In criminal law, abortion refers to induced abortion: the intentional destruction of a fetus in the womb, or an untimely delivery brought about with intent to destroy the fetus. An unintended miscarriage, or so-called spontaneous abortion, is not, for legal purposes, an abortion at all. Termination of pregnancy sometimes is used as a synonym for abortion. It is, however, a wider term, since pregna…
Accomplice liability rests on the premise that someone whom the law interchangeably calls an accomplice, accessory, aider and abettor, secondary party, or helper in the crime or crimes of his perpetrator, doer, or principal is derivatively liable for whatever crime or crimes the principal commits. Punishment for accomplice liability is shared equally among principals and their helpers. Proof of th…
Actus reus is a term of art in criminal law. Literally the Latin phrase means bad act. The technical, legal use of the phrase denotes one of the elements that must be proven by the prosecution before anyone can be liable to criminal punishment. The actus reus element is the act made criminal by some statute or other valid source of criminal law. Thus, a defendant is said to have committed the actu…
Born September 6, 1860 (Cedarville, Illinois) Died May 21, 1935 (Chicago, Illinois) Social reformer By the early 1900s Jane Addams was one of the most famous and respected women in America. Her practical approach to charity, business, and reform worked well within the American free enterprise system (the freedom of private businesses to operate competitively for profit with minimal government regu…
The term adversary system sometimes characterizes an entire legal process, and sometimes it refers only to criminal procedure. In the latter instance it is often used interchangeably with "accusatorial procedure," and is juxtaposed to the "inquisitorial," or "non-adversary," process. There is no precise understanding, however, of the institutions and arran…
The view that involvement in crime diminishes with age is one of the oldest and most widely accepted in criminology. Beginning with the pioneering research by Adolphe Quetelet in the early nineteenth century, criminological research consistently has confirmed that (the proportion of) the population involved in crime tends to peak in adolescence or early adulthood and then decline with age. This ag…
Excerpt from "The Al Qaeda Training Manual" Reprinted from Terrorism: Documents of International and Local Control, Volume 39, U.S. Perspectives, edited by James Walsh Published in 2003 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States was involved in a long struggle to protect the nation's homeland and American intere…
In nineteenth-century American thought, the link between alcohol and crime was strong and certain. The showman P. T. Barnum was echoing countless other writers when he stated, in a temperance pamphlet published at mid-century, that "three-fourths of all the crime and pauperism existing in our land are traceable to the use of intoxicating liquors." These claims made by the temperance movement spurr…
The Prohibition "experiment" is periodically cited as a test of the legal control of moral behavior. Implications are then drawn for other areas of morals legislation such as drug use, prostitution, abortion, and gambling. However, this analogy between a historical set of events and the scientific test of a hypothesis is both imperfect and misleading. What can be learned from the his…
Providing treatment for persons who have committed crimes and who also have alcohol problems seems a straightforward subject for description and analysis. The approach should presumably center on the description of circumstances when criminals with alcohol problems do or do not receive treatment for these problems, factors affecting this differential use of treatment, and a review of evidence of t…
Appellate review in criminal cases serves multiple purposes: correction of errors, supervision of trial court practice, articulation of legal standards, promotion of uniform decisionmaking, and provision of both procedural justice and its appearance. Although such review has come to be viewed as fundamental to criminal adjudication, the modern system of criminal appeals is a relatively recent phen…
The earliest scientific writings on arson were generated during the late eighteenth century by a group of German psychiatric theorists, who concluded that the crime was characteristic of physically and mentally retarded females from rural areas who were undergoing the stresses of puberty. These theorists classified arson under the rubric of "instinctive monomania" that, according to prevailing leg…
In the eleventh century the Shiite Ismaeli convert Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah (c. 1050–1124), "the Old Man of the Mountain," appeared in Islamic Persia and for nearly fifty years led the struggle against both Sunni orthodoxy and Turkish rule. Persecuted and hunted, he established the mountain fortress of Alamut, which "became the greatest training center of fanatical politico-…
A common description of the American criminal process begins with the arrest of a person accused of crime who, after booking and possible interrogation by the police, is brought before a judge or judicial officer to have bail set. At this first judicial appearance, the judicial officer may read the charges to the accused, explain the need for and availability of counsel, schedule the defendant�…
Under the federal Bank Robbery Act of 1934, as amended, 18 U.S.C ??2113, 3231 (1999), banks, credit unions, and savings and loan associations that are (1) organized under federal law; (2) part of the federal system; or (3) federally insured are protected. This section of the United States Code defines bank as any banking or trust institution that is organized and operating under United States law …
Individuals living in England in the early thirteenth century lived in a feudal society. The king granted favors to his subjects in return for their loyalty and obedience. His subjects and, most of all, the king himself believed the Almighty God gave him the right to rule. The king's law was the law of the land. No earthly document or written law was above what the king declared as lawful a…
Born February 6, 1802 (Beaumont-la-Chartre, France) Died February 22, 1866 (Paris, France) French magistrate, prison reformer Gustave de Beaumont was a nineteenth-century French statesman when he received a commission from the King of France Louis Phillipe (1773–1850) to inspect American prison systems for the French government. In 1831 Beaumont and his friend and noted historian Alexis de …
Extortion refers to obtaining property or compelling action by the use of threats or by the misuse of public office. The terms blackmail and extortion are often used interchangeably; yet in ordinary speech, they connote somewhat different behavior. Blackmail generally refers to hush money, and extortion refers to certain forms of public official misconduct and to those making threats of physical h…
Born March 6, 1937 (Detroit, Michigan) Wall Street financier, white-collar criminal Ivan Boesky worked in the fast-paced, high stakes world of Wall Street investing during the suddenly lucrative years of the 1980s. He was a financier who built a highly successful business by trading stock in companies experiencing financial difficulties. Boesky, however, became involved in a financial scam using &…
Born July 19, 1860 (Fall River, Massachusetts) Died June 2, 1927 (Fall River, Massachusetts) Accused murderer Lizzie Borden was accused in the gruesome double homicide of her father and stepmother in 1892. The violent nature of the murders and the gender of the accused killer made the case a national sensation. The trial had all the elements of a media drama, ensuring the high profile case a place…
Born November 24, 1946 (Burlington, Vermont) Died January 24, 1989 (Starke, Florida) Serial murderer Ted Bundy did not fit the stereotype of a murderer yet he was responsible for one of the most gruesome and notorious killing sprees in American history. Bundy was handsome and charming and lured dozens of unsuspecting women to their deaths. The sheer volume of those killed (suspected to be over one…
The principal purpose of most trials is to resolve a dispute about facts. Both parties present evidence to a fact finder, either judge or jury, who evaluates the evidence and resolves the controversy. A number of rules of law guide the fact finder in evaluating the evidence; most important of these are the rules that tell the fact finder who should have the benefit of the doubt. These rules are ty…
Burglary is a criminal offense that may be generally described as the unauthorized entry of a dwelling (or another delineated building) with the intent to commit a crime therein. Every jurisdiction has its own precise statutory definition of the crime of burglary, with corresponding case law to carve out the limits and meanings of that particular definition. One will immediately notice that the cr…
Execution as a criminal punishment has been a part of U.S. history since the early colonial days of the seventeenth century. It is a story of changing methods based on what the public considers the most effective deterrent to future criminals, as well as what is considered sufficiently humane. There is also a long history of debate over the morality of taking human lives. Capital punishments were …
Until the twentieth century, the law of capital punishment in the United States was almost entirely in the hands of individual states. State legislatures could decide whether to have capital statutes at all, what crimes to render eligible for capital punishment, what procedures to follow in capital trials, and what methods of execution to use. The federal legislature—Congress—also ex…
Throughout the world, from earliest recorded times, the death penalty has played a prominent role in social control. Abolition of the death penalty became a matter for political discussion in Europe and America beginning in 1764, when the young Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) published his little book, On Crimes and Punishments. Beccaria's criticism of torture and the deat…
Born September 30, 1924 (New Orleans, Louisiana) Died August 25, 1984 (Los Angeles, California) Author Truman Capote was an author who became famous as much for his eccentric personality as for his writing. Capote initially wrote dark, mystical fiction but later shifted toward nonfiction. He preferred writing more about people and places than about issues or ideas. Capote's professional rep…
The criminal justice system is composed of the agencies of police, courts, and corrections. The corrections system, representing the community's response to suspected and convicted juvenile and adult offenders, is a significant component of criminal justice. Corrections agencies, operating at local, municipal, state, and federal levels, include jails, prisons with varying degrees of securit…
A career in criminal law can be very rewarding and a valuable learning experience. The field is attractive to those who have a strong sense of justice and who are interested in public service. Furthermore, it is a good choice for individuals interested in trial work and litigation. Criminal lawyers generally work either as prosecutors or as defense attorneys. Defense attorneys work either for a pu…
Job and career opportunities in policing are many and varied. The early years of American policing were typified by political appointment of officers and frequent turnover in departmental personnel (Fogelson). This is no longer the case. Policing currently offers an attractive and stable profession to many people. The realm of employment in policing is quite vast, therefore the following section w…
How do some people decide to commit a crime? Do they think about the benefits and the risks? Why do some people commit crimes regardless of the consequences? Why do others never commit a crime, no matter how desperate their circumstances? Criminology is the study of crime and criminals by specialists called criminologists. Criminologists study what causes crime and how it might be prevented. Throu…
From the late nineteenth century into the early twenty-first century, U.S. society increasingly became concerned about the welfare of the nation's children. Congress and the states passed special laws recognizing that children held a right to a healthful upbringing and are particularly vulnerable to being victimized by criminals. Children have a right to basic needs such as food, clothing, …
The structure of the American legal system presupposes a clear distinction between civil and criminal wrongs in that the system provides distinctive legal processes and distinctive legal responses to the two kinds of wrongs. The clearest, strongest version of the civil/criminal distinction goes something like this: A civil action is brought by a private, injured party to seek compensation for an u…
The longstanding controversy over the importance of social class in the production of criminal conduct is often an argument over the meaning of class and the measurement of crime. Criminal conduct is far from a unitary phenomenon. In general, for a crime to be committed, there must be some intentional conduct that is prohibited by a criminal law. Occasionally, the law may require specific condu…
Religious beliefs played heavily in legal thinking of the early colonial period, a period dating from 1607 to the end of the American Revolution (1775–83; a war fought between Great Britain and the American colonies in which the colonies won their independence). The modern American criminal justice system has its roots in the legal concepts carried by early English settlers to the New World…
