos et al., 2006 ; Lipsey, 1995 ; Lipsey & Cullen, 2007 ) have stressed that programs focused on individual change have been found to be effective more often than those providing practical services. The SVORI evaluation also found support for this conclusion. Services we classified as “practical” (e.g., case manager, employment services, life skills, needs assessment, reentry planning, and reentry program) were associated with either no or a deleterious impact on arrest chances—although few were statistically different from a null effect. Individual-change services (e.g., anger management, programs for criminal attitudes including cognitive behavior therapy, education, help with personal relationships, and substance abuse treatment) were associated with positive impacts on arrest. The original SVORI evaluation had a follow-up period of about 2 years and findings suggested that the overall impact of SVORI program participation on rearrest and reincarceration were positive but not statistically significant. In contrast to these findings, a longer follow-up that extended at least 56 months showed participation in SVORI programs was associated with longer times to arrest and fewer arrests after release for both men and women. For the men, SVORI program participation was associated with a longer time to reincarceration and fewer reincarcerations, although the latter result was not statistically significant ( p = 0.18). For the women, the reincarceration results were mixed and not significant.

Support for positive impacts of programs focused on individual change are consistent with theories associated with identity transformation and desistance from criminal activity. Bushway ( 2020 ) has recently discussed two alternative views of desistance, contrasting the implications of desistance either as a process (i.e., the gradual withdrawal from criminal activity) or reflective of an identify shift towards a more prosocial identity. In examining these two ideas, Bushway posits that the second suggests that individuals with a history of a high rate of offending may simply stop (as opposed to reducing the frequency of criminal acts). If individuals do (or can or will) stop, the implication is clear: policies that focus on an individual’s criminal history (e.g., for employment or parole decisions) may fail to recognize that the individual has changed. This change may be evidenced by in-prison good behavior (e.g., completing programs and staying out of trouble) or positive steps following release (e.g., actively seeking meaningful employment or engaging in positive relationships). Tellingly, Bushway ( 2020 ) notes: “Individuals involved in crime get information about how they are perceived by others through their involvement in the criminal justice system. Formal labels of ‘criminal’ are assigned and maintained by the criminal justice system. As a result, identity models are much more consistent theoretically with an empirical approach that revolves around measures of criminal justice involvement rather than criminal offending per se.” He goes on to discuss the relationship of identity-based models of stark breaks and criminal career models. In short, reflecting insights that labeling theorists have long emphasized, the labels the criminal justice system and society place on individuals may impede the desistance process that is the supposed goal of the system.

The second consideration are concerns about program design and implementation—What is the underlying logic model or theory of change? Is there adequate time to develop the program and train staff to implement it appropriately? Is the resulting program implemented with fidelity? The two or three years usually provided to implement complex programs suggest that these goals are unlikely to be met. The “notorious” findings of Martinson (1975) that “nothing works” was more appropriately interpreted as “nothing was implemented.” Unfortunately, nearly 50 years later, we largely observe something similar—not “nothing” but “something” that is far short of what was intended.

As discussed in detail by Taxman (2020), the usual approach to program development and testing skips over important formative steps, doesn’t allow time for pilot testing, and provides little opportunity for staff training or for achievement and maintenance of program fidelity (if there is even a program logic model). From an evaluator’s perspective, this short timeline imposes multiple challenges. An evaluator must identify study participants (and control or comparison subjects), follow them largely while they are in the program, and hope to have at least one year of post-program follow-up—generally without being able to accommodate the impact of likely weak implementation on evaluation power to detect effects.

Thus, it may not be surprising that effects are generally small. However, these small effects may not be negligible from a public safety perspective. In a study of the effects of non-residential drug treatment for a cohort of probationers, Lattimore et al. ( 2005a ) found that treatment reduced the number of probationers with a felony arrest by 23% during the first year and 11% over the first two years. The total number of arrests was also reduced by 17% over 12 months and 14% over 24 months. “Back of the envelope” calculations suggested that if treatment cost $1,000 per individual, it would have been cost effective to provide treatment to all members of the cohort as long as the (average) cost of arrest (and all related criminal justice processing and corrections) exceeds about $6,463.

Another example is to consider that the impact of a treatment effect in the 10% range applied across all prison releases would imply the aversion of many crimes. For example, assuming 750,000 prison releases each year over a five-year period and a 66% rearrest rate within 3 years (and no additional arrests after 3 years), then 3.75 million prisoners will be released over the five years; of these individuals, 2.475 million will be arrested at least once during the three years following release. A 10% reduction in first-time rearrests would mean 247,500 fewer first-time rearrests. To the extent that many offenders are arrested multiple times, this figure represents a lower bound on the number of averted arrests. A similar analysis could be conducted assuming 2,000,000 probation admissions each year and a 39% rearrest rate within 3 years. In this case, there would be 10,000,000 probation admissions that would generate 3.9 million first-time arrests over the three years after admission to probation. A 10% reduction in first-time rearrests would mean 390,000 fewer arrests. In total, therefore, reducing recidivism—as measured by rearrest by 10% for these hypothetical correctional populations—would translate into 637,500 averted arrests. Extrapolating further and assuming that roughly 10% of the arrests were for violent crime and 90% for property crime, and applying the inverse of the crime clearance rates for these two types of crime to generate a “crimes averted” count, we find that a 10% reduction in recidivism for these two populations would translate into 140,110 violent and 3,519,939 property crimes averted. 22 Thus, “modest” improvements in recidivism may provide substantial public benefits—in crimes averted, and lower demands on law enforcement, prosecution, and correctional resources. 23

The third consideration is the adequacy of the evaluation methods we routinely apply to this complex problem of inadequate interventions that are partially and sometimes poorly implemented. At minimum, we need to explicitly recognize the impacts of the following:

Programs partially implemented and partially treated control conditions.
Recidivism outcomes conditioned on an intermediate outcome.
Follow-up periods too short to accommodate short-term failure followed by long-term success.
Focusing on a binary indicator of recidivism ignores frequency and seriousness of offending.

The impact of partial treatment of both treatment and control groups on effect sizes and the consequential impact on statistical power is seldom discussed—either in initial estimates of needed sample sizes or in subsequent discussions of findings. As shown earlier and is true for most justice evaluations, the control or comparison condition is almost never “nothing.” Instead, it is generally “business as usual” (BAU) that means whatever the current standard of treatment entails. Thus, the treatment group may receive some services that aren’t available to the control group, but in many cases both groups have access to specific services and programs although the treatment group may get priority.

As we saw in Fig. 10 , treatment was reported by some individuals in both the SVORI and non-SVORI groups. Table Table1 1 shows the implications of partial treatment using data from the SVORI evaluation. 24 The percent treated for the SVORI and non-SVORI men are shown in columns three and four. Column 2 presents the effect sizes for four interventions as identified by Wanner ( 2018 ). If we assume that the recidivism rate without treatment is 20%, 25 the observed recidivism rate for the SVORI and non-SVORI men as a result of receiving each treatment is shown in columns four and five. Column six shows that the observed differences in recidivism between the two groups in this “thought experiment” are less than two percent—an effect size that would never be detected with typical correctional program evaluations. 26

Hypothetical treatment effects with incomplete treatment of the treatment group and partial treatment of the comparison group, assuming untreated recidivism rate is 20 percent

* Estimates from Wanner ( 2018 ).

Similar findings emerge when considering the effects on recidivism of interventions such as job training programs that are intended to improve outcomes intermediate to recidivism. Consider the hypothetical impact of a prison job training program on post-release employment and recidivism. The underlying theory of change is that training will increase post-release employment and having a job will reduce recidivism. 27 Suppose the job training program boosts post-release employment by 30% and that, without the program, 50% of released individuals will find a job. A 30% improvement means that 65% of program participants will find employment. Randomly assigning 100 of 200 individuals to receive the program would result in 50 of those in the control group and 65 of those in the treatment group to find employment. (This outcome assumes everyone in the treatment group receives treatment.) Table Table2 2 shows the treatment effect on recidivism under various assumptions about the impact of employment on recidivism. The table assumes a 50% recidivism rate for the unemployed so, e.g., if the effect of a job is to reduce recidivism by 10% employed individuals will have a recidivism rate of 45%. If there is no effect—i.e., recidivism is independent of being employed—we observe 50% failure for both groups and there is no effect on recidivism rates even if the program is successful at increasing employment by 30%. On the other hand, if being employed eliminates recidivism, no one who is employed will be recidivists and 50% of those unemployed will be recidivists—or 25 of the control group and 17.5 of the treated group. The last column in Table Table2 2 shows the conditional effect of job training on recidivism under the various effects of employment on recidivism shown in column 1. The effects shown in the last column are the same regardless of the assumption about the recidivism rate of the unemployed. So, employment must have a very substantial effect on the recidivism rate to result in a large effect on the observed recidivism rate when, as is reasonable to assume, some members of the control group who didn’t have the training will find employment. As before, this finding underscores the need to carefully consider the mechanism affecting recidivism and potential threats to effect sizes and statistical power.

