ADJ 133 Final Exam Review - Ethics, Law, and Corrections

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering legal, ethical, and correctional concepts from the ADJ 133 study guide.

Pluralist Paradigm

The view that law arises from competing interest groups and that coalitions and shared interests continuously shift the dynamic balance of power in society.

Bureaucratic Justice

An administrative orientation within the legal system where efficiency and the fast processing or disposition of cases take precedence over individual justice, such as pressuring a defendant to take a plea bargain.

Reciprocity

Gresham Sykes's term for the informal system of debts, favors, and mutual give-and-take established between prison inmates and correctional officers.

Ethical Formalism

A deontological ethical theory asserting that the morality of an action is based on adherence to duty and universal moral rules rather than consequences, providing support for retributive punishment.

Treatment Ethic

A correctional philosophy that views criminal behavior as a symptom of underlying personal, psychological, or social deficits that require rehabilitation and vocational intervention rather than pure retribution.

Exculpatory Evidence

Any physical evidence or testimony that is favorable to the defendant and tends to establish innocence or mitigate guilt, such as scene shoeprints belonging to a third party.

Justice Model

Andrew von Hirsch's sentencing conceptualization arguing that punishment should be purely retributive and strictly proportional to the seriousness of the crime committed.

Restorative Justice

A diversion and justice model centered on repairing harm, acknowledging offender responsibility, and directly meeting the needs of both the victim and the community.

Prison-Industrial Complex

The multi-faceted network of public agencies and private corporations that derive employment, commercial contracts, and profit from the continued expansion of corrections.

Utilitarianism

A teleological ethical philosophy holding that actions and policies are moral if they maximize overall happiness and produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Punitive Law Enforcer

A type in Souryal's typology of probation and parole officers characterized by a strict focus on enforcement and control, who often needs to examine their personal use of authority.

Systemic Abuse

Bomse's category of institutional abuse stemming from administrative, budgetary, or structural decisions, such as intentional overcrowding of inmate housing units to save maintenance costs.

Ethics of Care

An ethical system that prioritizes interpersonal relationships, compassion, empathy, and alleviating human suffering above rigid adherence to rules or abstract duties.

Rational Relationship

The constitutional standard requiring correctional institutions to demonstrate that prison policies or restrictive regulations are logically connected to legitimate institutional goals of safety and security.

Natural Law

The philosophical idea that moral principles and fundamental human rights are inherent in nature and reason, rather than created or granted by human legislation.

Conflict Paradigm

The sociological perspective stating that groups within society hold fundamental conflicting differences and that those holding societal power formulate and control the law to protect their interests.

Innocence Project

A national organization consisting of an affiliation of lawyers that reviews criminal cases and investigates claims of wrongful conviction to exonerate innocent prisoners.

Recusal

The voluntary or legally mandated removal of a judge from presiding over a case due to a conflict of interest, financial stake, personal bias, or the appearance of impropriety.

Penal Harm

The penal philosophy advocating that the corrections system should intentionally inflict discomfort, pain, and deprivation on convicted offenders throughout their term of imprisonment.

Halo Effect

The cognitive bias where a person possessing perceived status, credibility, or expertise in one specific subject is inappropriately granted authority or deference in unrelated areas.

Tarasoff Rule

A legal mandate establishing that clinical professionals incur liability if they fail to breach confidentiality to protect or warn an identified third party facing a credible threat of harm from a patient.

Antonia Taguba

The United States Army major general who conducted the military investigation exposing prisoner mistreatment and systemic abuse at Abu Ghraib.

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

The specialized judicial body with jurisdiction to review and grant wiretap warrants for domestic counter-intelligence investigations involving suspected foreign operatives and U.S. citizens.

Legal Moralism

A rationale for state legislation holding that the law may properly prohibit and criminalize actions solely because they violate community standards of morality, such as same-sex marriage or gambling.

Atkins v. Virginia

The landmark Supreme Court ruling holding that the execution of convicted offenders with severe intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Positivist Law

Statutes and ordinances that are formally written, enacted, and enforced by human governments, standing in direct contrast to natural law.

White Hat

A label within the correctional officer subculture identified by Kauffman to describe an officer who is viewed by peers as excessively sympathetic or lenient toward inmates.

Noble-Cause Corruption

Misconduct committed by criminal justice professionals, such as fabricating or manipulating evidence, motivated by the desire to secure a conviction against an individual believed to be guilty.

Operation Greylord

An undercover federal investigation into pervasive judicial bribery, fixing of cases, and institutional corruption within the Cook County court system in Chicago, Illinois.

Principle of Double Effect

The moral doctrine that an action with foreseeable harmful consequences (e.g., civilian war casualties) is ethical if the initial action is good, the harm is not the intended means, and the good outweighs the bad.

Slippery Slope

The behavioral pattern wherein an officer compromises their integrity through minor rule deviations for an inmate, creating vulnerability to escalating leverage, manipulation, and serious violations.

Strict Constructionist Philosophy

The judicial philosophy asserting that individuals possess no constitutional rights unless those rights are explicitly enumerated in the literal text of the Constitution or created by statute.

Interpretationist Philosophy

A constitutional interpretation model that reads legal documents expansively, adapting their principles to contemporary social standards and evolving human needs.

Washington v. Harper

The Supreme Court decision affirming that prison authorities can forcibly medicate a mentally ill inmate with antipsychotic drugs if it is medically necessary and the inmate poses a danger to self or others.

Command Responsibility

The military and international law doctrine holding military commanders legally liable for war crimes committed by their subordinates if the commander knew or should have known and failed to stop them.

Renditions

The extrajudicial capture, apprehension, and covert transfer of foreign terror suspects between countries without formal extradition hearings.

Legal Agent Position

A standard of legal ethics defining the attorney as a technician whose obligation of zealous advocacy and loyalty to the client completely supersedes personal moral scruples.

Specific Deterrence

A penal objective designed to administer a penalty severe enough to dissuade the specific convicted offender from engaging in criminal conduct again in the future.

Shadow Jury

A hired panel of individuals possessing demographics similar to an empaneled trial jury, assembled by trial attorneys to monitor proceedings and provide daily feedback on how arguments are perceived.

Negligent Abuse

Bomse's term for correctional staff misconduct characterized by failure of duty or willful inattention, such as a prison guard standing by and failing to intervene during an inmate altercation.

District Attorney v. Osborne

The Supreme Court ruling establishing that convicted criminal defendants do not hold a freestanding constitutional due process right to post-conviction testing of DNA evidence.

Stigmatizing Shaming

A form of societal condemnation that rejects and permanently brands the wrongdoer as an outcast, which often isolates the individual and drives them into deviant subcultures.

The Green Wall

A clandestine group and subcultural code formed among correctional officers at Salinas Valley Prison implicated in misconduct, retaliatory beatings, and cover-ups.

Kansas v. Hendricks

The Supreme Court decision affirming the legality of state civil commitment statues permitting the indefinite confinement of violent sexual predators in treatment centers past the expiration of their criminal sentence.

Prison Litigation Reform Act

A federal law passed in 1996 that substantially limited the ability of incarcerated inmates to file civil lawsuits concerning prison conditions in federal court.

Waterboarding

An interrogation technique involving immobilization and the pouring of water onto cloth over the face to simulate the sensation of imminent drowning.

The Hired Gun

Shaffer and Cochran's typology term for a lawyer who obeys all client directives without evaluating their moral merit, completely subordinated to the client's demands.

Rights-Based Approach

An ethical orientation prioritizing the defense of fundamental human rights as the primary duty of public servants and legal officials, contrasting with pure crime-control ideologies.