A striking contradiction of the reform era of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since the late 1970s has been the coexistence of dramatic changes in the social and economic field and the sustained stagnation of political and legal institutions. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has insisted upon adherence to both the existing political system and to continuous economic reform. This contr…
In the United Kingdom there are three separate criminal justice systems, one each for Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England and Wales. This entry will focus on the system in England and Wales, a jurisdiction with a population of fifty-two million people. In many jurisdictions the criminal laws or penal code can be traced to a key constitutional date when a new system of government was introduced…
Islamic law is traditionally equated with the shari'a, the compendium of rules and applications devised over the centuries by the jurists of the Islamic empire. The main form and content of the shari'a arose during the first three and a half centuries after the death of Muhammad in A.D. 632, through the development of "schools of law," which were groupings of legal spec…
Russia belongs to the continental European civil law tradition although its long history of autocracy and Soviet totalitarianism has left a distinct imprint on its system of criminal justice. Three great historical watersheds have left their imprint on Russian law: (1) the legal reforms of Tsar Alexander II in 1864; (2) the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917; and (3) the collapse of the Soviet Union in …
If at any time in the criminal proceedings the defendant appears to be suffering from a mental illness, the issue of competence to proceed may be raised. This may occur when the defendant seeks to plead guilty or to stand trial. It may occur when the defendant seeks to waive certain constitutional rights, such as the Fifth Amendment or Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), or the Sixth Amendmen…
Computerization significantly eases the performance of many tasks. For example, the speed and ability to communicate with people is fostered by the Internet, a worldwide network that is used to send communiqués and provide access to the world-wide web. But this same speed and ability to communicate also opens the door to criminal conduct. Computer crime plays a significant role in the crim…
Excerpt from the Comstock Law Reprinted from The Statutes at Large and Proclamations of the United States of America from March 1871 to March 1873, Vol. XVII. Edited by George P. Sanger Published in 1873 Sexual morality has long played an important role in U.S. criminal justice history even as many other Western countries have decreased emphasis on these kinds of moral offenses. Sexual crimes are …
Confessions have played an ambiguous and paradoxical role in Anglo-American cultural and legal history. In many religious traditions, a confession begins the process of expiation and forgiveness. Yet in the secular, legal sphere, it often lays the foundation for blame and punishment. Moreover, there is a contradiction embedded within this contradiction. Because confessions appear to create unmedia…
The offense of contributing to the delinquency of minors (CDM) originated in the United States in the 1900s. Colorado enacted the first statute defining CDM in 1903. Since that time, virtually all states have enacted some form of CDM legislation. CDM is a statutory crime with no precedent in the common law. As a result, its application and elements vary considerably across jurisdictions. In genera…
When a person leaves prison, or is released from probation or parole, the most long-lasting aspect of his criminal conviction may only be beginning. Every state, to a greater or lesser degree, prohibits an ex-felon from exercising some of the most basic rights of free citizens, ranging from the right to vote to the right to employment by the state. Although some states impose civil disabilities on…
Corporal punishment is the infliction of physical pain as a penalty for an infraction. Past forms of corporal punishment included branding, blinding, mutilation, amputation, and the use of the pillory and the stocks. It was also an element in such violent modes of execution as drowning, stoning, burning, hanging, and drawing and quartering (in which offenders were partly strangled and, while st…
Criminal prosecutions of corporations and other fictional entities have occurred routinely in the United Kingdom since the nineteenth century and in the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century. During the later portion of the twentieth century the Netherlands, Canada, and France enacted standards for holding fictional entities criminally liable. Elsewhere in the world, legislati…
Corpus delicti literally means the body or substance of the crime. In law the term refers to proof establishing that a crime has occurred. Although misunderstanding about corpus delicti has been common, the term does not refer to a dead body. There is a corpus delicti of robbery, tax evasion, and, indeed, of every criminal offense. Moreover, even in a homicide case, a "dead body" is …
Throughout U.S. history nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have played a decisive role in correctional reform and the evolution of the penal system. As governmental control of the justice system has grown, NGOs have continued to exert a large influence on public policy decisions that involve the corrections system; indeed, their role has increased in the last quarter century. …
Apprehension, examination before a judge, and correction are the three components of the U.S. criminal justice system. Apprehension, the investigation and arrest of an individual suspected of committing a crime, is the responsibility of police and other law enforcement agencies. Once apprehended, an individual moves to the court system where a judge or jury listens to all sides of the case and dec…
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense." Over the past seventy-five years, the contours of this constitutional right have expanded dramatically. Originally, the Sixth Amendment simply ensured that the defendant in a federal criminal c…
In the eyes of many people, the criminal defense lawyer (defense counsel, or defender, for short) represents all that is best about the legal profession; in the eyes of others, all that is worst. Defense counsel is the innocent defendant's last refuge against the horror of wrongful conviction—or, as lawyers sometimes say in their hyperbolic fashion, the defender is the only friend th…
Counterfeiting is one of the few crimes mentioned in the text of the Constitution, perhaps because "[t]he general power over currency . . . has always been an acknowledged attribute of sovereignty" (Legal Tender Cases, 79 U.S. 457, 545 (1870)). Congress quickly made use of its authority to prohibit counterfeiting; the Act of 30 April 1790 authorized the death penalty for counterfeiti…
Criminal behavior results from a complex interplay of social and biological factors. Social factors are a reflection of environmental sources of influence, such as socioeconomic status. The terms "biological" and "genetic" are often confused, in part due to the fact that they represent overlapping sources of influence. Biological factors are more inclusive, consisting of physiological, biochemical…
The roots of crime are diverse and a discipline like economics, predicated on rational behavior, may be at something of a disadvantage in explaining a phenomenon largely viewed as irrational. The foray by economists into this area is relatively recent, dating back to Gary Becker's pathbreaking contribution in 1968. As part of a larger model designed to explore optimal criminal justice policy, he d…
Crime causation is a daunting and complex field. For centuries, philosophers have pondered the meaning of the concept of cause as it pertains to human behavior. Increasingly, research suggests that individuals are unaware of the causes of other people's behaviors as well as the causes of much of their own conduct. It is no longer sufficient to ask people, "Why did you do that?"…
From its inception criminology has been embedded in politics (Radzinowicz). Despite frequent claims to scientific objectivity, criminological inquiry has been defined and sustained by political concerns. Affinities between political orientations and explanations of crime have often been noted, and debates over theoretical differences have typically included references to such affinities. Indee…
It is hard to specify distinctively psychological theories of crime. The guiding principle in this entry is that psychological theories focus especially on the influence of individual and family factors on offending. Psychological theories are usually developmental, attempting to explain the development of offending from childhood to adulthood, and hence based on longitudinal studies that follow u…
This entry focuses on the three major sociological theories of crime and delinquency: strain, social learning, and control theories. It then briefly describes several other important theories of crime, most of which represent elaborations of these three theories. Finally, efforts to develop integrated theories of crime are briefly discussed. All of the theories that are described explain crime in …
The emergence of crime as a national issue in America dates back to the early 1920s. The Volstead Act, providing for federal enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment (which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors), went into effect in January 1920. This was followed by the rapid growth of organized crime in the form of large-scale smuggling, manufacture, and sale…
A crime is an act proscribed by law and subject to punishment. It can also be an omission instead of an act, namely a failure to act where the law imposes a duty to act. Traditionally, crimes have been restricted to acts and omissions that harm the interests of others. Sometimes, however, a legislature will criminalize an act or omission because it is harmful to the perpetrator himself, or because…
Crime laboratories offer forensic science services to the criminal justice system. Forensic science applies scientific testing methods and the latest technologies to collect, preserve, process, and analyze evidence. Proof of guilt or innocence is frequently determined by the results of forensic evidence. Forensic science is a combination of many kinds of knowledge, some of which have existed, howe…
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) almost twenty-three million Americans over twelve years of age were victims of violent crimes, property crimes, or both, in 2002. The term "victimization" is often used to describe the physical harm victims suffer from assault, rape, or murder, or financial loss due to theft, vandalism, or business corruption. Some 5.3 milli…
Crimes against property are crimes of theft where no force or threat of force is directed toward an individual. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program as reported in Crime in the United States, 2002, thefts known as property crimes include "the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson." Burglary invol…
Since the early works of Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, the concept of the criminal career has been well established within the field of criminology. Most generically, the criminal career is conceived of as the longitudinal sequence of delinquent and criminal acts committed by an individual as the individual ages across the lifespan from childhood through adolescence and adulthood. Four key structura…
Federal and state governments each consist of three sections: the legislative branch to make laws, the executive branch to carry out the laws, and the judicial branch or court system to resolve legal disputes and administer justice. The U.S. Constitution developed a delicate balance of power between the three branches so one cannot hold sway over either of the other two. The three branches, howeve…
The criminal justice process consists of the procedures public officials follow in the course of imposing criminal punishment. Criminal justice specialists commonly distinguish the investigatory and adjudicatory stages of the process. Cases must come to the attention of officials before an investigation can begin, the boundaries separating the two stages are occasionally blurred, and the same offi…
A criminal justice system is a set of legal and social institutions for enforcing the criminal law in accordance with a defined set of procedural rules and limitations. In the United States, there are separate federal, state, and military criminal justice systems, and each state has separate systems for adults and juveniles. Criminal justice systems include several major subsystems, composed of on…
Since World War II, American penal law has undergone a fundamental transformation that has reached each of its three aspects: the definition of offenses and the consequences of their violation (substantive criminal law, or criminal law), the imposition of these norms (procedural criminal law, or criminal procedure) and their infliction (prison or correction law). The first phase of that transforma…
English criminal law, like almost every other English legal, political, religious, educational, and social institution, has undergone substantial reform since the second quarter of the nineteenth century; but reform has taken place piecemeal and very slowly. There has been no decisive break with the past as has occurred in many European countries with the promulgation of a penal code and code of c…