Hypothetical effects of job training on employment and recidivism assuming job training increases employment by 30% and control (untreated) employment is 50%

A third concern is that follow-up periods which typically are 2 years or less may be too short to observe positive impacts of interventions (Lattimore & Visher, 2020). Although this may seem counterintuitive, it is what was observed for the SVORI multisite evaluation. The initial SVORI evaluation focused on the impact of participation with at least 21 months of follow-up following release from prison and showed positive but insignificant differences in rearrests for the SVORI and non-SVORI groups. A subsequent NIJ award provided funding for a long-term (at least 56 months) examination of recidivism for 11 of the 12 adult programs (Visher et al., 2017 ; also see Lattimore et al., 2012 ). In contrast to the findings in the original study, participation in SVORI programs was associated with longer times to arrest and fewer arrests after release for both men and women during the extended follow-up period of at least 56 months. Although untestable post hoc, one plausible hypothesis is that the early period following release is chaotic for many individuals leaving prison and failure is likely. Only after the initial “settling out period” are individuals in a position to take advantage of what was learned during program participation. In any event, these findings suggest the need to conduct more, longer-term evaluations of reentry programs.

A final consideration is the indicator of recidivism used to judge the success of a program. Recidivism, which is a return to criminal behavior, is almost never observed. Instead, researchers and practitioners rely on proxies that are measures of justice system indicators that a crime has occurred—arrest, conviction, and incarceration for new offenses—and, for those on supervision, violation of conditions and revocation of supervision. A recent National Academy of Sciences’ publication ( 2022 ) highlights some of the limitations of recidivism as a measure of post-release outcomes, arguing that indicators of success and measures that allow for the observation of desisting behavior (defined by the panel as a process—not the sharp break advanced by Bushway) should be used instead. These are valid points but certainly in the short run the funders of interventions and those responsible for public safety are unlikely to be willing to ignore new criminal activity as an outcome.

It is worth highlighting, however, some of the limitations of the binary indicator of any new event that is the usual measure adopted by many researchers (e.g., “any new arrest within x years”) and practitioners (e.g., “return to our Department within 3 years”). These simple measures ignore important dimensions of recidivism. These include type of offense (e.g., violent, property, drug), seriousness of offense (e.g., homicide, felony assault, misdemeanor assault), and frequency of offending (equivalent to time to the recidivism event). As a result, a typical recidivism outcome treats as identical minor acts committed, e.g., 20 months following release, and serious crimes committed immediately. Note too that this binary indicator fails in terms of being able to recognize desisting behavior, that is, where time between events increases or the seriousness of the offense decreases. Survival methods and count or event models address the frequency consideration. Competing hazard models allow one to examine differences between a few categories of offending (e.g., violent, property, drug, other). The only approach that appears to have tackled the seriousness dimension is the work by Sherman and colleagues (Sherman et al., 2016 ; also, see www.crim.cam.ac.uk/research/thecambridgecrimeharminde ) who have developed a Crime Harm Index that is based on potential sentences for non-victimless crimes. To date, statistical methods that can accommodate the three dimensions simultaneously do not, to my knowledge, exist. At a minimum, however, researchers should use the methods that are available to fully explore their recidivism outcomes. Logistic regression models are easy to estimate and the results are easily interpretable. But an intervention may be useful if it increases the time to a new offense or reduces the seriousness of new criminal behavior.

The last forty years or so have seen strides at identifying interventions that are promising, but much work remains to be done to find programs that result in substantial, broad-based improvements. Challenges in program development and implementation, partial treatment of treatment groups and control groups, and limited focus on recidivism as a binary indicator of failure were highlighted as some of the issues confronting practitioners and evaluators. 28 There is reason for optimism—if expectations are realistic from both a programmatic and methodological perspective: Identify promising programs, apply best practices of implementation science, calculate reasonable statistical expectations, and build on what has been tried.

Conclusions

In the past several decades, dramatic increases in crime resulted in large-scale legislative changes and expenditures. Correctional populations dramatically increased even as crime rates plunged. In addition, despite large increases in funding to law enforcement and other justice agencies, the number of offenses cleared declined. During this time, there were multiple federal initiatives focused on reducing criminal recidivism. Some, such as the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) programs, focused singularly on reducing drug use, while others focused broadly on addressing the multi-faceted needs of justice-involved individuals.

These changes occurred in a context of a highly decentralized approach to criminal justice, one that creates a myriad of costs and incentives. For example, if a federally funded reentry program reduces crime, the immediate agency beneficiaries are local law enforcement (due to fewer crimes to solve), prosecution (due to fewer crimes to prosecute), and the courts (due to fewer cases to try). That can reduce admissions to prison. But for cost-savings to occur, agencies have to respond to reductions in crime by reducing costs. That tends to run counter to the natural inclination of administrators, especially if it means reducing staffing. And it runs counter to what happened as crime declined over the last roughly 30 years.

We increasingly have research evidence that some programs can reduce recidivism, but many challenges, such as underpowered research designs, sometimes undermines this evidence. Even so, it is important to note that even modest reductions in recidivism imply opportunities to avert substantial numbers of crimes and subsequent criminal justice system processing and costs.

This essay suggests that it is time to embrace the modest improvements in recidivism that have been forthcoming from programs that have been subjected to the most rigorous evaluations. And it suggests that it is time to downsize our expectations for a “silver bullet” and, instead, prepare for a long-term and sustained investment in programming that will improve, refine and augment programs and approaches that “work.” By using “what works” today as the basis for the successful adaptation of multi-faceted programs that address the multiplicity of offender needs, criminal justice policy and practice will develop the tools needed to help a heterogeneous population of prisoners successfully reenter their communities.

Finally, as policymakers grapple with a recent increase in violent crime, it is important to recognize that the “tough-on-crime” responses of the twentieth century led to a 252% increase in the number of citizens under legal system control—including a 312% increase in prison populations—between 1980 and 2000. Correctional populations peaked in 2008 but in 2019 remain 255% above 1980 levels with more than 6.5 million individuals in prisons, jails, or on probation or parole. 29 As the current administration proposes the Safer America Plan, it is important that proper attention be addressed to assure that the result of these expenditures is not to reinvigorate the mass incarceration and mass supervision that followed the adaptation of the as the 1984 Pretrial Reform Act and the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Act of 1994. And it is important that we attend to widespread support for high-quality implementation of programs that have been shown to reduce recidivism.

is a Principal Scientist with RTI International’s Justice Practice Area. She has more than 35 years of experience evaluating interventions, investigating the causes and correlates of criminal behavior, and developing approaches to improve criminal justice operations. She was principal investigator for multi-site, multi-method evaluations including the Multi-Site Evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Initiative, the Second Chase Act Adult Offender Reentry Demonstration Program Evaluation, and the HOPE Demonstration Field Experiment. She is principal investigator for research examining pretrial risk assessment, policy, and practice; state-level reforms for adult probation; implementation and impact of criminal record expungement; development and implementation of dynamic risk assessment algorithms for Georgia probation and parole; and the long-term impact of a three-state RCT of the 5-Key Reentry Program Model. She is a past Chair of the American Society of Criminology Division on Corrections and Sentencing, a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, and a recipient of the American Correctional Association Peter P. Lejins Researcher Award, the American Society of Criminology Division on Corrections and Sentencing Distinguished Scholar Award, and the Academy of Experimental Criminology Joan McCord Award. Dr. Lattimore has published extensively, has served on the editorial boards of multiple journals, and was the inaugural co-editor of the annual series Handbook on Corrections and Sentencing published by Routledge Press.

