CRJS 501 Criminal Justice Theory

1
CRJS 501Criminal Justice Theory

• Session 3
• Criminal Justice Theory
• POLITICS
• SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST
• GROWTH COMPLEX

2
Question

• The most interesting thing you read this week??

3
Theoretical Orientations Politics
4
Criminal Justice as Politics

• Ideology and Criminal Justice Policy (Miller)
• The Desirability of Goal Conflict within the
  Criminal Justice System (Wright)
• Crime, Culture, and Political Conflict
  (Scheingold)

5
Criminal Justice as Politics

• viewing the criminal justice apparatus through
  political lenses means that we wrap our minds
  around criminal justice using the language and
  thinking of political scientists (p. 105)

6
Miller Ideology and Criminal Justice Policy

• Ideology is the permanent hidden agenda of
  criminal justice
• What assumptions and crusading issues
  characterize the divergent ideological positions
  that drive criminal justice policies and
  practices?
• How does this clash of ideology dictate the
  nature of all aspects of criminal justice?

7
Wright The Desirability of Goal Conflict
within the Criminal Justice System

• to analyze the criminal justice system as if it
  did not exist within a political environment
  seems to be particularly naïve (p. 123).
• All but the radicals fail to see that criminal
  justice is as it is for a reason, that there is a
  certain rationality in the seemingly structural
  irrationality (p. 123).
• Conflict provides system stability (p. 125).

8
Scheingold Crime, Culture, and Political
Conflict

• For politicians, crime is a political
  opportunity as well as a responsibility an
  issue for which the myth of crime an punishment
  provides a simple and credible answer that the
  public is only too happy to embrace (p. 126).
• what is operative is a complex and
  unpredictable process in which politicians
  seeking to retain office capitalize on public
  anxieties, which are only tenuously linked to the
  actual incidence of crime (p. 128).
• What makes the connection between politics and
  criminal justice so complex?

9
Questions

• What are key features of the Political
  Perspective?
• Are the assumptions of the political perspective
  that politics play a role at all levels of the
  criminal justice process correct?
• Kraska says that it is a large theoretical bite
  to cover the political perspective in one section
  and notes the overlap of political theories with
  other perspectives if so, how are politics
  incorporated into the other CJ theories?

10

• Explain the following statistics from the
  Political Perspective
• In 2005 there were 2,320,359 million people
  incarcerated in the United States with 1 in every
  136 people in prison or jail.
• In Washington State, as a result of recently
  passed HB6157 offenders released from prison must
  return to the county of their 1st conviction.

11
Thoughts/Comments on the Political Perspective?
12
Theoretical Orientations Social Constructionist
13
The Social Constructionist Perspective

• Analyzing crime and justice from the social
  constructionist perspective means asking
  questions about how crime and its control is
  constructed through culture -- Crime is a social
  construction Reality is not a given its a
  human accomplishment (p. 137).

14
Criminal Justice from the Social Constructionist
Perspective

• The Social Construction of Crime and Crime
  Control (Rafter)
• Chicano Youth Gangs and Crime The Creation of a
  Moral Panic (Zatz)
• Inventing Criminal Justice Myth and Social
  Construction (Kappeler)

15
Rafter -- The Social Construction of Crime and
Crime Control

• the social constructionist approach
  investigates how the facts of crime and crime
  control are produced.it explores the
  relationships among social structures, law,
  criminal acts, and perception (p. 161).
• It enables us to relativize practices usually
  taken for granted, to problematize received
  wisdom, and to historicize otherwise unquestioned
  assumptions (p. 162).
• What are the contributions of the social
  constructionist perspective to understanding
  criminal justice?

16
Zatz -- Chicano Youth Gangs and Crime The
Creation of a Moral Panic

• the social imagery of Chicano youth gangs,
  rather than their actual behavior, lay at the
  root of the gang problem (p. 157)
• What factors contributed to this moral panic over
  Chicano gangs in the late 1970s/early 1980s in
  Phoenix?

17
Kappeler -- Inventing Criminal Justice Myth and
Social Construction

• Criminal justice myths are collective
  presentations of reality. Everyone we come into
  contact with can add a bit of myth to our
  understanding of criminal justice (p. 168)
• The government is a powerful mythmaker The
  government is also a form of media (p. 169).
• The ultimate power of the social construction of
  criminal justice myth is its ability to determine
  what is and what is not thinkable (p. 175).
• What are some of the myths?

18
Questions

• What are the key features of the social
  constructionist perspective?
• Do you buy that crime is a social construction?
  What are the implications of this contention?

19
Thoughts/Comments on the CJ from the Social
Constructionist Perspective?
20

• Explain the following CJ Practices from the CJ as
  Social Constructionist
• Racial Profiling
• Sex Offender Registration
• Capital Punishment

21
Theoretical Orientations Growth Complex
22
Criminal Justice as Growth Complex

• The Corrections-Commercial Complex (Lilly
  Knepper)
• The Crime Control Industry and the Management of
  the Surplus Population (Shelden Brown)

23
Criminal Justice as Growth Complex

• Prisons have become a prison industrial
  complex. The growth in the criminal justice
  system over the past few decades appears, despite
  its ineffectiveness, to have no boundaries
  even when criminal justice bureaucracies fall
  short of their public interest goals, they often
  turn the lemons of their failure into
  bureaucratic lemonade (p. 182).

24
Lilly Knepper -- The Corrections-Commercial
Complex

• Any issue of Corrections Today, the official
  publication of the ACA, contains many examples of
  the triangular arrangement between government,
  commerce, and this organization (p. 191).
• Does a national corrections subgovernment
  influence incarceration and recidivism rates?
  Is there a connection between get-tough-on-crime
  politics and the profit-seeking interests of the
  corrections industry? How rapidly is the
  international corrections subgovernment
  developing? (p. 194)
• What are the authors talking about here?

25
Shelden Brown -- The Crime Control Industry
and the Management of the Surplus Population

• The war on crime (including the war on
  drugs) has become a booming business (p. 198).
• The police, the courts, and the correctional
  system have become huge, self-serving and
  self-perpetuating bureaucracies with a vested
  interest in keeping crime at a minimal level (p.
  198).
• The incarceration rate in the U.S. is around
  nine times greater than the global average (p.
  200).

26
Questions

• What evidence exists to support the notion of the
  prison industrial complex?
• What arguments could be made/evidence presented
  contrary to this view?
• As we move through these perspectives, how do
  they compare/contrast?

27
Thoughts/Comments on the Growth Complex
Perspective?
28

• Explain the following from the Growth Complex
  Perspective
• Proliferation of Alternative Sanctions such as
  GPS tracking and Electronic Home Detention.
• The increase in student enrollment in criminal
  justice undergraduate and graduate programs.
• Policies and legislation requiring prisoners to
  copay for medical and other services.

29
Literature Review Workshop

• How would your topic be explained from the
  theoretical perspectives discussed today?
• Rational-Legal?
• CJ System?
• Crime Control/Due Process?
• Politics?
• Social Constructionist?
• Growth Complex?
• What questions do you have regarding?
• Topic ideas?
• Developing, narrowing, broadening good literature
  review/research questions?
• Other?

30
In Class Exercise

• Small Groups -- Apply the theories weve covered
  so far to term paper topics in your group.
• Rational/Legal
• CJ as System
• Due Process/Crime Control
• Politics
• Social Constructionist
• Growth Complex

31
Questions

• Do some topics more readily lend themselves to
  explanation by some theories over others?
• What challenges did you face in analyzing your
  topics from these perspectives?