In the light of growing dissatisfaction with the realities of American criminal procedure, the criminal process of foreign countries has since the 1970s attracted growing interest among American scholars. They have sought possible models for domestic reform not only in other jurisdictions of the common law family but also in continental Europe, where the criminal process has followed a format quit…
Criminal procedure is literally at the center of the U.S. Bill of Rights, as a quick glance at the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments makes evident. But as a subfield of constitutional law, constitutional criminal procedure stands as an anomaly, with shaky historical and conceptual foundations. In many other areas of constitutional law, major opinions of the Marshall Court helped lay the groundwo…
The question of the proper scope of the criminal law—what to punish, and why—is a continuing and difficult one. What new criminal prohibitions should be enacted, and which existing prohibitions should be expanded, narrowed, or eliminated? Since all criminal laws in the United States are created or subject to modification by statute, this question is primarily addressed to the legisla…
Those interested in the study of criminology and criminal justice have at their disposal a wide range of research methods. Which of the particular research methods to use is entirely contingent upon the question being studied. Research questions typically fall into four categories of research: (1) descriptive, (2) exploratory, (3) explanatory, and (4) evaluative (Schutt). Descriptive research atte…
Prior to the 1960s in the United States, criminological research resulted from individual efforts. The reliance on individual investigators to conduct (and oftentimes fund) their own research agenda was primarily a function of a lack of funding sources devoted to issues surrounding criminology and criminal justice. Since the 1960s, however, research in criminal justice has dramatically increased. …
Controversy among criminologists and between criminologists and others is endemic. It could hardly be otherwise. Problems of definition, once merely legally technical regarding behavior defined as crime, are joined by both ideological and postmodern concerns with what crime, criminality, and criminology are about. Because crime is by definition behavior that is so specified in the criminal law, cr…
The prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments is one of the most important constitutional limitations upon the penal process. Like the general guarantees of due process and equal protection, it has been applied to every aspect of that process, ranging from the definition of criminal norms and the consequences of their violation (the subject of substantive criminal law), to the imposition of pun…
The Internet is a worldwide electronic computer network that connects people and information. It has changed the way Americans communicate, purchase goods and services, educate, and entertain themselves. Possibilities for Internet use seem unlimited. Communication anywhere in the world takes only seconds with electronic mail, or email. Pictures and sound files are easily sent by email. People in a…
Excerpt from "The Plea of Clarence Darrow" Reprinted from The Amazing Crime and Trial of Leopold and Loeb, edited by Maureen McKernan Published in 1996 Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold were nineteen years old, exceptionally bright students, and from wealthy families. Loeb was a handsome University of Chicago student and Leopold an ornithologist (person who studies birds). The Leopolds…
Born April 18, 1857 (Kinsman, Ohio) Died March 13, 1938 (Chicago, Illinois) Defense attorney Clarence Darrow was an attorney who championed the fundamental principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial in a court of law. He promoted radical political and social causes and secured his place in history by opposing governmental and religious limits on individual freedom. Darrow helped sway publ…
Subcultures consist of norms, values, interests?and artifacts associated with them?that are derivative of, but distinct from, a larger referential culture. The term also is sometimes used loosely to distinguish individuals, groups, or other collectivities based on their demographic characteristics (e.g., age, ethnicity, and regional location) or pattern of behavior (e.g., occupation or commitment …
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the prevalent conception of societal change is still encapsulated by the term development (Escobar). Definitions vary, but many emphasize a relatively optimistic view of history (often called modernization) in which development refers to the increased use of technology, increased generation of wealth, and increased attention to democratic procedures an…
Born March 24, 1902 (Owosso, Michigan) Died March 18, 1971 (Bal Harbor, Florida) Criminal prosecutor, governor Thomas E. Dewey was an attorney who became a national hero for his success in prosecuting organized crime in New York City. He later played a crucial role in moving the United States forward as a major world power following World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France…
Excerpt from American Notes Reprinted from Charles Dickens: American Notes for General Circulation, edited by Patricia Ingham Originally published in 1842; excerpt taken from 2000 reprint With the U.S. Constitution protecting American citizens from cruel and unusual punishment, a search for more humane forms of punishment began in the late 1800s. The idea of incarceration had been in use since the…
Born February 7, 1812 (Portsmouth, England) Died June 9, 1870 (Kent, England) Social reformer, novelist Charles Dickens is considered by many as the most important writer of his time and remained the most widely recognizable British author, after William Shakespeare (1564–1616), throughout the twentieth century. He ushered in an age of serious attention to novelists with his dynamic writing…
Legal guilt or culpability for the commission of a crime requires both that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt all the definitional elements of the crime charged, including the mental state—the mens rea required by the crime's definition—and that an affirmative defense, such as the excuse of legal insanity or duress, is not established. Diminished capacity re…
Each party initially learns the facts of the case through its personal knowledge and investigation. As the trial approaches, a set of procedures, commonly called discovery, permit each side to require disclosure of certain aspects of the opponent's evidence. Whether in civil or criminal cases, the purposes of pretrial discovery are generally the same. Discovery of the opponent's case…
One night in 1974, two young men in Elmira, Ontario, Canada, vandalized the property of twenty-two people: they broke windows, slashed tires, and damaged churches, stores, and cars. They pled guilty to twenty-two charges. The offenders did not pay restitution to the court clerk's office, however. Instead, in an experiment jointly administered by the probation department's volunteer p…
All states made "wife beating" illegal by 1920. However, only since the 1970s has the criminal justice system begun to treat domestic violence as a serious crime, not as a private family matter. Domestic violence is any physical, sexual, or psychological abuse that people use against a former or current intimate partner. It refers to a number of criminal behaviors: assault and batter…
Ancient civilizations relied on the blood feud to provide justice when one person killed another—the relatives of a slain person had a duty to avenge the death. While the blood feud manifested a rough "eye-for-an-eye" retributive justice, it could, in theory, lead to an endless series of killings as each death was avenged. The Greek playwright Aeschylus dramatized a cycle of b…
The automobile age brought with it unprecedented prosperity and freedom of movement, but motor vehicles have also caused the deaths and injuries of millions of people. From the beginning the abuse of alcohol has been universally viewed as one of the major causes of vehicular carnage, with severe punishments being deemed the best way of dealing with the self-indulgent reprobates responsible. Acc…
For more than a century, there have been differences of opinion regarding the relationship between the use of illegal drugs (specifically narcotics and cocaine) and criminal behavior. While representatives of the criminal justice system, the medical profession, and academia have reflected numerous points of view and have espoused widely differing reasons for their interest in the topic, a detailed…
A systematic description of drug regulations must begin by identifying the parameters of the inquiry. What exactly is a drug? Unfortunately, no standard definition exists; different answers are given for different purposes. The most widely cited legal definition, contained in the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. secs. 1–5), basically contains three disjunctive clauses. It identifies …
From the time of the American Revolution (1775–83) until the early part of the twentieth century, pieces of the American criminal justice system gradually came together to include courts, professional policing, and prisons at the federal and state levels. A criminal justice system is the collection of public agencies including the police, courts, and prison officials responsible for apprehe…
Corporate executives at the close of the twentieth century committed and concealed a remarkable amount of antitrust crime. The discovery of these crimes underlined a criminal offense that has existed in the United States since 1890 but that nonetheless has remained a peripheral and exotic species within the general criminal law. American antitrust law begins with the Sherman Act of 1890 (15 U.S.C.…
A traditional view holds that criminal tax offenses exist to combat tax evasion. Tax evasion is indeed a widespread, serious, and persistent problem in the United States and elsewhere. In the last part of the twentieth century, however, the United States government broadened its criminal enforcement focus from the suppression of classical tax evasion to a more general attack on crime, including dr…
There is no widely accepted definition of economic crime, and it is impossible to enumerate briefly the various definitions, theories, and offenses included in this category. We focus on the theoretical work that explores three aspects of economic crime: offender motivations, economic outcomes, and economic processes. The first tradition refers to economic crimes as illegal acts in which offenders…
Crime is a major part of every society. Its costs and effects touch just about everyone to some degree. The types of costs and effects are widely varied. In addition, some costs are short-term while others last a lifetime. Of course the ultimate cost is loss of life. Other costs to victims can include medical costs, property losses, and loss of income. Losses to both victims and nonvictims can als…
In modern societies, an individual's life trajectory—including an individual's involvement in criminal activity—has become increasingly determined by his or her educational experiences. Over the past few centuries, schools have in many ways come to challenge families as the primary site for childhood socialization. The expanding role of formal education in the lives of …
The term employee theft refers to the unauthorized taking, transfer, or use of property of a work organization by an employee during the course of work activity. Straightforward as it seems, the application of the definition to employees' activity is complicated by two essential problems. The first centers on the issue of what is meant by unauthorized taking. If the activity is prohibited b…
The entrapment defense has received wide public attention in many prosecutions ranging from drug sales, to public corruption, to financial crimes. The defense is very significant, for the criminal defendant successfully raising entrapment will have all charges dismissed if a showing is made that the government was improperly involved in the creation of the criminal activity. Entrapment has been co…
In the United States through the first half of the twentieth century little attention was paid to protecting the environment. Americans simply thought the environment and its resources were to be used to build a mighty industrial nation, to build cities, and to create the world's most productive agricultural system. Modern-day environmentalists, those who promote the protection of the envir…
Euthanasia is translated from Greek as "good death" or "easy death." As originally used, the term referred to painless and peaceful natural deaths in old age that occurred in comfortable and familiar surroundings. That usage is now archaic. As the word is currently understood, euthanasia occurs when one person ends the life of another person for the purpose of ending th…
The exclusionary rule permits a criminal defendant to prevent the prosecution from introducing at trial otherwise admissible evidence that was obtained in violation of the Constitution. In a sense the term "exclusionary rule" is misleading, because there are many exclusionary rules. Some, such as the rule against hearsay, exclude evidence because it is not very reliable. Others, such…