Data Availability

1 Some of the ideas presented here were initially explored in Lattimore ( 2020 ) and Lattimore et al. ( 2021 ).

2 Data 1960 to 1984 are FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, prepared by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data; downloaded March 5, 2006; data from 1985 to 2020 are from https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend , downloaded July 12, 2022.

3 Violent crime commands the most attention and hence is the focus here, but property crimes are much more prevalent—directly affecting many more individuals. Property crime rates also increased in the 1960s and 1970s. The property crime rate increased from 1,726.3 per 100,000 in 1960 to 4,660.2 in 1994—an 170% increase. The property crime rate peaked in 1980 at 5,353.3 per 100,000—a 210% increase over 1960.

4 Data for 1960 and 1970 prisoners are from Cahalan, M.W. and Parsons, L.A. ( 1986 ). Data from 1980–2014 are from Glaze, L., Minton, T., & West, H. (Date of version: 12/08/ 2009 ) and Kaeble, D., Glaze, L., Tsoutis, A., & Minton, T. ( 2015 ). Data from 2015–2020 are from Kluckow, DSW, & Zeng, Z. (Date of version: 3/31/ 2022 ).

5 As noted in footnote 3, property crime rates also rose between 1960 and 1980—peaking at 5,353.3 per 100,000. With some minor fluctuations, the property crime rate has declined steadily since the 1980s and was 1958.2 per 100,000 in 2020.

6 The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 (PL 91–513); the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (PL 91–452); the District of Columbia Court Reorganization and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970 (PL 91–358); and the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1970.

7 https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/billfs.txt

8 The trend shown in Fig. 9 continued a trend. Between 1982 and 1997, total justice expenditures increased 125% from $84.1 billion to $189.5 billion (2007 dollars), Kyckelhahn, T. ( 2011 ).

9 Data are from the FBI Crime in the United States publications for 1980, 1991, 1995, 2000, 2010 and 2019 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/ . Numbers of offenses cleared were estimated by multiplying the offenses known by the offense clearance rates reported by the FBI.

10 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/31/opinion/richard-nixon-america-trump.html

11 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/01/fact-sheet-president-bidens-safer-america-plan-2/

12 For some thoughts on recommendations for reforms for pretrial and sentencing see Lattimore, Spohn, & DeMichele ( 2021 ). This volume also has recommendations for reform across the justice system.

13 Safety and Justice Challenge.

14 https://www.arnoldventures.org/

15 https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/economics_of_incarceration/

16 For an example of how a minor traffic offense can result in thousands of dollars in fines and fees for extensive terms of private probation see In Small-Town Georgia, A Broken Taillight Can Lead to Spiraling Debt—In These Times.

17 See for example, https://www.propublica.org/article/florida-felonies-voter-fraud

18 https://www.arnoldventures.org/work/public-defense

19 https://www.samhsa.gov/gains-center

20 https://www.nami.org/Advocacy/Crisis-Intervention/Crisis-Intervention-Team-(CIT)-Programs

21 https://www.eugene-or.gov/4508/CAHOOTS

22 In 2005, the Uniform Crime Reports reported 1,197,089 known violent offenses and 8,935,714 known property offenses or a ratio of about 1:9. Clearance rates were 45.5% for violent and 16.3% for property crimes known to police. The estimated total number of arrests for 2005 was 14,094, 186. Thus, the violent and property arrests account for about 72% of all arrests. Of course, these estimates rest on many assumptions—in some cases, these assumptions would imply that we are estimating the lower bound, since each member of our study population is allowed only one arrest while many will have many more than one. On the other hand, to the extent that individuals are arrested who have committed no offenses, the estimates would over represent the impact of a reduction in crime. The goal here was not to generate a precise estimate but to illustrate that a 10% reduction in recidivism translates into substantial reductions in crime.

23 A model-based estimate of the effect of non-residential drug treatment on 134,000 drug-involved individuals admitted to probation in Florida showed treatment reduced arrests by more than 20% (Lattimore et al., 2005a , 2005b ). This analysis was extended to a cost-effectiveness framework in which it was shown that it would be cost effective to spend $1000 treating all drug-involved probations as long as the average cost of an arrest averted (including arrest, and the costs of judicial processing and corrections) is at least $6,463.

where R = recidivism rate for the group, r = recidivism rate in the absence of treatment, T = percentage of group that is treated, and p = the percentage reduction in recidivism due to treatment (the treatment effect). Differences in outcomes are constant with respect to the assumed recidivism rate in the absence of treatment.

25 Differences in outcomes are constant with respect to the assumed recidivism rate without treatment.

26 Lipsey ( 1998 ) discusses the issue of underpowered evaluations.

27 A similar example was presented in Lattimore, Visher, & Steffey ( 2010 ).

28 Although not addressed here because of page limitations additional important methodological considerations include whether a comparison group exists for some interventions such as incarceration (see Lattimore & Visher 2021 for a brief discussion) and, even more challenging, whether replication is even possible given the heterogeneity of context and populations. For an interesting consideration of the implications of the latter for examining the impact of incarceration see Mears, Cochran & Cullen ( 2015 ).

29 Correctional populations dropped dramatically in 2020 as law enforcement and the criminal justice system adapted to COVID-19.

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A better path forward for criminal justice: Reimagining pretrial and sentencing

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Pamela k. lattimore , pamela k. lattimore senior director for research development, division for applied justice research - rti international cassia spohn , and cassia spohn regents professor - school of criminology and criminal justice, arizona state university matthew demichele matthew demichele senior research sociologist - rti international.

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Below is the second chapter from “A Better Path Forward for Criminal Justice,” a report by the Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform. You can access other chapters from the report here .

The roots of mass incarceration in the United States lie in policies and practices that result in jail for millions of individuals charged with but not convicted of any crime and lengthy jail or prison sentences for those who are convicted. These policies and practices are the results of 50 years of efforts at criminal justice reform in response to the “War on Crime” and the “War on Drugs” that began in the 1970s—intended to improve public safety, curb drug abuse, and address perceived inequities in the justice system, these reforms also had unintended consequences that exacerbated disparities.

As the United States grapples with yet another iteration of calls for social and racial justice following multiple deaths of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement, the time is ripe to develop and implement deep structural reforms that will increase fairness and ensure proportionate punishment without sacrificing public safety. Concurrently, practices implemented to address the public health crisis in the Nation’s jails and prisons accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic provide an opportunity to examine whether reducing pretrial detention and prison sentences can be accomplished without negatively affecting public safety.

As the United States grapples with yet another iteration of calls for social and racial justice following multiple deaths of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement, the time is ripe to develop and implement deep structural reforms that will increase fairness and ensure proportionate punishment without sacrificing public safety.

This chapter briefly discusses the evolution of criminal justice reform efforts focused on pretrial and sentencing policies and practices that resulted in unprecedented rates of incarceration that have only recently begun to abate. This discussion is followed by proposals for policy reforms that should be implemented and recommendations for critical research needed to guide future reform efforts.

Level Setting

Despite declining somewhat over the past two decades, America’s incarceration rate remains the highest in the world. 1 Individuals in the United States may spend months in jail awaiting trial and those convicted are more likely than those in peer nations to receive long carceral sentences. Against the backdrop of renewed calls for racial and social justice in response to deaths of Black people at the hands of police, the COVID-19 pandemic has shone an unforgiving spotlight on America’s jails and prisons, where those awaiting trial or serving sentences have experienced disproportionate rates of infection and death due to the spread of the virus. The responses to the pandemic in many jurisdictions have included unprecedented efforts to reduce jail populations and some efforts toward early prison release that provide an opportunity to determine whether reducing pretrial detention or prison sentences can be accomplished without negatively affecting public safety.

The United States has been engaged in efforts to reform pretrial practices and sentencing for more than five decades. The 1966 Bail Reform Act sought to reduce pretrial detention through the offer of payment of money bond in lieu of detention, while rising violent crime rates and an ongoing “drug war” resulted in the 1984 Pretrial Reform Act that once again led to a reliance on preventive pretrial detention. More recently, there has been a renewed push to reduce reliance on financial requirements for pretrial release in response to concerns about the growing numbers of individuals detained and the disparate impact of these detentions on individuals who are poor and people of color. Risk assessment tools that predict failure to appear and new arrests for those released while awaiting trial have been implemented to support release decisionmaking and to provide an alternative to money bail. These tools have also been suggested as a means to reduce disparities in release that may reflect implicit biases and cognitive errors in judgement by those charged with making release decisions quickly with incomplete information. Risk assessment tools continue to garner support despite criticisms that they perpetuate historical biases that exist in the criminal record information used to make the predictions.

