The policy is used in various ways by the criminal justice system. Policy guides those that have been tasked with administering criminal justice. All people are affected by criminal justice in one way or another through public policy. However, most importantly, policy shapes, and is shaped, by criminal justice system and institutions. Criminal justice is an area of concern that impacts our daily lives. Many authors have studied this field from various perspectives and recorded their findings. This paper aims to provide a synthesis and evaluation of some of the available literature on criminal justice.
The provided literature area based mostly on case studies of instances where crime soared, and then changes were done to the policing structures and policy as a way to control the upsurge in crime rates. In most of the cases, police were made to stop vehicle patrols and adopt foot patrols as a way to curb runaway crime (Kelling & Wilson, par. 2; Rosenfield, p.356). One thing that stands out in common among these pieces of literature is how the public, national observers, state and local officials give credit to the police for crime reduction without carrying out analysis to establish the truth (Kelling & Wilson, par. 8; Rosenfield et al., par.2). In most cases, it turned out that the crime rate had not declined. This brings to the fore a critical aspect in the criminal justice system; public perception.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Whereas violent crime frightens the citizens, there is another aspect of crime that the public seems to be more frightened of. In instances where targeted crackdown on crime was conducted, follow up investigations by criminologists noted that violent crime rates did not decline. Nevertheless, the residents admitted to having witnessed a drastic drop in the rate of crimes (Rosenfield, p.378). It emerged that the crime rates citizens are more concerned about in the short run is the rate of social disorderliness. However, to some extent, disorderliness is related to violent crime. The study in New York city by (Rosenfield, p.378) revealed that order maintenance policing and arrests yielded a substantial fall in the rate of violent crime. The correlation between the two is still not clear though and is open to further study as the authors indicated.
The correlation between the law enforcers’ motivation and the rate of crime. The public policies governing the relation of law enforcers and citizen relations impact motivation in the police officers (Kelling & Wilson, par. 4). Where officers are highly motivated towards their work, crime rates were noted to go down, albeit on a small scale. This is typical with what Rosenfeld et al. noted in their survey of the reduction in the rates of homicide in the United States cities during the 1990s (Rosenfield et al., par.6). Cases of homicide dropped sharply in the state of Boston, where officers recorded higher motivation (Rosenfield et al., par.2). A similar trend was recorded by Kelling and Wilson in their publication “Broken Window” which studied the rate of crime in the state of New Jersey. In this study, police officers were made to patrol on foot as opposed to driving in the patrol cars (Kelling & Wilson, par. 7). Officers on foot expressed they were more motivated to their work, and in such instances, the rate of public disorder and crime dropped drastically. Officers also expressed more satisfaction with their jobs.
The authors also widely reflected in the rate of police engagement in unlawful activities. These activities range from some unlawful means of enforcing public orderliness. In the new Jersey case, for instance, the officers were engaged in a campaign dubbed “Clean Neighborhoods Program ”. The authors noted that though the officer in charge was successful in implement orderliness, some of the ways he used in achieving were unconstitutional and would not stand trial in a court of law (Kelling & Wilson, par. 6). Ready et al. also exposed how officers take part in misconduct that leads to disqualification from serving in the forces. In a separate case, some officers were noted to break the same law they purport to enforce by acting disorderly, especially in regards to racial discrimination. In Warren et al.'s "Driving While Black", officers were noted to be discriminatory by white officers exhibited a significant level of racial disparity. Policing by white officers was seen to target blacks. In contrast, white civilians were not under tight scrutiny by police (Kelling & Wilson, par. 9), similar to what (Rojek et al., par.19) recorded from their study. A similar case was noted in New Jersey, where the residents are majorly blacks; the police were seen to target the whites in their crackdown on suspected criminal elements.
Correlation between crime and immigration has also been addressed by most of the articles. Ferraro (p.9) reported that the rates of crime in the destination country was expected to fall. Wang (par.12) also found no evidence to support the perception that illegal immigrated to more crime. Immigration, Contrary to popular belief that immigration, especially undocumented, is directly related to an increase in crime, the studies found very little or no evidence to support this view.
Although these studies were conducted each with a different aim and methodology, it emerged that policing structure and public policies play a major role in shaping the criminal justice system’s operations. Whenever cases of crime were on the rise and necessitated an urgent need to restore order, the policing structure and public policies were altered to facilitate the quick realization of the objective of the particular anti-crime campaigns.
References
Ferraro, Vincent. "Immigration and crime in the new destinations, 2000–2007: A test of the disorganizing effect of migration." Journal of quantitative criminology 32.1 (2016): 23-45. https://sci-hub.tf/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-015-9252-y
Ready, Justin T., and Jacob TN Young. "The impact of on-officer video cameras on police–citizen contacts: Findings from a controlled experiment in Mesa, AZ." Journal of experimental criminology 11.3 (2015): 445-458. https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/document/the-impact-of-on-officer-video-cameras-on-police-citzen-contacts-jec.pdf
Rojek, Jeff, Richard Rosenfeld, and Scott Decker. "Policing race: The racial stratification of searches in police traffic stops." Criminology 50.4 (2012): 993-1024. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2012.00285.x
Rosenfeld, Richard, Robert Fornango, and Andres F. Rengifo. "The impact of order‐maintenance policing on New York City homicide and robbery rates: 1988‐2001." Criminology 45.2 (2007): 355-384. http://www.antoniocasella.eu/nume/LIGHT_Miller_2018.pdf
Rosenfeld, Richard, Robert Fornango, and Eric Baumer. "Did ceasefire, compstat, and exile reduce homicide?." Criminology & Public Policy 4.3 (2005): 419-449. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227605022_Did_Ceasefire_CompStat_and_Exile_Reduce_Homicide
Wang, Xia. "Undocumented immigrants as a perceived criminal threat: A test of the minority threat perspective." Criminology 50.3 (2012): 743-776. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256081616_Undocumented_Immigrants_as_Perceived_Criminal_Threat_A_Test_of_the_Minority_Threat_Perspective
Wilson, James Q., and George L. Kelling. "Broken windows." Atlantic Monthly 249.3 (1982): 29-38. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/