The defense of duress is typically invoked when someone has been pressured into committing a crime by another person's threat. According to the Model Penal Code, an actor is excused in committing a crime if "he was coerced to do so by the use, or the threat to use unlawful force against his person or the person of another, that a person of reasonable firmness in his situation would h…
If a person pleads "not guilty by reason of insanity" (NGRI), that plea means that the person committed the underlying act (that would have been criminal had she had the requisite mens rea, or guilty mind), but, because of mental illness, is not to be held responsible for that act. A series of perplexing and difficult questions remains: What should the test be to determine if a defen…
To approach the theory of excuse, one needs first to understand how excuses relate to other components of punishable, criminal conduct. Excuses become relevant only after proof that the actor has committed an unjustified act in violation of a criminal statute. Acts that fall outside the scope of the criminal law require no excuse; nor do nominal but justified violations of the law. If the actor ha…
The classic eyewitness identification takes place in court, with the witness pointing to the defendant and stating "That's the perpetrator." Such identifications are usually preceded by outof-court identifications, using one of three procedures: (1) lineups, in which a witness is asked to pick a suspect out of a line of people; (2) showups, in which a witness is shown just one…
Eyewitness identification refers to a type of evidence in which an eyewitness to a crime claims to recognize a suspect as the one who committed the crime. In cases where the eyewitness knew the suspect before the crime, issues of the reliability of memory are usually not contested. In cases where the perpetrator of the crime was a stranger to the eyewitness, however, the reliability of the identif…
Since the early 1970s, violence in the family has been transformed from a private concern to a criminal justice problem. Violence in intimate relationships is extensive and is not limited to one socioeconomic group, one society, or one period in time. Every type and form of family and intimate relationship has the potential of being violent. In 1998, a National Academy of Sciences panel assessing …
"The most important part of education," said the Athenian in Plato's Laws, "is right training in the nursery" (li. 643). Through acceptance of Freudian theory, this ancient belief gained new credibility during the first half of the twentieth century. According to Freudian theory, successful socialization begins with an early attachment to the mother, an attachmen…
Criminal events provoke many emotions from the general public—outrage, sadness, anger, disgust, shock. One of those emotions, public fear of crime, has drawn concerted attention from social scientists since the late 1960s. One reason for that attention is a simple but sobering fact: The number of people who experience fear of crime during any particular period is enormously greater than the…
Since the founding of the United States, the authority to define and punish crimes has been divided between the states and the federal government. Before the Civil War the United States exercised jurisdiction over only a narrow class of cases in which the federal interest was clearly dominant if not exclusive. Since the Civil War, federal criminal jurisdiction has been gradually expanding to subje…
Cases investigated and prosecuted by the federal criminal enforcement authorities often capture national attention. Terrorist bombings, official corruption, insider securities trading, organized crime enterprises, international drug conspiracies—all have been targeted by the "Feds," as have bank robberies, environmental crimes, illegal immigration, and foreign espionage, t…
Feminist perspectives in criminology developed in reaction to silences and gaps in mainstream criminology. According to the critique that feminists began to mount in the late 1960s and early 1970s, mainstream or traditional criminology was inadequate in five key respects: (1) it focused almost exclusively on male offenders; (2) it was androcentric in its understandings and interpretations of crime…
Even according to its critics, feminism has been one of the most important influences on the substantive criminal law in the past fifty years. Feminism has changed legal understandings of rape and battering as well as the law of homicide and self-defense. Indeed, there is a growing awareness and body of scholarship showing that feminist concerns are not simply limited to "women's�…
Forfeiture is the loss or confiscation of one's property in consequence of a crime, offense, or breach of obligation. It is an ancient practice sustained by differing rationales through the centuries. In biblical times, religious ideas supported the view that property causing death was "guilty" and had to be destroyed as a form of expiation. In medieval England, offending prop…
From the birth of the nation at the time of the American Revolution (1775–83) until the early part of the twentieth century, the various parts of the American criminal justice system, including courts, policing, and prisons, gradually developed at the federal and state levels. These loosely coordinated segments of the criminal justice system have been responsible for apprehending, investiga…
Born November 15, 1882 (Vienna, Austria) Died February 22, 1965 (Washington, D.C.) Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter was one of America's more powerful people in the legal profession who sought increased protection for criminal defendants in the early twentieth century. As a Supreme Court justice, he was a major force behind the creation and validation of President Franklin Delano Roo…
Excerpt from "Speech by Louis J. Freeh, Director of the FBI, 1997 International Computer Crime Conference, New York, New York, March 4, 1997" Reprinted from Cyber Terrorism and Information Warfare: 1. Assessment and Challenges, edited by Yonah Alexander and Michael S. Swetnam Published in 1999 By the 1990s computer systems had become a critical operating component for governments and…
Gambling can be defined broadly as participation in any risk-taking activity. In law gambling is defined as a bet or wager (consideration), on a probability game or a sporting event (chance), with the hope of winning a payoff or prize (FCC v. American Broadcasting Co., 347 U.S. 284 (1954)). From a public health perspective, activities such as day trading in stocks, commodities, and futures markets…
Gender is the single best predictor of criminal behavior: men commit more crime, and women commit less. This distinction holds throughout history, for all societies, for all groups, and for nearly every crime category. The universality of this fact is really quite remarkable, even though many tend to take it for granted. Most efforts to understand crime have focused on male crime, since men have g…
Born June 27, 1869 (Kovno, Russia) Died May 14, 1940 (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) Social activist Emma Goldman came to America and made a career of challenging the legitimacy of government, religion, and property. Throughout her political life she championed the constitutional right to freedom of speech and worked to improve conditions for the poor, laborers, and immigrants. Goldman criticized the s…
Excerpt from the "Examination of Sarah Good" Reprinted from The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692, edited by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum Published 1977 Seventeenth century colonists believed in witches, as did their European ancestors. The Great European Witch Hunt occurred from the fifteenth through th…
A guilty plea consists of a defendant admitting having committed one or more of the crimes charged and a court agreeing to accept that admission and to sentence the defendant. Ordinarily, a guilty plea occurs after defense counsel has bargained with the prosecution and obtained some concession—for example, a reduction of the charges, an agreement not to file other charges, or a stipulation …
"There is no glory in plea bargaining," writes Professor George Fisher. "In place of a noble clash for truth, plea bargaining gives us a skulking truce . . . . Plea bargaining may be . . . the invading barbarian. But it has won all the same" (p. 859). In the late 1990s, 94 percent of the convictions of state-court felony defendants in the seventy-five largest U.S. count…
There are approximately as many guns in civilian hands in the United States as there are people, more than 250 million (Kleck, pp. 96–97). Most are rifles and shotguns used primarily for recreation, but a growing proportion, perhaps one-third, are handguns, which are usually purchased for personal or home defense. Between the late 1960s and late 1970s, violent crime rates in the United Stat…
Habeas corpus is shorthand for a variety of writs or legal pleadings seeking to bring a person within a court's power. Of the many habeas corpus writs, the most celebrated and significant is the writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, the "Great Writ," which requires an official or person who holds another in custody to produce the person so that a court can inquire into the le…
Excerpt from the Harrison Narcotic Drug Act of 1914 Reprinted from The Statutes at Large and Proclamations of the United States of America from March 1913 to March 1915. Vol. XXXVIII, Part 1 Published in 1915 Prior to the twentieth century few restrictions were placed on drug trade and use. Opium and cocaine flowed freely into the United States. Drug abuse was considered more a public health probl…
A hate crime is a crime committed as an act of prejudice against the person or property of a victim as a result of that victim's real or perceived membership in a particular group. Many of the most notorious hate crimes have been murders, such as the racially motivated murder of James Byrd, Jr., in Texas in 1998 or the homophobicmotivated murder of Matthew Shepard in North Dakota later that…
Homicide is the killing of one human being by another. As a legal category, it can be criminal or noncriminal. Criminal homicides are generally considered first-degree murder, when one person causes the death of another with premeditation and intent, or second-degree murder, when the death is with malice and intent but is not premeditated. Voluntary manslaughter usually involves intent to inflict …
A glance through anthropological and historical records reveals immense cross-cultural variation in the acceptance and repression of homosexual relations between men and between women. So great is this variation that some societies in some eras have imposed capital punishment on men engaging in homosexual acts, while others have held sexual friendships between men to be a social ideal of the most …
Born January 1, 1895 (Washington, D.C.) Died May 2, 1972 (Washington, D.C.) Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) During his tenure J. Edgar Hoover built the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into one of the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the world. Appointed director in 1924, he held the position for nearly fifty years, through eight presidents beginning with Calvin…
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is usually spread unintentionally, but in the course of sexual or drug-using conduct that is intentional. Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, criminal law has been proposed, and sporadically deployed, as a means of addressing conduct that exposes others to, or actually infects them with, HIV. This entry surveys the practical, legal, and social issues that ar…
Incapacitation is one of the mechanisms through which prisons contribute to crime prevention. While incarcerated an offender is restrained from committing crimes, at least outside the prison walls, and thus it is said that prisons incapacitate offenders from "additional mischief," as William Blackstone once put it. For at least two hundred years incapacitation has been recognized as …
Prosecuting authorities in the American criminal justice system have broad discretion in deciding how to handle a criminal matter. A prosecutor may file formal charges against an individual suspect and pursue a guilty verdict by means of a plea bargain or trial. The vast majority of cases that are processed to a verdict within the criminal justice system result in the conviction and punishment of …
The study of intelligence in criminological research has ebbed and flowed considerably during the past century. In the first quarter of the 1900s, hundreds of studies categorized criminal offenders as "feebleminded" and "mentally deficient." Fifty studies conducted from 1910 to 1914 identified an average of 51 percent of institutionalized delinquents as feebleminded (Su…
A major step to close one of the important gaps in the enforcement system of international criminal law was taken on 17 July 1998 with the adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Statute) at a diplomatic conference in Rome. The vote was 120 in favor to 7 against (including the United States, China, Iraq, and Israel), with twenty-one abstentions. The Statute provides for t…
International criminal justice standards, including principally the right to a fair trial, have been defined and guaranteed by no less than twenty global and regional human rights treaties and other instruments. The most important are (1) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; (2) the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; (3) the International Convention on the Elimination of A…