Concerns about disparity, discrimination, and unfairness in sentencing led to a sentencing reform movement that began in the mid-1970s and that, over time, revolutionized sentencing. States and the federal system moved from indeterminate sentencing, in which judges imposed minimum and maximum sentences and parole boards determined how long those incarcerated would serve, to structured sentencing policies that constrained the discretion of judges, ensured that sentences were pegged to crime seriousness and to the criminal history of those found guilty, and, in many jurisdictions, eliminated discretionary release on parole.

As the “War on Crime” and the “War on Drugs” escalated during the 1980s in response to increasing rates of violent crime and the drug—primarily crack cocaine—epidemic, reformers also championed changes designed to establish more punitive sentencing standards. These changes included sentencing enhancements for use of a weapon, prior criminal history, and infliction of serious injury; mandatory minimum sentences, particularly for drug and weapons offenses; “three-strikes laws” that mandated long prison sentences for repeat offenders; truth-in-sentencing statutes that required individuals to serve more of their sentences before they were eligible for release; and life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) sentences. Federal support for these efforts included funding under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Pub. L. 103-322) that established the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing (VOI/TIS) Incentive Grant Program, which was designed to assist state efforts to remove violent offenders from the community. Over five years (FY1996 to FY2001) this program provided states with $3 billion in funding to expand prison and jail capacity and to encourage states to eliminate indeterminate sentencing in favor of “Truth in Sentencing” laws that required individuals to serve at least 85 percent of the imposed sentence. 2

What have been the results of these efforts at reform? More individuals detained pretrial as the numbers of individuals booked into jails increased and as the proportion of those held in jail pending trial increased from 56 percent of the jail population in 2000 to 66 percent in 2018. Prison populations also skyrocketed—from about 200,000 in 1970 to 1.43 million in 2019. 3 Further, sentences became more punitive, with individuals convicted of felonies in state and federal courts facing a greater likelihood of incarceration and longer sentences than they did in the pre-reform era. The number of individuals serving life—and life without the possibility of parole—sentences also increased dramatically; there are now more offenders serving life sentences than the total number of individual who were held in all U.S prisons in the early 1970s. Worldwide, the United States accounts for more than one-third of all life sentences and eight out of ten LWOP sentences. Moreover, there is persuasive evidence that these punitive changes did not produce the predicted decline in crime but did exacerbate already alarming racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration.

T here are now more offenders serving life sentences than the total number of individual s who were held in all U.S prisons in the early 1970s.

Pretrial detention and prison incarceration are linked, as those engaged in recent efforts on pretrial reform recognize. Pretrial detention contributes to mass incarceration both directly and indirectly. Pretrial detention results in a greater likelihood that individuals (irrespective of guilt) will plead guilty, a greater likelihood of being sentenced to incarceration, and longer sentences. These impacts are disproportionately borne by people of color—who are more likely to be detained and less likely to be able to afford bond amounts that are often set higher than for similarly situated White defendants.

The consequences of pretrial detention are difficult to reconcile given that many of those detained pretrial are charged with offenses that, were they to be found guilty, would be unlikely to result in incarcerative sentences. Research suggests that pretrial detention is linked to substantially higher recidivism rates post sentencing—suggesting that even if pretrial detention reduces some criminal activity during the pretrial period this is more than offset by much higher recidivism rates after individuals serve their sentences. Further, pretrial detention removes individuals presumed innocent from their families and communities—often resulting in the loss of employment and housing, interrupted treatment, and, in some cases, the loss of child custody. Court imposed fines and fees are passed without making income-based adjustments and failure to pay such fines and fees can result in revocation of one’s driver’s license and further incarceration.

Housing America’s prisoners is expensive—more than $88 billion in local, state, and federal taxpayer monies were spent on corrections in 2016. 4 Most of those in jail are awaiting trial—so the costs of jail are not to pay for punishment. Instead, pretrial detention is meant to ensure attendance at trial and to protect the public from harm by individuals who have not been convicted of a crime. But, in fact, failure to appear at trial is rare and often due to mundane reasons (e.g., forgetting the trial or hearing date). Similarly, new arrests of those released pretrial are also infrequent with arrests for violent crimes rare. 5

The costs of jail or prison for sentenced individuals are justified in terms of one or more of the purposes of punishment—retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation. The first of these (retribution) provides voice to the victims of crime and recognizes society’s need for justice. The remaining three are utilitarian justifications of punishment, each of which is designed to prevent or reduce crime. Incarcerated individuals cannot perpetrate new crimes on society at large (incapacitation) and there is a presumption that punishment will deter those who have been punished and those contemplating similar crimes from future criminal acts (deterrence). Finally, as reflected in the last three decades’ focus on reentry programs, society benefits if prisoners can be rehabilitated, reentering society with the skills and desire to be contributing citizens. These goals are often at odds—lengthy prison sentences may be justified by the seriousness of the crime and may act to incapacitate dangerous individuals or to deter potential offenders, but they also may decrease the odds of rehabilitation and successful reentry into the community. Long prison sentences that cause individuals to lose touch with their families and their communities and that reduce their ability to function in society interfere with rehabiliative goals, particularly as the prison environment itself is toxic to individual agency and the skills needed to function in society.

There is an urgent need to identify a balanced strategy with respect to pretrial justice and sentencing, one that will reduce crime and victimization, ameliorate unwarranted disparities, and reclaim human capital currently lost to incarceration. This strategy should identify the costs incurred across the system and society and ensure that these costs are balanced by the benefits. Further, to ensure that the intent of policy changes is realized and to identify unanticipated consequences, rigorous research should assess the impacts and costs of changes, identifying what is promising.

Criminal justice reform is complicated. In the United States, justice responsibilities are spread across the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of local, state, and federal governments. As a result, the costs and benefits of various justice functions are seldom obvious to those making decisions. Further, the costs often accrue to one branch and level of government while the benefits accrue to another—for example, if the local government implements and pays for a program that diverts individuals with mental illness from jail to treatment, thus reducing future criminal activity, the local police and jail may incur fewer future justice system costs but the greatest savings may accrue to the state government that won’t have to prosecute and incarcerate or supervise these individuals in the future. A judicial decision to detain an individual pretrial or to sentence an individual to years in prison (or on probation) imposes costs that are not borne by the judicial branch. As a result, there is often little incentive to change policies and practices. In addition, laws and decisions are often made to address retributive or incapacitation goals—perhaps with a nod to deterrence—without consideration that less punitive—and less costly—interventions might provide better, long-term societal outcomes. Finally, the justice system is often the system of last resort to address the needs of individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders, who often do not have the education and job skills to be successful in the 21 st century. Rethinking how society can better address societal disadvantage may relieve the burdens on the justice system and result in better outcomes.

Our recommendations for achieving these goals include the following:

Short-Term Reforms

Cost-benefit Analyses of Pretrial and Sentencing Practices
Set Fines and Fees on Ability to Pay

Hold Prosecutors Accountable for Filing and Plea-Bargaining Decisions

Reconsider Probation and Parole Practices that Contribute to Mass Incarceration

Medium-Term Reform

Inter-Agency Approaches to Reducing Justice System Intervention

Long-Term Reforms

Establish a Presumption of Pretrial Release

Revise sentencing statutes to ensure proportionality, short-term reforms, cost-benefit analyses of pretrial and sentencing practices.

Immediate changes could be made to reveal the costs across decision points within justice systems to those making decisions, with a goal of ensuring that the incurred costs are equal to the benefits. For pretrial decisions, this means stakeholders would have the information to understand that pretrial detention is not “free,” but instead comes with justice system costs and with collateral costs to the detained, their families, and their communities. If the average cost of a night in jail is $50 or higher 6 and given the collateral costs of pretrial detention, how many nights in jail awaiting trial would be justifiable for someone who is charged with a minor crime that would never result in a sentence of incarceration? Does society benefit if an individual spends many nights in jail because they are unable to post $200 to cover a $2000 bond while they are awaiting trial on minor charges or because they were unable to pay fees and fines from a previous case?

