NCJ Number
86314
Editor(s)
D E J MacNamara
Date Published
1981
Length
254 pages
Annotation
Fifty-two articles are presented under the broad topics of crime and justice in America, police, the judicial system, juvenile justice, and punishment and corrections.
Abstract
Essays on the topic of crime and justice in America include presentations of a general view of the criminal justice system, a perspective on how 200 years of socioeconomic change have shaped America's crime problem, taking the profit out of organized crime, nuclear terrorism and its consequences, and Federal legislation bearing upon white collar crime. Other topics in this section focus on crime against the elderly, the difficulty of rehabilitating the career criminal, the crime-unemployment cycle, and property crime in rural America. Some articles on the police consider officer depression resulting from the officer's killing of an offender, the impact of officer burnout on the officer's family, private policing, and how the police view the press. Other topics in this section include police career planning among university students, citizen policing, and anti-police attitudes among the public. Among the topics covered in the section on the judicial system are the Burger Court's (Supreme Court) reinterpretation of Warren Court rulings on the constitutional rights of the defendant and suspect, the scientific selection of jurors, the misuse of psychiatry in court dispositions, preventive detention, and censuring and selecting judges. Essays on juvenile justice evaluate the various aspects of the juvenile justice system, and essays on punishment and corrections note changes in the philosophy of sentencing, profitable inmate work, inmate protection, the effectiveness of parole, and deinstitutionalization. The inmate riot at the New Mexico State Penitentiary is also assessed, and the juvenile delinquency prevention program at New Jersey's Rahway Penitentiary is described. The table of contents includes annotations for the articles. For individual entries, see NCJ 86315-24.