The bulk of criminal law is established and enforced under the national law of individual states, but an increasingly important body of international criminal law has also emerged. It began with a few international procedures developed by states to coordinate the enforcement of their national criminal law and has grown as international law itself has come to proscribe certain acts as crimes. Since…
Jails are locally administered, short-term confinement facilities, usually run by the county sheriff or city police, which typically hold persons awaiting trial or other proceedings, as well as convicted offenders serving sentences of one year or less. The transiency and diversity of jail inmate populations cause significant problems for jail administrators, and many believe that local control com…
The U.S. federal, state, and even local governments have adapted the territorial reach of their criminal laws to permit punishment of "new and complex crimes" when elements of extraterritoriality exist. The proactive extension of its extraterritorial jurisdiction has resulted in transformation of the law of jurisdiction and has led to occasional tension with other governments. While …
Public praise and criticism for the jury have a long history, and high profile jury trials are a staple of modern press coverage. However, it is only in the past forty years that researchers have published systematic empirical studies of jury behavior. Study of the jury is a particularly thorny project because the jury speaks publicly only through its verdict. At the end of the trial the jury reti…
In 1791, the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed every criminal defendant the right to trial "by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." This provision was essentially redundant. Article III, section 2 of the Constitution had already provided, "The trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by…
The law recognizes a privilege for an actor to employ force to prevent crime, to effect a lawful arrest, to prevent an escape from custody, under circumstances where, without the justification of such a privilege, the actor might be charged with assault or even homicide. This category of justifications, like others, arises in cases where the law accepts that a harm is done, or may be done, by the …
Self-defense and defense of others are defenses to a charge of criminal conduct in which the defendant concedes the transgression of a norm or statute against violence, for example, assault or homicide, but maintains that under the circumstances the use of force was either not wrongful ( justification) or is wrongful, but it would be unfair to impose punishment (excuse). Either as a justification …
In the early twenty-first century most people assumed juveniles would be treated differently than adults in the U.S. criminal justice system. This distinction did not come to pass until the end of the nineteenth century. In criminal justice, juveniles are youths who are not old enough to be held fully responsible for their crimes. Juvenile justice is largely a state matter and is separate from the…
Juvenile courts and the rest of the juvenile justice system are responsible for dealing with: (1) juvenile delinquents, who have committed an act, such as an assault or burglary, that would be a crime if committed by an adult; and (2) status offenders, whose behavior, such as school truancy, running away from home, or incorrigibility, is illegal for a child but would not be a crime if committed…
Ideological changes in the cultural conception of children and in strategies of social control during the nineteenth century led to the creation of the first juvenile court in Cook County, Illinois, in 1899. Culminating a century-long process of differentiating youths from adult offenders, Progressive reformers applied new theories of social control to new ideas about childhood and created the juv…
The Maine Youth Center, which opened in 1854 and is one of the oldest reform schools in the United States, is home for over two hundred adolescent boys and girls from Maine who have broken the law. The campus sits high on an open hill overlooking the Fore River and looks out on the South Portland Airport. The original building, which formerly housed all of Maine's delinquent youths, is now …
Juvenile courts in the United States are legally responsible for young people who are arrested by the police or otherwise accused of breaking the criminal laws of their community. Some areas of the country do not have courts actually called juvenile courts. Law violations by young people may be handled by probate courts, juvenile divisions of a circuit court, or even comprehensive family courts. I…
One definition of a juvenile status offense is conduct "illegal only for children." A second is noncriminal misbehavior. Juvenile status offenders are youths of juvenile court age who violate laws that define how young people should behave. These misbehaviors are unlawful for children, but not unlawful for adults. It is the status of childhood that allows children to be the subject o…
Most juveniles have committed a violent act, probably by the age of two. An objective observer spending a few minutes in a pre-school daycare center would likely see many incidents of physical assault and robbery. However, to classify an act as a crime (i.e., a behavior warranting severe sanctions by the justice system) is not as simple. Modern societies do not legally respond to the behaviors …
Estimates of the magnitude of youth gang problems in the United States steadily increased over the last decades of the twentieth century. An unprecedented public and government response to gang problems at federal, state, and local levels began in 1989. As the century drew to a close, evidence of a leveling off of the scope of gang problems began to emerge. For two consecutive years, in 1997 and 1…
Jurisdictional waiver constitutes a type of sentencing decision. Transfer of juvenile offenders for adult prosecution provides the nexus between the more deterministic and rehabilitative premises of the juvenile court and the free will and punishment assumptions of the adult criminal justice system. Mechanisms to prosecute some juveniles as adults provide a safety valve that permit the expiatory s…
Born May 22, 1942 (Evergreen Park, Illinois) Domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski was an American terrorist who used his crimes to draw attention to his political views. His campaign to fight what he believed was the evil of technological progress was waged with bombs he delivered or mailed to sixteen different places across the country. Over a period of eighteen years, Kaczynski killed three people a…
Born July 26, 1903 (Madisonville, Tennessee) Died August 10, 1963 (Bethesda, Maryland) U.S. senator Estes Kefauver was a senator from Tennessee who gained national attention as chairman of the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. Conducted by the Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses in 1950 and 1951, the committee was more commonly known as the "Kefauver Committ…
Excerpt from "Far Worse Than Hanging" Reprinted from the New York Times Published in the August 7, 1890, edition, on the front page William Kemmler was a vegetable peddler in the slums of Buffalo, New York. An alcoholic, on March 29, 1888, he was recovering from a drinking binge the night before when he became enraged with his girlfriend, Tillie Ziegler. He accused her of stealing fr…
Kidnapping is a widely known felony that may be described as the seizing and carrying away of another person against his or her will. The precise statutory definitions are much more elaborate than the foregoing, and occur in a variety of different forms. Most statutes also prohibit the unlawful restraint of anther person. Kidnapping is primarily regulated by state law, though certain federal laws …
Born August 30, 1982 (Springfield, Oregon) Murderer Kip Kinkel confessed to killing his parents on May 20, 1998, and then opening fire the following day at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, killing two and wounding twenty-five. The following year he was sentenced to 111 years in prison. His case focused national attention on the continuing tragedy of school violence that plagued America…
Excerpt from "Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall" Original "Lawes Divine" published in 1611 Reprinted from Tracts and Other Papers Relating Principally to Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies of North America from the Discovery of the Country to the Year 1776, edited by Peter Smith Published in 1947 The Magna Carta officially became part of English law in 129…
Born November 22, 1938 (People's Republic of China) Forensic scientist Dr. Henry C. Lee is an internationally respected authority in the field of forensic science. Forensic science refers to scientific testing methods and the latest technologies to the collect, preserve, process, and analyze evidence. He has worked with law enforcement agencies on thousands of crime scenes in over thirty co…
Criminal libel is a libel punishable criminally. It consists of a defamation of an individual (or group) made public by a printing or writing. The defamation must tend to excite a breach of the peace or damage the individual (or group) in reference to his character, reputation, or credit. At common law, libel was recognized as a criminal misdemeanor as well as an individual injury justifying damag…
Born October 24, 1830 (Royalton, New York) Died May 19, 1917 (Washington, D.C.) Attorney Belva Ann Bennett McNall Lockwood gained notoriety as the first woman to run for president in the United States. She was nominated in both the 1884 and the 1888 presidential races by the National Equal Rights Party. Lockwood is best remembered, however, as the first woman admitted to practice law before the Su…
Excerpt from "Amendments to the Constitution" Delivered by James Madison on June 8, 1789, to the House of Representatives Reprinted from The Papers of James Madison, edited by Charles F. Hobson and Robert A. Rutland Published in 1979 James Madison of colonial Virginia is considered the father of the U.S. Constitution. Madison fought hard for the recognition and protection of individu…
Excerpt from the Magna Carta Original Magna Carta published in 1215 Reprinted from Magna Carta: Manuscripts and Myths by Claire Breay Published in 2002 "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we [English royalty] proceed with force against him or send others to do so …
Born May 23, 1846 (Burlington, Iowa) Died August 1, 1911 (Aurora, Illinois) Attorney, social activist Arabella Mansfield sought equal opportunities for women in all aspects of U.S. society. She was an activist in the nineteenth century women's rights movement that spanned a range of issues from voting rights for women to the right of practicing law. As a result she became the first female l…
The relationship between the criminal justice system and the media system has been the subject of research, speculation, and commentary throughout the twentieth century. This relationship may be understood in terms of dependency relations operative between these massive systems (Ball-Rokeach and De Fleur). Put most simply, neither the media nor the criminal justice system could operate effectively…
Born c. 1812 (Glasgow, Scotland) Died May 3, 1865 (Berkshire, England) Murderer Daniel McNaughtan was tried in 1843 for the murder of a British government official. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and his case created a widely used legal precedent known as the McNaughtan Rules. These rules, established by Great Britain's House of Lords, were delivered by Chief Justice Nichola…
Criminal trials, by their very nature, are public events. Prosecuting attorneys are public officers of the court, judges are often elected officials, and juries who decide the fate of the accused consist of members of the community. As with all public events of importance, the news media play a major role in relaying information to the public and providing access to events the public otherwise wou…
Mens rea, or "guilty mind," marks a central distinguishing feature of criminal law. An injury caused without mens rea might be grounds for civil liability but typically not for criminal. Criminal liability requires not only causing a prohibited harm or evil—the actus reus of an offense—but also a particular state of mind with regard to causing that harm or evil. For a p…
In the early twenty-first century multiple criminal justice systems existed in the United States. Two major kinds of systems—in addition to the civilian U.S. criminal justice system—were the military justice system and numerous American Indian or Native American justice systems. The military judicial system balances the rights of military service members with the need to maintain str…
Born March 9, 1940 (Mesa, Arizona) Died January 31, 1976 (Phoenix, Arizona) Robber, rapist, murderer Ernesto Miranda was a career criminal whose name became familiar to every American following a Supreme Court decision that created what became known as the Miranda Rights. Miranda's conviction in an Arizona court in 1963 would be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966. In Miranda v. Ar…
The criminal law exists to prevent various kinds of harm, and those who violate its prohibitions are usually culpable because conduct that risks or causes harm is generally culpable conduct. For various reasons, however, a wedge can be driven between culpability and the causing or risking of harm. One can cause or risk harm without being culpable, and one can be culpable without causing or risk…