Justice systems should consider monetary and extra-monetary costs alongside the usual considerations of judicial officers as to whether someone will miss court or be arrested for a new crime as well as the costs of these very different events. Missing court is likely less costly than incorrectly detaining many people to avoid the potential for missed court appearances—particularly if inexpensive court reminder systems can more cheaply reduce failures to appear. Many jails reduced their pretrial detained populations significantly as the COVID-19 pandemic began and there is little evidence of effects on crime. This may provide a reset in some communities as they consider that what changed was not the risk posed by the detained individuals but the decision to release, as well as reconsideration of the initial decisions to arrest (rather than cite) and book into jail. To this end, jurisdictions need to move away from reliance on financial conditions for release. Few people are denied bail, but most people detained pretrial are there because they are unable to pay bail—a system that advantages the well-off who have the resources to cover bail at the expense of the poor. If bail cannot be eliminated for most charges, policymakers should revisit the use of private bail bond agencies so that individuals who are released only by securing the services of a bail agency do not end up forgoing the ten percent they pay to cover their bail—an expense they incur even if they appear and meet all pretrial conditions.

Setting Fines and Fees Based on Ability to Pay

Another reform that could be accomplished in the short-term is setting fines and fees based on ability to pay. 7 Just as bail differentially disadvantages the poor over the more well-off individual, so do fixed fine and fee schedules that charge the indigent the same as the millionaire. Fixed fines and fees can trap those with limited means in a cycle of fines, fees, jail for failure to pay, more fines, etc. Fine schedules could be developed that set fines based on multiples of the individual’s daily wage (perhaps setting the minimum at the minimum wage for those intermittently employed—for example, $58 representing eight hours of wage at $7.25). Similarly, fees could be adjusted to reflect ability to pay. Neither of these should preclude the ability of judges to waive fees and fines for those unlikely to ever be able to make the payments. In clear cases of indigence, courts should have the authority to waive all fines, fees, and surcharges.” 8

Policy changes that constrained judicial discretion at sentencing have concomitantly led to increased prosecutorial discretion at charging and plea bargaining. Prosecutors decide whether to file charges that trigger mandatory minimum sentences, life without parole sentences, or habitual offender provisions; whether to dismiss these charges during plea bargaining; and whether to file (and later dismiss) collateral charges that lead to punitive sentence enhancements. An immediate effort needs to be made to hold prosecutors accountable by requiring that they file charges only for offenses for which there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt and a reasonable likelihood of conviction at trial, and by mandating that plea negotiations be in writing and on the record. Prosecutors also should consider establishing sentencing review units that would identify, evaluate, and rectify sentences deemed excessive and disproportionate.

Reconsider Probation and Parole Practices that Contribute to Mass Incarceration

Jurisdictions should reconsider probation and parole policies and practices that contribute to mass incarceration. In many jurisdictions, a large proportion of those admitted to jail or prison are individuals who violated the conditions of probation or parole. To rectify this, the conditions imposed on individuals placed on probation or parole should be reasonable (and not designed to set them up for failure), judges should use graduated sanctions in responding to probation/parole violations, and probation or parole should be revoked, and a jail or prison sentence imposed, only for repeated or egregious technical violations or for serious new crimes.

MEDIUM-TERM REFORMS

There should be investment in ongoing performance measurement—across the decision points—so that stakeholders can begin to understand the aggregate impacts of individual decisions. The law at its core is about the individual—the individual victim, the individual defendant, and the individual case. But the decisions that are made individually add up to crowded jails and prisons. These performance measurement systems are not necessarily complex—for example, dashboards to track variation in judicial sentencing or to monitor who is being held in jail provide insight into the overall consequences of the dispensation of justice.

Developing and monitoring these process metrics are simply good business practices. Just as a well-run restaurant knows exactly how many ingredients are needed and how long it takes to process each part of an order, a local justice system should know the details of who is in their jail and why. Prosecutors should know how their offices and individual prosecutors manage caseloads and outcomes. Judges should know how their sentencing stacks up with their peers.

Mid-term improvements require more sophisticated inter-agency approaches by law enforcement, prosecutors, and the courts. 9 These agencies have wide discretion to institute diversion programs, problem-solving courts, and other alternatives to incarceration, and they should collaborate with social service agencies and with public health and educational professionals to address underlying issues, such as behavioral health, substance abuse, or homelessness, that lead to local justice system intervention. Such inter-agency approaches to developing programs reflect that the complex needs of individuals caught in the justice system are the responsibility of society more broadly and not of a justice system poorly equipped and financed to address lifetimes of cumulative disadvantage. These programs need to be adequately funded and designed to provide positive pathways forward. One misunderstanding that accompanied the many early reentry programs was the assumption that the programs and services needed to address the needs and deficits of returning prisoners already existed in communities and only needed to be harnessed through planning and case management. Evaluations of some of the largest federally funded reentry grant programs have repeatedly shown that few individuals releasing from prison access services to address their needs—as services are not available or competing demands such as finding and keeping employment or lack of transportation preclude engagement. Emerging support for the hypothesis that desisting from criminal behavior may have different roots than simply addressing deficits correlated with offending like substance use also suggests that these programs should divert to a positive lifestyle through demonstrations and support for alternative identities. 10

LONG-TERM REFORMS

Mass incarceration is the result of several decades of policy decisions, and unwinding mass incarceration will require a long-term approach designed to slow the flow of individuals into jails and prisons and to reduce the lengths of sentences they are serving. Pretrial detention is an important component of mass incarceration; something to consider is restricting the crimes for which individuals are booked into jail and establishing a presumption for release for all but the most serious offenses and the individuals who pose the most serious flight risks.

In the long run, the criminal codes that govern the imposition of punishment in municipal, state, and federal justice systems in the United States need to be reformed to ensure that punishment is commensurate with the seriousness of the crime. This will entail ratcheting downward the sentencing ranges associated with various combinations of offense seriousness and criminal history, enhancing eligibility for probation, reducing sentence enhancements for aggravating circumstances, and increasing sentence discounts for mitigating circumstances. In addition, mandatory minimum sentencing statutes and two- and three-strikes laws should be repealed or, if that proves politically unpalatable, dramatically scaled back to ensure that the punishment fits the crime. Jurisdictions also should revise truth-in-sentencing and life sentencing statutes by reducing the amount of time offenders must serve before being eligible for release and should eliminate life without the possibility of parole sentences for all but the most heinous crimes.

Recommendations for Future Research

Justice requires identifying and confirming more effective and cost-efficient ways of securing appropriate outcomes for society, for victims, and for those charged with and convicted of crimes. Reforms should be surrounded with rigorous research and ongoing performance measurement. Basic research is needed to better understand the relationships between policy alternatives and outcomes, and evaluation is needed to ensure that reforms lead to better outcomes, to identify unintended negative consequences, and to embark on a path of continuous improvement of the justice system.

Researchers studying pretrial systems need to assess the impact of current practices and potential reforms on the crime rate, sentencing punitiveness, mass incarceration, and unwarranted disparity in pretrial detention. First, there needs to be more research on cumulative disadvantage to understand how disparities at earlier stages of the process (i.e., pretrial detention) accumulate across the life course of a criminal case to produce harsher treatment of certain categories of offenders. Second, research on the pretrial process needs to address and answer the following questions:

Do financial conditions increase court attendance and decrease crime rates compared to release on recognizance (ROR) or non-financial conditions?
Does the amount of bail affect outcomes?
How consequential are pretrial decisions in future decisions about conviction and sentencing? And on future criminal behavior?
What are the factors associated with failure to appear? Is there a relationship between the seriousness of the charged offense or the severity of the prior record and failure to appear?
How does defense counsel at first appearance affect detention decisions and case outcomes?
What are the effects of pretrial conditions and supervision practices on failure to appear and new criminal activity?
How dangerous are pretrial releasees? What is the nature of criminal activity during pretrial release?
What considerations and conditions need to attend release decisions for special categories of offenders that may pose special risks to victims (e.g., domestic violence cases) or to justice (e.g., defendants that pose special concerns with respect to witness intimidation)?