In early 1929 newly elected Herbert Hoover (1874–1964; served 1929–33) became the first U.S. president to mention crime as a major issue in his inauguration speech. A crime wave caused by bootleggers (persons who illegally made and sold alcohol) and gangsters swept America in the 1920s, thanks in large part to the introduction of Prohibition. Prohibition made it illegal to make, sell…
Since the first European settlements in North America in the early seventeenth century, governments in America have tried to regulate morality. The early colonists equated sin with crime. Such offenses as blasphemy (showing a lack of reverence toward God), heresy (holding a belief that conflicts with church doctrine), and adultery (sex between two adults, one of whom is married to another) were co…
The influence of religion and morality on criminal justice has been of major importance throughout history. Morality is society's set of accepted rules and norms of behavior. Morality is commonly part of religious belief; a primary role of religion is to exert control over its followers by setting and promoting rules and customs for people to follow. In turn, these rules help establish crim…
Portrayals of sexuality have existed in virtually every society for which we have historical records. At the same time, virtually every society (Denmark being an exception) has called for at least some limits to sexual material, leading to precarious balances between free expression and social control. Sex is a deep and mysterious part of human nature, being intimately linked to many aspects of hu…
What brought down President Richard Nixon was not any involvement in planning the burglary of the Democrat National Committee's Watergate offices but his efforts, while president, to obstruct the investigation of that crime. In this instance, as in many others, Nixon's effort to cover up the burglary was not merely a separate criminal offense but an offense arguably even more serious…
As with several terms in criminology, organized crime has been defined in a variety of ways and there is surprisingly little consensus regarding its meaning. In part this is because, unlike in the case of homicide or robbery or many other types of offenses, organized crime is a conceptual rather than a legal category. The issue of definition is an important one, however, since how we define organi…
Some of the most recognizable names associated with U.S. organized crime include "Lucky" Luciano (1892–1962), Meyer Lansky (1902–1983), Al Capone (1899–1947), and "Bugsy" Siegel (1906–1947). Legendary American Mafia or Cosa Nostra crime families include the Colombos, Bonannos, Genoveses, Luccheses, and Gambinos. Famous gangs include the Hell&…
Born August 25, 1819 (Glasgow, Scotland) Died July 1, 1884 (Chicago, Illinois) Private investigator Allan Pinkerton provided America with a national policing system at a time when there was little federal or state law enforcement. Credited as a reformer for popularizing private security, he focused primarily on crime prevention and investigation. During the American Civil War (1861–65; war …
Some police experts would argue that over the last twenty-five years the concept of community policing has quietly revolutionized law enforcement in America (Kelling). The precise nature and scope of this transformation is still the source of much debate, but what is clear is that community policing has captured the attention of the nation's government and police departments. In 1994, Congr…
This entry provides an overview of the criminal investigation process and investigative methods. The focus of the discussion is on definitional issues along with the identification and evaluation of the types and sources of information often used in criminal investigations. This discussion has provided an overview of the criminal investigation process and the role, function, and utility of various…
The juvenile justice system mirrors the adult system of criminal justice in that it has three basic components: police, courts, and corrections. More likely than not, whether or not a juvenile is processed into this system is dependent upon the outcome of an encounter with the police. It is accurate to say that the police serve as the "gatekeepers" to the juvenile justice system …
Throughout the history of civilization, societies have sought protection for their members and possessions. In early civilizations, members of one's family provided this protection. Richard Lundman has suggested that the development of formal policing resulted from a process of three developmental stages. The first stage involves informal policing, where all members of a society share equal…
Discovering the best way to organize and manage the police is a popular topic among police managers and administrators, researchers, reformers, and others interested in improving the American police. Over the past century, police organization and management have changed tremendously. Many of these changes can be attributed to changes in the environment of policing: the development of new technolog…
In the 1950s, The American Bar Foundation sponsored a series of observational studies that spanned the criminal justice system. The researchers observed an astounding array of incompetence and corruption in criminal justice practices, due in part to the pervasive discretion inherent in the system. Discretion can be described as official action taken by criminal justice professionals based on their…
Certain types of criminal offenses, such as some forms of commercialized consensual sex (e.g. prostitution), nongovernmentally sanctioned gambling, public drunkenness, and drug addiction, are said to generate no complaints. These offenses are often designated as victimless crimes because of a perception that these crimes involve no specific objects of attack, which is one of the defining character…
In this entry the terms private security and private police are used interchangeably. However, private security more often refers to in-house security (personnel who conduct policing activities within an organization), and private policing refers to contract security (security guards/officers hired by organizations to secure and protect assets and personnel). These terms are used synonymously beca…
Until the late 1960s police agencies throughout the United States responded to crisis or special threat situations?such as those involving barricaded gunmen and hostages?on an ad hoc basis, simply deploying as many officers as seemed appropriate to handle the situation in whatever way seemed appropriate at the time. This practice proved (tragically) ineffective several times during the tumultuous …
Policing in the United States is highly decentralized, meaning the legal authority to police is split among federal, state, and local forces. Most police forces largely operate independently, unlike policing in other countries. Many nations including European countries have strong national police forces. In the United States, a number of federal agencies have their own police powers. At the beginn…
As anyone who has spent time watching television or going to the movies understands, crime and criminal justice occupy a prominent place in popular culture. The drama of the law violator brought to justice, the portrait of the lives and work of law enforcement officials, the stories of notorious, sometimes sensational crimes, and of justice done or justice denied are found every day as the common …
In the Protagoras, Plato states that "he who undertakes to punish with reason does not avenge himself for past offence, since he cannot make what was done as though it had not come to pass; he looks rather to the future, and aims at preventing that particular person . . . from doing wrong again" (p. 139). Twenty-four hundred years later, preventing crime by predicting who is likely t…
The purpose of a preliminary hearing is to determine whether the prosecutor has enough evidence to justify further criminal proceedings against the accused. The preliminary hearing is held in open court before a judge or magistrate. After the prosecution has presented its evidence and the defense has been given a chance to respond, the judicial officer decides whether there is probable cause to be…
Pretrial diversion is an informal feature of the American criminal process that emerged in the late 1960s with the trappings of a formal "program." In 1973, the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals defined pretrial diversion as "halting or suspending before conviction formal criminal proceedings against a person on the condition or assumption th…
Community crime prevention programs were founded upon a simple idea: that private citizens can and should play a critical role in preventing crime in their communities. The concepts community and crime prevention have fluid interpretations. Consequently, the range of programs popularly or officially labeled community crime prevention has included a virtually limitless array of activities, includin…
For many social scientists the physical environment is simply the space in which activity occurs. Others see this arena as a factor in affecting the behavior that it contains, but in so doing assign the physical context widely different levels of causal importance. Some take a direct, environmental determinist position, and argue that like any other variable, the built environment actively affects…
If a program prevents the first delinquent act, the social harm associated with subsequent delinquency can be avoided. To deliver on this promise, however, prevention programs must be effective and targeted to those most likely to offend. Evaluation research has challenged the effectiveness of prevention efforts, prompting one careful reviewer to conclude: "Prevention projects don't work and they …
Picture crime prevention as a leisurely river that flows toward the sea, fed by a network of streams, creeks, and other tributaries, some of which flow into the river alone, and others which first join with one another before reaching the river. In this analogy, we can think of the sea as the universe of formal and informal mechanisms used by society to deal with crime. Many rivers flow into th…
Americans live in a time of the greatest prison expansion in the modern history. By the close of 2000, almost two million adults were imprisoned at an operational cost that exceeds over $38 billion dollars a year. Minorities are represented in the prison population in percentages that far exceed their representation in the general population. African Americans comprise less than 13 percent of the …
Correctional officers (C.O.s) are "people workers" who interact with prison inmates on an intensely personal level, in an environment of close physical proximity over long periods of time, while functioning as low-level members of a complex bureaucratic organization (Lombardo, 1981). C.O.s are the primary social control agents in the prison because they are responsible for regulating…
By the end of the twentieth century, the United States had nearly two million people confined in its prisons or jails, representing ten or twenty times more of its population behind bars than that of most other postindustrial nations. Although these numbers increased more than fourfold in the last thirty years, imprisonment in various forms has played an important role in the American experience f…
The American public appears to have an insatiable fascination with what goes on inside prisons. Moviegoers flock to see Hollywood films about prison life (e.g., Escape from Alcatraz, Murder in the First, and The Shawshank Redemption). The news media is quick to cover lurid stories about prisons, including prison disturbances (escapes, prison riots, or the killings of inmates or staff members by in…
Most problems in prisons originate outside their walls. The police and courts leave varied groups of offenders at the gate, and prisons must do the best they can to sequester these persons. Prisons function as does one's stomach, digesting that which is often indigestible. If the police decide to arrest young gang members, the prison to which these young men are committed will experience a …
Over five million people are under the supervision of the criminal justice systems in the United States. Approximately, 1.6 million are incarcerated in local, state, and federal institutions. The remaining, or almost 70 percent of those under the responsibility of the criminal justice system, are being supervised in the community on probation or parole. This means that at any one time a large numb…
Probation is a form of criminal sanction imposed by a court upon an offender, nearly always after a verdict or a plea of guilty or nolo contendere but without the prior imposition of a term of imprisonment. Probation may be linked to a jail term, known as a split sentence, where the judge sentences the offender to a specified jail term to be followed by a specified period of release on probation. …
Probation and parole agencies share one particular and significant function: they provide supervision of offenders in the community. After an offender has been granted probation or parole, a probation or parole officer, hereafter referred to as "PO," is expected to supervise that offender in the community. The basic question remains: What is the purpose of supervision? To some, the function of sup…
Excerpt from the Eighteenth Amendment—Prohibition of Intoxicating Liquors Adopted on January 29, 1919 Reprinted from the Findlaw Web site at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendments18/ Alcohol is the most frequently used drug in the United States. Rum was often present in community gatherings in the early colonial settlements. Concern began to rise over those who drank too…
In the United States, the prosecutor is probably the most important decision-maker in the criminal process. The impetus to begin a criminal investigation usually emanates from a private complainant, and it is ordinarily the police who conduct the bulk of investigations; but the determinations whether to charge a suspect, what to charge him with, and what sanctions eventually to impose are made or …
There are several systems of criminal prosecution in the Western world, each distinguished in substantial part by the extent to which a public prosecutor decides whether crime should be charged. In England, any member of the public may prosecute but the attorney general has complete authority to dismiss the charge, and most prosecutions are conducted by the local police. In continental Europe, the…
The term "prosecutorial discretion" refers to the fact that under American law, government prosecuting attorneys have nearly absolute and unreviewable power to choose whether or not to bring criminal charges, and what charges to bring, in cases where the evidence would justify charges. This authority provides the essential underpinning to the prevailing practice of plea bargaining, a…
An United States attorney is the chief federal law enforcement officer in one of the ninety-four judicial districts in the United States (excepting Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, which share a United States attorney). Appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, United States attorneys work with grand juries and law enforcement agencies to investigate federal crim…
Prostitution as a legal category and as a social problem has undergone a reexamination in scholarly and policy debates since the 1970s. This rethinking of prostitution has relied upon a variety of historical and cross-cultural studies. Policy initiatives have increasingly turned to economic approaches, especially to transaction-cost analyses. New attention has been paid to the social position of t…
Excerpt from the PROTECT Act of 2003 Reprinted from the U.S. Government Printing Office Access Web site at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/index.html "No family should ever have to endure the nightmare of losing a child. Our nation grieves with every family that has suffered unbearable loss. And our nation will fight threats against our children. . . . And now it is my honor to sign the PROTECT Ac…
The first portion of this chapter, historical in nature, deals with one of the most significant legal battles in the early twentieth century. The Scottsboro trials stood as examples of minority treatment in the criminal justice system. The second portion of the chapter deals with a highly significant child protection law, the PROTECT Act of 2003. PROTECT includes the AMBER Alert, used to rescue ab…
Like the economy, politics, or religion, crime is a regular topic of national public opinion surveys, and journalists and social commentators often remark on the public mood when it comes to issues like the death penalty, police use of force, or fear of crime. For their part, criminologists have become increasingly interested in how the general public perceives or feels about matters related to cr…
Public order crimes are actions that do not conform to society's general ideas of normal social behavior and moral values. Moral values are the commonly accepted standards of what is considered right and wrong. Public order crimes are widely viewed as harmful to the public good or harmful and disruptive to a community's daily life. In this chapter the public order crimes described in…
Media coverage of criminal cases poses a dilemma. Press attention in criminal cases sometimes has significant benefits. Publicity can cause unknown witnesses to come forward so that their information may be considered and the facts correctly determined. It can also help to ensure that those administering the criminal process will act fairly by subjecting their decisions to public scrutiny. Media a…
Although punishment has been a crucial feature of every developed legal system, widespread disagreement exists over the moral principles that can justify its imposition. One fundamental question is why (and whether) the social institution of punishment is warranted. A second question concerns the necessary conditions for criminal liability and punishment in particular cases. A third relates to the…
The relationship between race and crime has been a primary concern among sociologists and criminologists since the beginning of the disciplines in America. Various racial and ethnic minorities in the United States have consistently been associated with higher rates of criminality, including peoples of Italian, Polish, Irish, German, Hispanic, and African descent, among others. Throughout history, …
The United States of the twenty-first century is a result of five hundred years of immigration combined with the surviving Native American populations. The first European settlements along the Atlantic coastline in the early seventeenth century began a three-century forced relocation of hundreds of established Native American societies. Waves of immigrants came to the United States after the early…
The National Victim Center and Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center reported in 1992 that 13 percent of all adult American women have been raped at some time in their lives. The NVC/CVRTC Report estimated that there were 683,000 forcible rapes during 1992, which translates to about 1,871 rapes per day. The American Psychological Association's Task Force on Male Violence Against Women…
Each day in the United States, the correctional system supervises over six million of its residents. Approximately two million people are in prison or jail, while four million are on probation or parole. With so many people under its control, a central policy issue is what the correctional system hopes to accomplish with those it places behind bars or on community supervision. A simple response mi…
Claims and findings pertaining to the relationship between religion and crime in American society are conflicted. In the early 1940s Middleton and Fay concluded that religion may cause crime and delinquency, an outcome that Schur later linked to religious beliefs and moral codes supporting the legal regulation of practices such as alcohol consumption and sexual behavior. Kvaraceus (1944), on the o…
As the American criminal justice system enters the twenty-first century it continues to be faced with numerous unresolved problems. While some advocate greater retribution and harsher penalties, others continue to believe in the importance of rehabilitating criminals and preventing further crime. These conflicting views have led to an increasing lack of clarity about the basic purpose of sentencin…
Retributivism is first and foremost a theory of punishment. It answers the question, Why do we have punishment institutions? The answer it gives is very simple: for the retributivist, we are justified in punishing persons when and only when they deserve to be punished. To avoid question-begging circularity, "deserve to be punished" in the above definition cannot simply mean "o…
Excerpt from the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970 Reprinted from United States Statutes at Large, 1970–1971, Volume 84, Part 1 Published in 1971 Organized crime is defined as any group that has an organized structure of bosses, advisors, and committed working members whose key goal is to obtain money and property through illegal activities. Organized crime …
Despite several decades of research on crowd behavior and collective violence, the definition of the term riot remains the subject of intense debate. The traditional view of rioting, and crowd behavior in general, formulated by scholars such as Gustave LeBon and others, suggests they are episodes of irrational destruction carried out by a few antisocial individuals and a relatively homogenous mass…
This entry addresses the research literature exploring the nature and extent of rural crime in the United States, and theoretical explanations of rural crime. First, it is important to develop an understanding of what is meant by the term rural. The definition of a rural community has been debated by social scientists for quite some time, and differences in the definition of rural have implication…
Adramatic series of school shootings between 1995 and 1999 startled the nation. Deadly violence within schools struck fear in the public and particularly school-age youth across the nation. Beginning in 1989, there had been an increase in school violence, ranging from verbal harassment, threats of harm, and violent crime. Overall national violent crime rates dropped after 1993 and continued at low…
Most school crime, like crime outside the school, is nonviolent. Teachers and students report thefts of money and valuables from unattended desks; student lockers are broken into; teachers' pocketbooks are snatched; bicycles are stolen. Other nonviolent offenses include such acts by students as using and selling drugs, drinking alcoholic beverages, defacing walls and desks, and setting mino…
The first American crime laboratories were established about 1930. The principal techniques used in these laboratories were fingerprinting, handwriting comparisons, toolmark and firearms ("ballistics") identifications, drug analysis, blood tests, and trace analysis (hair, fiber, and glass). However, by the late 1960s the nature of scientific evidence had changed dramatically; new techniques had be…
Accused rapists In 1931 the United States was in the second year of the Great Depression (1929–41; the period, following the stock market crash in 1929, of depressed world economies and high unemployment). On March 25 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a Southern Railroad freight train eased out of the station headed west. Dozens of people, men and women, black and white, jumped on board for a free…
Excerpt from "Scottsboro Case Goes to the Jury" Reprinted from the New York Times Published on January 23, 1936 "It takes courage to do the right thing in the face of public clamor for the wrong thing, but when justice is not administered fairly, . . . there is no protection for any one, man or woman, black or white." These words were spoken in January 1936 by defense a…
In any free society, the police must be constrained. The constraint can come from a variety of sources—politics, bureaucratic culture, administrative sanctions, and so forth. It need not necessarily come from the law. And in most Western democracies, it does not come from the law; outside the United States, police seem to be regulated, where they are regulated, mostly through nonlegal means…
In the United States there are now a wide range of legal approaches to the sentencing of criminal offenders. These include indeterminate sentencing systems in many states, statutory determinate systems in a few others, and a growing number of sentencing guideline systems among the states and in federal law. The diversity in legal structure for punishment decisions has brought with it a great deal …
The United States has relatively little intermediate punishment for crime. Offenders are either incarcerated or they are given routine probation, which sometimes equates with perfunctory supervision. Because seriousness of crime does not fall into two neat compartments, sentencing often errs in one direction or another. It is either too harsh, putting behind bars people whose crimes and criminalit…
Critics of the sentencing process contend that unrestrained discretion results in sentencing disparity. They contend that judges who are not bound by sentencing rules or guidelines, but who are free to fashion sentences as they deem appropriate, often impose different sentences on similarly situated offenders or identical sentences on offenders whose crimes and characteristics are substantially di…
"Sentencing guidelines" are rules or recommendations created by judges or an expert administrative agency, usually called a "sentencing commission," which are intended to influence, channel, or even dictate the punishment decisions made by trial courts in individual cases. Since the early 1970s, commission-based guideline structures have emerged as the principal alterna…
Supporters of mandatory sentencing assert that these laws achieve deterrence and incapacitation with more certainty than sentencing under other structures. Mandatory penalties are designed to eliminate judicial discretion in choosing among various punishment options, under the assumption that judges are too lenient and that offenders are therefore neither generally deterred from crime nor specific…
Considered among the most important documents in the criminal justice field, the presentence investigation report (PSI) has been the central source of information to sentencing judges since the 1920s. Its original purpose was to provide information to the court on the defendant's personal history and criminal conduct in order to promote individualized sentencing. With the advent of more pun…
Both the provisions of the U.S. Constitution and an array of statutes and court rules govern sentencing procedures in the United States. In considering sentencing procedures, it is important to note at the outset that sentencing is an area in which American jurisdictions vary considerably, and to recognize that differences in sentencing systems may have an important bearing on the applicable proce…
Sex crimes that are sometimes labeled consensual are numerous. They include adultery, bigamy, fornication, incest between adults, obscenity, prostitution, and sodomy. In each case, criminalization is controversial, at least in part because of the consent issue. If two adults agree to participate in a private sex act, what harm can justify state intervention to criminalize that conduct? At first bl…