Sentencing researchers should examine decisions to sentence offenders to life—and especially to life without the possibility of parole; these consequential decisions have not been subjected to the type of empirical scrutiny directed at other sentencing outcomes and thus little is known about the existence of or extent of unwarranted disparities in the application of these punitive punishments. Research is needed to assess the impact of different types of punishment on recidivism rates—that is, to determine whether more punitive sentences lead to higher or lower recidivism rates and whether this relationship varies depending upon the offense of conviction. We know that those sentenced in the United States are more likely to be incarcerated, and for longer terms, than similar individuals in peer countries. What is not known is whether these harsher punishments produce any positive “added value” for society at large.

Research is needed to produce better estimates of the “costs of punishment” across the justice system and society. These estimates should include the explicit costs to local, state, and federal jurisdictions, but also the implicit costs to individuals, their families, and their communities. These efforts should be accompanied by new work to update estimates of the cost of crimes—both the cost to the criminal justice system but also the costs to victims. These sets of studies will provide the foundations for balancing the costs of crime with the costs of punishment.

And, finally, evaluation research should study the process, outcomes, impacts, and costs and benefits of pretrial and sentencing reforms. This research should help to identify what works and what does not work, including identifying unexpected consequences of reform. This research should clearly identify the goals of the reform and then assess how well those goals are met. For example, if changes in detention decisionmaking are intended to reduce racial disparity, a rigorous evaluation should assess the extent to which decisionmaking changes, whether those changes are commensurate with what was envisioned, had an impact on disparity.

Pretrial release and sentencing policies and practices are a root cause of mass incarceration in the United States. Moreover, these inflexible and punitive policies have disparate effects on the poor and people of color, are not cost effective, and often result in punishment that is disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime. We have outlined a series of short- medium- and long-term reforms designed to slow the flow of people into our nation’s jails and prisons, reduce the number of persons now incarcerated and the lengths of sentences they are serving, and ameliorate unwarranted disparities and unfairness. We also have articulated a series of issues for future research; answers to the questions we pose will be critical to understanding the cost, benefits, and effectiveness of pretrial and sentencing reforms.

Essay on Criminal Justice System

Students are often asked to write an essay on Criminal Justice System in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Criminal Justice System

Introduction to criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system is a set of legal and social institutions for enforcing the criminal law. It has three main parts: the police, courts, and corrections. These parts work together to prevent and punish criminal activities.

The Role of Police

The police are the first step in the criminal justice system. They keep us safe by preventing crime and catching people who break the law. When they find evidence, they give it to the courts.

The Court System

The courts are where judges decide if someone broke the law. They look at the evidence given by the police. If they find the person guilty, they decide the punishment.

Corrections and Punishment

The last part is corrections. This includes prisons, probation, and parole. Prisons are where people go if they’re found guilty. Probation and parole are ways for people to serve their punishment outside of prison.

Importance of the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system is important because it helps keep order in society. It makes sure that people who break the law are punished, which helps prevent more crime.

250 Words Essay on Criminal Justice System

What is the criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system is a set of legal and social institutions for enforcing the criminal law. These institutions include the police, the courts, and the correctional facilities. They work together to maintain social control, deter and control crime, and sanction those who violate laws.

The Role of the Police

The police are the first point of contact in the criminal justice system. Their job is to enforce laws, maintain peace, and protect the community. When a crime happens, the police investigate, gather evidence, and arrest the suspect.

The Courts and Their Function

After the police make an arrest, the case moves to the court. The court’s role is to judge if the person is guilty or not. This is done through a trial where both sides present their arguments. If the person is found guilty, the court decides the punishment.

Correctional Facilities

The last part of the criminal justice system is the correctional facilities. These are places like jails and prisons. If a person is found guilty, they might be sent here. The goal is to punish them but also to help them become better citizens.

The Importance of the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system is very important. It helps keep our society safe and orderly. It makes sure that people who break the law are punished. But it also tries to help these people change their ways so they can live better lives.

In conclusion, the criminal justice system plays a key role in maintaining law and order in society. It ensures that justice is served for both the victims and the offenders. It’s a system that is designed to protect the rights of everyone involved.

500 Words Essay on Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system is a set of legal and social institutions for enforcing the criminal law in line with a defined set of procedural rules and limitations. In simple words, it’s a system that makes sure people follow the law. If someone breaks the law, this system steps in.

Parts of the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system is made up of three main parts. These are the police, the courts, and corrections.

The police are responsible for enforcing the law. They are the ones who catch people who break the law. After catching these people, the police hand them over to the courts.

The courts then decide if the person is guilty or not. They do this by listening to both sides of the story. If the person is found guilty, the court gives a punishment. This punishment is meant to make the person understand that breaking the law is wrong.

The corrections part of the system is where the punishment happens. This could be in a jail or prison, or the person might be allowed to stay in their own home but with some rules they must follow.

Why is the Criminal Justice System Important?

The criminal justice system plays a big role in keeping our society safe. It makes sure that everyone follows the law. If there were no system to punish people who break the law, then more people might decide to do bad things.

The system also tries to help people who have broken the law to change their ways. This is done through programs that teach them new skills or help them to understand why what they did was wrong.

Challenges in the Criminal Justice System

Even though the criminal justice system is very important, it also has some problems. Sometimes, people are treated unfairly because of their race or how much money they have. Some people might get a harsher punishment than others for the same crime. This is not fair, and many people are working to make the system better.

In conclusion, the criminal justice system is a key part of our society. It helps to make sure that people follow the law and punishes those who don’t. It also tries to help people change their ways so they don’t break the law again. But, like any system, it has problems that need to be fixed. By understanding how it works, we can all help to make it better.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Analysis & Opinion

New Essay Collection from Columbia University Press Offers Latest and Best Thinking on Criminal Justice, and What Must Be Done

Edited by the Brennan Center’s Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Excessive Punishment is a reality check on crime and justice in 2024

Changing Incentives
Cutting Jail & Prison Populations
Prison and Jail Reform
Social & Economic Harm

Anti-mass incarceration efforts have succeeded in bringing reform without sacrificing public safety, but an overreliance on punitive responses have limited their impact, especially for people of color

Contributors include Paul Butler, Alexes Harris, Michael Mendoza, Nkechi Taifa, Bruce Western

Today Columbia University Press published Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration . Lauren-Brooke Eisen , director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, solicited 38 essays from criminal justice scholars, practitioners, and advocates, as well as former law enforcement and people who have experienced incarceration.

“The noise and disinformation about crime is hitting its usual election-year peak. This book cuts through all that,” says Eisen. “It shows that public safety, justice, and fairness are compatible goals that must be achieved together if they are to be achieved at all. The current dominant method— the blend of mass incarceration and perpetual punishment – has failed on all three counts: public safety, justice, and fairness.”

The contributors to the collection include Paul Butler , Jennifer Chacón , Khalil Cumberbatch , Alexes Harris , Michael Mendoza , Nkechi Taifa , Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western , and many others (complete list below). They delve into the unfinished work of the criminal justice reform movement. Why does so much of the criminal justice system remain locked on overincarceration? How do factors like structural racism and economic incentives work against commonsense reforms? A sampling:

“ Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs ” by Nkechi Taifa, civil rights attorney
“ Monetary Sanctions as a Pound of Flesh ” by Alexes Harris, University of Washington
“ Providing Hope and Freedom to Overpunished People: Where Both Seem Impossible to Achieve ” by David Singleton, University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law
“ Addressing Violent Crime More Effectively ” by David Alan Sklansky, Stanford Law School
“ The Inhumanity of Solitary Confinement ” by Christopher Blackwell, who is incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center in Washington state

The book has earned advance praise for its depth, scope, and solutions from U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner (ret.), Judith Resnik (Yale), Emily Bazelon ( The New York Times Magazine ), James Cadogan (National Basketball Social Justice Coalition), and more. (Their comments are below.)

On Wednesday, April 3 , at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT, the Brennan Center along with the Commonwealth Club of California and The Last Mile will host a panel at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (live-streamed as well) to discuss the themes and questions raised by Excessive Punishment . Eisen will be joined by fellow contributor Michael Mendoza, along with retired Superior Court of Northern California Judge LaDoris Cordell , Kevin McCracken of The Last Mile, and Ken Oliver of the Checkr Foundation. To RSVP for an in-person spot or for the live stream, please email John Zipperer at the Commonwealth Club.