This entry addresses laws for the civil commitment of sexually dangerous persons. Beginning in the 1930s, many states expanded the traditional reach of civil commitment to include "sexual psychopaths." By the 1970s these psychopath laws were judged to be a failed experiment. In the 1990s, social forces combined to produce a suite of innovative approaches to sexual violence, includ…
Convicted of drug distribution, Takeisha Brunson—a twenty year old with a lengthy string of prior convictions—might ordinarily have been sentenced to a significant prison term. But the judge in her case decided to try an alternative sanction: shame. As a condition of probation, the judge ordered Brunson to place an advertisement in a local newspaper announcing, "I purchased dr…
Born December 23, 1923 (Cleveland, Ohio) Died April 6, 1970 (Columbus, Ohio) Accused murderer, physician In 1954 Dr. Sam Sheppard was accused of the brutal murder of his wife Marilyn at their home in Cleveland, Ohio. Before the sensational Sheppard criminal case was over, a landmark Supreme Court ruling would be handed down on the widely debated conflict between freedom of the press and a defendan…
Excerpt from the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 Reprinted from The Statutes at Large and Proclamations of the United States of America from December, 1889, to March, 1891, Vol. XXVI Published in 1891 Since 1890 the Sherman Antitrust Act has been the key law representing America's commitment to a free market economy. A free market economy, one where competition operates free from private or g…
The right to a speedy trial finds expression in the U.S. Constitution, state constitutions, state and federal statutory law, and state and federal case law. The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the case law surrounding this amendment, provide the best place to start analysis of the basic questions of primary concern: What interests does the right protect? When and why are these intere…
Beginning in the late 1980s stalking became an accepted word in the American vocabulary and a distinct criminal offense under state and federal law. The sensitivity of the mental health and legal communities to this abnormal social behavior was heightened by the notable cases of Prosenjit Poddar (Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California, 551 2d 334 (1976); Meloy, 1996) and John Hinckley, Jr…
Born May 5, 1903 (Baker City, Oregon) Died February 1, 1982 (Greenbrae, California) San Francisco madam Sally Stanford was a bootlegger of illegal liquor during Prohibition in the 1930s before becoming a famous San Francisco madam during the 1930s and 1940s. A madam is a woman who manages a house of prostitution, also known as a brothel. Stanford supplied prostitutes to male customers and collecte…
Estimating the costs of crime serves many purposes. At a very basic level, such estimates indicate the burden of crime for individuals and society. Victims often lose or have their property damaged. Replacing or repairing damaged goods, even in an era of widespread insurance, can result in substantial monetary loss. Victims also often sustain physical injury and suffer considerable psychological t…
The extent of crime in Western societies is an issue of grave concern to public officials and criminologists alike. Those who are projecting police budgets and building prisons need to know the levels and kinds of crime to expect in future years, just as those who think more broadly about the causes of crime need to know how it has undermined society in years past. Many in the public seek informat…
In order to better understand, explain, and control crime, one needs accurate counts of its occurrence. Crime statistics represent the counts of criminal behavior and criminals. They are typically uniform data on offenses and offenders and are derived from records of official criminal justice agencies, from other agencies of control, and from unofficial sources such as surveys of victimization or …
Although there is some dispute as to whether Anglo-American criminal law has always required the state to prove that the defendant had a culpable mental state for every element of an offense, there is general consensus that, except for the rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse and the felony murder doctrine, such a mental state has been required for criminal liability over the last few centu…
The taking of one's own life has raised ethical, religious, and legal issues for centuries. Although the suicide rate in some countries is declining, in the United States it remains high, virtually equaling the homicide rate each year. At English common law, suicide was a felony punishable by burial in the public highway with a stake driven through the body and forfeiture of all one'…
Terrorism is the preplanned use of force or violence against innocent civilians to make a statement about a cause and influence an audience. Terrorist action is staged for maximum surprise, shock, and destruction. Its goal is to so terrorize or alarm individuals, groups, or governments that they give into the demands of the terrorists. Terrorists are individuals or groups who plan and carry out vi…
Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack (known as 9/11) on the United States, the U.S. government named its number one mission as protecting the homeland from future terrorist actions. Prior to 9/11 there was no comprehensive plan for such a mission; immediately after the terrorist attacks the government began developing a plan and the practical steps needed to achieve it. President Geor…
Although the terrors of war and criminal violence have been known since the dawn of human existence, the concept of terrorism as a form of political violence originated in le terreur of the French Revolution. Initially a word for the brutal excesses of a revolutionary government (some forty thousand persons were guillotined), by the late nineteenth century "terrorism" referred almost…
Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution of the United States provides: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the …
Criminal trials have always held a special fascination for Americans and have furnished the plots for numerous books, plays, films, and television shows. Although civil trials can occasionally be of broad general interest, violations of criminal law frequently arouse strong popular emotions. Not surprisingly, horrific crimes are frequently front-page features in the newspapers. Trials that retell …
Sorting people into types according to distinguishing traits or forms of behavior that are presumed to characterize them is a common social process. For example, high school students often label their classmates as "hoods," "jocks," "Goths," or "brains." These slang terms identify certain students as delinquents, as overly interested in schoo…
Excerpt from "Patterns of Global Terrorism—2002" Reprinted from Terrorism: Documents of International and Local Control, Volume 39, U.S. Perspectives, edited by James Walsh Published in 2003 Although post-9/11 many important reports on terrorism have been issued, the U.S. State Department's annual assessment has long been considered the government's most importan…
Early twentieth century criminology might reasonably be considered the criminology of urban places. During the 1920s and 1930s much of the attention of criminologists focused on the "criminogenic city," however, by the close of the century researchers had moved away from the notion that the city is itself criminogenic. Instead research on urban crime has become concerned mainly with explaining why…
In the 1970s, changes in the nature of economic development and growth left many northern industrial cities stagnating with declining populations. During this time period, many urbanites moved to the suburbs to escape the congestion and rising crime rates of inner cities. Described as "white flight," middle-and upper-class, predominantly white Americans moved to the suburbs, further …
Vagrancy and disorderly conduct are examples of a category of legal prohibitions commonly referred to as public order offenses. Such offenses share a number of general characteristics. They usually prohibit relatively trivial types of public misconduct such as, for example, aggressive panhandling, public drinking, or loitering in the vicinity of an automated teller machine. In the main, they provi…
Venue is the appropriate place of trial, as between different geographical subdivisions of a state or between different federal districts It is determined by constitutional, statutory, and administrative provisions. Venue should be distinguished from the related concepts of jurisdiction, vicinage, and cross-sectional representation. Subject matter jurisdiction, which includes territorial juris…
Vicarious liability, which is common in some areas of the law, refers to legal responsibility for the actions of another. If a law holds X responsible for Y's actions, then X's liability is said to be vicarious. In the criminal law, however, courts and commentators use the term in several different ways. Sometimes the term vicarious liability may be intended to refer only to cases th…
In the continuing debate over the proper scope of the criminal law, it has frequently been suggested that certain crimes are in reality "victimless" and that all statutes defining such offenses should be repealed or at least substantially restricted (Schur; Packer; Morris and Hawkins). Although all authors do not use the term in the same way, the following offenses have been included…
The striking increase in attention to victims by the world's criminal justice systems may well have been the most significant development in those systems during the second half of the twentieth century. In earlier times, crime victims were consigned to a peripheral position, necessary as background players but of no true importance. Once their crime report and their testimony had been reco…
The term violence is used to describe animal and human behavior that threatens to cause or causes severe harm to a target. Most animal studies emphasize variations in aggression and use the concept of extreme aggression (rather than violence) to denote the most serious and injurious behavior. In studying human behavior, violence and aggression are frequently used as synonyms, with violence marked …
On the evening of January 27, 2001, Roxana Verona arrived at the home of Susanne and Half Zantop for dinner. Verona and the Zantops were professors at Dartmouth, an elite Ivy League university in the peaceful wooded town of Hanover, New Hampshire. The Zantops lived in Etna, a village just outside Hanover. When Verona arrived at the Zantop home, she immediately sensed something might be wrong. Alth…
Born May 1, 1823 (New York) Died December 31, 1891 (New York) New York City police chief George Washington Walling was the police chief of New York City from July 1874 until June 1885. Walling gained a reputation as a tough but fair and honest law officer during his decades on the force. He was elevated to the position of chief of police because of his personal heroics during the New York City Dra…
The most authoritative definition of war crimes was formulated in the London Charter of 8 August 1945, which established the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. It was adopted in 1946 by the General Assembly of the United Nations in a unanimous resolution approving of the work of the Nuremberg Tribunal: War Crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of law which include, but are not limit…
Sociologist Edwin Sutherland (1883–1950) first coined the term "white-collar crime" around 1939 and used it for the title of a book published in 1949. White-collar crime is difficult to define because it can be committed by anyone with money and apply to many different activities. White-collar crime is illegal activity carried on within normally legal business transactions. Fo…
Crimes committed by persons of respectability have drawn the attention of societies throughout history. In the United States, interest in such phenomena far antedates the first public use of the concept of white-collar crime by Edwin Sutherland. The muckraking tradition at the turn of the century produced many persons who condemned abuse of position for private gain. Sociologist E. A. Ross, in Sin…
Two major categories of crime attracted considerable attention from the U.S. criminal justice system during the twentieth century and posed far greater costs to society than usual street crime. They were white-collar crime and organized crime. Both involved illegal activities through enterprises. An enterprise is a group of associated individuals such as a business partnership, corporation, or uni…
Excerpt from The Problem of Law Enforcement An address by George W. Wickersham on April 16, 1931 Published by the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, 1931 The 1920s were a particularly trying time for the U.S. criminal justice system. The introduction of Prohibition by passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919 introduced a new crime wave. Prohibition m…
Wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping are two types of electronic surveillance that play vital roles in criminal investigations. Wiretapping involves the use of covert means to intercept, monitor, and record telephone conversations of individuals. Electronic eavesdropping may involve the placement of a "bug" inside private premises to secretly record conversations, or the use of a…