On Wednesday, April 17 , at 3 p.m. ET, the Brennan Center will also host a live, virtual event. Eisen will moderate a conversation with fellow contributors Jeremy Travis of the Columbia Justice Lab , Khalil Cumberbatch of the Council on Criminal Justice, and Nkechi Taifa , a civil rights attorney. RSVP here . Excessive Punishment will be the subject of other upcoming events. Please email Derek Rosenfeld to find out more.

In addition to leading the criminal justice work at the Brennan Center, Eisen is a former prosecutor and the author of Inside Private Prisons (Columbia, 2017).

Advance Praise for Excessive Punishment

“This book weaves a path toward reform of the fragmented system of criminal punishment in the United States, which produces too many harms and too little safety for anyone. Essays brilliantly distill the histories of control and racism, and they map how to reorient interactions on streets, in prisons, and after release to recognize the political voice and social worth of all members of the country.” – Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law, Yale Law School

“This book breaks through the tropes about what it takes for our criminal legal system to ensure public safety; it smashes the generalizations that have fueled our failed experiment in mass incarceration for the past several decades. And it does so with experts of all kinds—scholars, activists, practitioners—who chronicle how our system went off the rails and, more important, how to fix it.” – U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner (ret.)

“This book brings together an amazing array of contributors to outline the biggest problems with American conceptions and implementation of punishment—and also to propose solutions.” – Emily Bazelon , author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration and staff writer, The New York Times Magazine

“In 2020, millions of Americans came together in an unprecedented call for a more just society. This collection of essays by some of the country’s foremost thinkers continues that work—helping us understand the history of our carceral system and offering a blueprint for how we can create safe, healthy, and thriving communities from coast to coast.” – James Cadogan , executive director, National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

“As someone who endured fourteen years within the confines of federal prison, I have witnessed the stark and often brutal realities of our criminal justice system. Excessive Punishment is a beacon of insight onto the cycle of mass incarceration that grips our nation.” – Louis L. Reed , activist and film producer

Contributors to Excessive Punishment

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Social & Economic Harm

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The Importance of Ethics in Criminal Justice

This essay about the importance of ethics in the criminal justice system likens ethical standards to an undercurrent in an ocean, crucial yet often unseen, guiding the legal framework from beneath. It illustrates ethics as both a moral compass for practitioners, like detectives, and a protective immune system against corruption and bias. The narrative underscores the daily reality where criminal justice professionals face moral dilemmas and emphasizes that ethical vigilance is essential for maintaining public trust and the integrity of justice. It warns that neglecting these ethical standards can lead to systemic failure, impacting innocent lives and societal trust. Through imaginative analogies, the essay highlights how a culture of integrity and ethical awareness is vital for the criminal justice system to function effectively and justly.

How it works

In a world that often resembles a high-stakes drama, the significance of ethics within the criminal justice system is a storyline that deserves center stage. Think of the system as a vast ocean, with laws as its surface – visible, defined, and tangible. Yet, beneath this surface, in the depths where the sunlight struggles to reach, ethics swim, guiding the system’s course through unseen, yet treacherous waters. This silent undercurrent is what keeps the ship of justice afloat, navigating through the complexities of right and wrong, fairness, and bias.

Picture this: a detective, weighed down by the pressure to solve a high-profile case, finds himself at a moral crossroads. The easy path tempts with promises of quick resolution but ventures into murky ethical waters. Here, the detective’s internal compass, honed by a commitment to ethical integrity, becomes his guiding light, steering him away from compromise. This narrative is not just fiction; it’s a daily reality for many in the criminal justice field. The ethical principles they uphold are invisible shields protecting the sanctity of justice.

Now, let’s shift the lens to view ethics as the system’s immune system. Just as our bodies fight off infections, ethical vigilance works silently but persistently to resist the infection of corruption and misuse of power. In the absence of this immune response, the system would succumb to the diseases of injustice and bias, eroding public trust. Imagine a courtroom where fairness is the judge, accountability the jury, and respect for human dignity the law. This is the ideal, safeguarded by the unsung heroes who daily commit to ethical practice.

However, the path of ethics is not without its obstacles. It’s a tightrope walk over a canyon of moral dilemmas, where a misstep could mean a fall into the abyss of ethical violations. The high stakes of criminal justice decisions amplify these challenges, where the impact of choices can change lives forever. To navigate this tightrope, professionals need more than just knowledge of the law; they require a moral compass that points steadfastly towards justice, even when the winds of circumstance try to blow them off course.

The consequences of neglecting this ethical undercurrent are stark. Unethical actions can turn the criminal justice system into a shipwreck, with the wreckage impacting innocent lives and corroding the foundations of societal trust. To prevent this, the system itself must champion the cause of ethical vigilance, promoting a culture where ethical training and awareness are paramount, and where integrity is celebrated and rewarded.

In weaving the narrative of ethics into the fabric of the criminal justice system, we acknowledge its critical role in upholding justice. It’s a tale of heroism that often goes untold, yet it’s the force that maintains the balance between law and morality, ensuring the system serves its true purpose. As we look to the future, the continuous commitment to ethical vigilance will be the beacon that guides the criminal justice system through the storms, ensuring it remains a vessel worthy of society’s trust and confidence.

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importance of criminal justice system essay

Yes, Criminal Justice Reform Is Still a 'Thing,' and It Might Be Yours | Opinion

A s President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump prepare for their first debate, one commonality is that each has in some contexts backed criminal justice "reform." Biden is enumerating his executive actions on policing and touting billions made available for violence prevention . Trump embraced his signing of the First Step Act in a Super Bowl ad and more recently on the campaign trail in portraying himself to Black voters as someone who understands what it is like to be a victim of the criminal justice system.

Yet it's no secret that the cause of criminal justice reform has taken on water in many quarters over the last few years for reasons such as growing concerns over urban decay , cartel activity connected with the border crisis , a fentanyl epidemic that has only begun to wane slightly , and a crime spike in 2020 and 2021 , though crime other than auto thefts has dropped sharply since 2021 . Another factor has been the conflation of effective changes in policy and practice guided by research with misguided and dangerous calls to abolish police and prisons .

Nonetheless, current polling still shows strong bipartisan support for the general concept of "criminal justice reform," and though the term can mean very different things to different people, those suspicious of reform from either the Right or the Left might find a surprising number of policies to favor if they peeked beneath the hood.

With that in mind, here's a cheat sheet, followed by a few cautionary notes.

You might be a criminal justice reformer:

If you recognize the vital role of police in deterring and solving crime but also back accountability, transparency and professional development, and wellness programs that improve officer performance.

If you'd want a family member or close friend struggling with a mental illness or addiction to get treatment .

If you believe decisions on whether defendants remain in jail prior to trial should be based on whether they're a threat to the public , not how much money they have.

You might be a criminal justice reformer if you think that the loss of freedom itself, not inhumane conditions , is the punishment when we put someone in prison.

If you believe crime victims should have access to restitution and services, including through trauma recovery centers and other resources that are available even if a case is not prosecuted or solved.

If you think people charged with a crime should have as much access to quality legal representation as the government prosecuting them.

If you think formerly incarcerated people who have been living in the community crime-free for many years should be able to clear their record rather than carrying/bearing a lifetime scarlet letter.

If you accept years of academic research showing that the swiftness and sureness of sanctions more effectively deter criminal behavior than the severity of those sanctions.

If you think probation and parole systems that supervise 3 million Americans should put at least as much effort into helping people succeed as catching and punishing them when they fail.

If you acknowledge the reality of wrongful convictions , which one study estimated at 11.6 percent of murder and sexual assault cases, and believe that defendants should be able to avail themselves, even years later, of the best forensic techniques such as DNA testing to vindicate colorable innocence claims, just as we should leverage the best science to solve more crimes.

If you think the government should not be permitted to confiscate your property through forfeiture laws without proving it was connected to criminal activity.

If you think people should be able to punch the clock at a paying job after doing their time, instead of being denied an occupational license for an offense unrelated to that job.

These common-sense positions are supported by evidence and tap into values like fairness and redemption that unite us as Americans. Nonetheless, you might buy a pig in a poke if you don't keep a few cautionary notes in mind, as not all policies labeled as "criminal justice reform" are grounded in evidence or worthy of adoption.

The same goes when it comes to writing a blank check for any program that claims to reduce recidivism but lacks validation by solid evidence that compares similar individuals who went through the program with those who did not. The criminology literature is littered with examples of programs like " Scared Straight " that sounded good, but upon closer scrutiny, did not deliver.

Finally, reform should not mean revolution. While some may find tilting at windmills alluring, the process of making targeted changes, evaluating their impact, and adjusting course as warranted need not be dispiriting. In their new book Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age , Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox compellingly argue that both within criminal justice and in other policy areas, tying the pace of reforms to systems' capacity for implementing them with fidelity to the model, has proven to be the most effective approach. If every jurisdiction adopted the best policy on each topic covered here, our justice system would be a model for the world.

Until then, if you think the criminal justice system needs improvements but that we shouldn't dismantle it, you might find a lot of fellow Americans are in your corner. In a polarized country, there remains a brand of criminal justice reform that Americans across the spectrum just might be able to get behind.

Marc A. Levin, Esq., is chief policy counsel for the Council on Criminal Justice and a former law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He can be reached at [email protected] and on X at @marcalevin .

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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State lawmakers join formerly incarcerated New Yorkers, faith leaders, and activists during a rally to launch a post-budget effort to pass parole reforms in New York state before the end of the state legislative session on April 20, 2022.

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COMMENTS

The Importance of the Criminal Justice System
The criminal justice system is designed to deliver "justice for all.". This means protecting the innocent, convicting criminals, and providing a fair justice process to help keep order across the country. In other words, it keeps our citizens safe. Without the criminal justice system, and all those who work within it, there might be havoc ...
Why Is the Criminal Justice System Important?
Criminal justice touches on all aspects of our lives and in ways that most people might not think about. Criminal justice is important because it's a system that includes law enforcement, courts, prisons, counseling services, and a number of other organizations and agencies that people come into contact with on a daily basis.
How to Think about Criminal Justice Reform: Conceptual and Practical
We argue that an effective approach to criminal justice reform—one that results in policy action that matches policy talk—requires clarity regarding normative views about the purpose of punishment, appreciation of practical realities involved in policymaking, and insight into how the two intersect. To this end, in this essay we offer ...
Criminal Justice Reform Is More than Fixing Sentencing
The annual reduction in income that accompanies a criminal conviction rises from $7,000 initially to over $20,000 later in life. Today crime is rising. Public safety must be a paramount goal. When violence cascades, it affects and hurts poor and marginalized communities most. As Alvin Bragg, the new Manhattan district attorney, put it so well ...
Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System
This text explains how a criminal case proceeds through the criminal justice system very effectively. Each of the three components of the criminal justice system - law enforcement, courts, and corrections - is fully covered. It explains the importance of data collection to measure crime, which is essential to effective resource deployment.
Core of Criminal Justice System
Core of Criminal Justice System. At the core of the criminal justice system is the delivery of justice for all, by convicting and punishing the guilty and helping them to stop offending, while protecting the innocent. It is responsible for detecting crime and bringing it to justice; and carrying out the orders of the court, such as collecting ...
What is the Criminal Justice System? Insights for Aspiring Legal Minds
The criminal justice system plays a central role in protecting society and maintaining order by ensuring that laws are enforced and justice is served as fairly as possible. It operates through three primary components that include law enforcement, the judiciary (courts), and corrections. Law enforcement agencies take the initial step in this ...
Guide to the U.S. Criminal Justice System
The criminal justice system adheres to policies and practices that exist to uphold justice and keep people safe. The criminal justice system operates to prevent crime and punish law offenders under the governing jurisdiction. The criminal justice system is the complicated network of legal subsystems at the federal, local, and state level in the ...
American Criminal Justice: a Review Essay
AA REVIEW ESSAY ROBERT V. STOVER*. Hardly anyone who has systematically studied the American criminal. justice system in recent years is satisfied with the way it works. In the past. decade or two, social scientists, attorneys, administrators, journalists, and political activists have produced immense bodies of literature on the police ...
General Introduction (Chapter 1)
Criminology today definitely cannot be seen as a coherent set of theories, methods, and research topics - quite the opposite. Like many other disciplines, it is nowadays highly diff erentiated and specialised from the theoretical, methodological, and thematic perspectives. Moreover, it goes without saying that its historical and contemporary ...
Criminal Justice Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas
199 essay samples found. Essay topics on criminal justice are not easy. It requires much research and knowledge of the justice system of a particular country and the law rights of residents. This topic combines much information, but you should focus on one to reveal it well in your essay. For example, you can write about the United States ...
A better path forward for criminal justice: Conclusion
The essays in this volume and the recommended supplemental readings provide much food for thought about the major areas of criminal justice reform that should be at the top of the nation's ...
The Importance of the Criminal Justice System
The importance of the criminal justice system cannot be overstated in a functioning society. It serves as the cornerstone of maintaining law and order, upholding justice, and safeguarding the rights of individuals. This system comprises a network of agencies, institutions, and processes that work together to investigate, prosecute, and manage criminal activities.
Essay about The Criminal Justice System
Essay about The Criminal Justice System. The Criminal Justice System is one of the most important tools available to society for the control of anti-social behavior. The criminal justice system needs to prove a balance between punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent being found guilty; however it is not as easy to convict those who are ...
PDF Criminal Justice System: Aims and Processes
This chapter considers the purposes, aims, and values of a criminal justice system and the controversy surrounding each of its terms: system, justice, and criminal. It describes the agencies that form the justice system and the passage of cases through it. Central to the criminal process is the exercise of by police officers, prosecutors, defence
Reflections on Criminal Justice Reform: Challenges and Opportunities
In this essay, I offer some reflections based on my nearly 40 years of evaluating criminal justice reform efforts. 1. Go to: Part I: Waging "War". The landscape of criminal justice reform sits at the intersection of criminal behavior and legal system response. Perceptions of crime drive policy responses.
A better path forward for criminal justice: Reimagining pretrial and
Pretrial detention is an important component of mass incarceration; something to consider is restricting the crimes for which individuals are booked into jail and establishing a presumption for ...
The Importance Of The Criminal Justice System
856 Words. 4 Pages. Open Document. The criminal justice system, at times, provides an effective balance of the rights of victims, offenders and society. However, when considering the balance or rights in regards to the criminal investigation and criminal trial process and the system of sentencing and punishment, the inefficacy is considered ...
U.S. Criminal Justice System Essay
1006 Words. 5 Pages. Open Document. U.S. Criminal Justice System. In order to keep a safe society, it is important to establish a nation with good education to teach people judging from right or wrong , excellent police force to keep our street safe, and most of all, a good criminal justice system to carry out the justice.
Criminal Justice System Essay [Free Example]
This essay discusses how the criminal justice system is an important part of the government, allowing for the prosecution, imprisonment, and rehabilitation of criminals. Apart from the court system and police, the criminal justice system has other components like criminal justice agencies that provide additional information for researchers to form studies and articles to help improve the ...
Essay on Criminal Justice System
The criminal justice system is very important. It helps keep our society safe and orderly. It makes sure that people who break the law are punished. But it also tries to help these people change their ways so they can live better lives. In conclusion, the criminal justice system plays a key role in maintaining law and order in society.
New Essay Collection from Columbia University Press Offers Latest and
Today Columbia University Press published Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration. Lauren-Brooke Eisen , director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, solicited 38 essays from criminal justice scholars, practitioners, and advocates, as well as former law enforcement and people who ...
The Importance of Ethics in Criminal Justice
This essay about the importance of ethics in the criminal justice system likens ethical standards to an undercurrent in an ocean, crucial yet often unseen, guiding the legal framework from beneath. It illustrates ethics as both a moral compass for practitioners, like detectives, and a protective immune system against corruption and bias.
Yes, Criminal Justice Reform Is Still a 'Thing,' and It Might Be ...
to the public. , not how much money they have. You might be a criminal justice reformer if you think that the loss of freedom itself, not. inhumane conditions. , is the punishment when we put ...
Importance Of Criminology In The Criminal Justice System
This essay will explore whether there is equality in the criminal justice system. It aims to look at statistics, legislation and studies from the past 30-40 years to get a thorough analysis of the processes and experiences different races in particular black and ethnic minority youths have been through within the criminal justice system.
Civil vs. Criminal Cases: Understanding the Key Differences
One of the major distinctions between criminal and civil cases is the parties involved. For civil cases, the party initiating the lawsuit is the plaintiff, while the party being sued is the defendant. The dispute is generally between private individuals or organizations. For criminal cases, the state, represented by a prosecutor or district ...