Politics of Criminal Justice: Beginner Flashcards

[Week 2] What is criminal justice discretion?

The room an official has to choose among legally available actions. For example, a prosecutor may have grounds to file a charge and still decide to dismiss the case.

[Week 2] What is a crime rate?

The number of crimes counted in a population over a set period, often expressed per 100,000 people. It lets you compare places or years with different population sizes.

[Week 2] What are three ways a crime can be missing from a headline police count?

The incident may go unreported, police may receive the report and leave it out of their records, or police may record it in a category that the headline count excludes.

[Week 2] What does reactivity of a social indicator mean?

People change how a statistic is produced once they are judged by it. Seidman and Couzens found that some of the reported crime decline in Washington, D.C., reflected changes in police recording.

[Week 2] How could Washington, D.C., police change the crime index by valuing stolen property at $49?

At the time, larceny counted in the index only at $50 or above. Recording a theft at $49 moved it outside the index while still counting it as a theft in another category.

[Week 2] Why did Seidman and Couzens compare major and minor larceny?

The two series had generally moved together and then split after a new police chief took office. The split was evidence that offenses were being moved across the reporting threshold.

[Week 2] What is a moral panic in Chiricos's reading?

A surge of public concern in which media and political figures frame an issue or group as an urgent threat. The concern can help build support for harsher laws.

[Week 2] What is a folk devil in a moral panic?

A person or group portrayed as the public symbol of a threat. Chiricos draws on Stanley Cohen's study of how British youth groups were portrayed.

[Week 2] How do reports and commands work together in Chiricos's account?

Reports tell the public what the threat is. Commands tell the public or policymakers what action to take, such as imposing mandatory penalties.

[Week 2] Why does Lynch use both police records and victimization surveys?

Police records capture many serious events known to police. Surveys ask people about their experiences and can reveal incidents that victims never reported.

[Week 2] Which U.S. patterns stand out in Lynch's international comparison?

Lethal violence and the overall level of imprisonment. Comparisons for other offenses depend on the countries, definitions, and stages of the justice system being studied.

[Week 2] What is the difference between a prison population and prison admissions?

The prison population counts people in custody at a given time. Admissions count entries over a period. The time people serve also affects how many are in prison at once.

[Week 2] What is the carceral state in Gottschalk's work?

The broad system of criminal punishment, including prisons, jails, supervision, and restrictions that can continue after a sentence.

[Week 2] How does Gottschalk's 2006 book explain the growth of punishment?

It traces how earlier law-enforcement institutions, political coalitions, racial hierarchy, federal and state action, and a weak welfare state made punitive policies possible.

[Week 2] What changed in Gottschalk's 2015 focus?

She examined how the system maintains itself and reshapes citizenship through barriers to voting, jobs, housing, and other opportunities.

[Week 2] Why does Gottschalk say ending racial disparities alone would leave a large U.S. prison system?

Bringing everyone to the U.S. white imprisonment rate of the period would still leave the country with a high overall rate. Both the size and unequal distribution of punishment matter.

[Week 2] What is incapacitation?

Preventing some offenses by limiting a person's opportunities to commit them in the community while that person is confined.

[Week 2] What is deterrence?

Preventing an offense by changing someone's behavior through the expected risk of punishment.

[Week 2] Why do King, Mauer, and Young compare periods before and during the 1990s crime decline?

Imprisonment increased in both periods, while crime rose in one and fell in the other. Looking at both periods makes clear why additional evidence is needed to estimate prison's contribution.

[Week 2] What are diminishing returns from expanding incarceration?

The next increase in imprisonment may prevent fewer crimes than earlier increases, especially if it confines lower-risk people or keeps people imprisoned past their highest-risk years.

[Week 2] What did Tonry argue about the racial effects of the drug war?

Policymakers could foresee especially severe harm to Black Americans. Tonry questioned whether the benefits justified those harms when treatment and prevention were available.

[Week 2] How did Fortner explain support for New York's Rockefeller drug laws?

Some working- and middle-class Black New Yorkers organized for tougher responses to heroin, street crime, and disorder. Political developments helped turn those demands into law in 1973.

[Week 2] What are Kingdon's three streams in Fortner's account?

A problem gains recognition, a policy proposal is available, and political conditions create an opening. When the streams come together, major action becomes possible.

[Week 2] How does Forman explain the rise of punishment in Washington, D.C.?

Black residents and officials sought protection from serious violence. Many separate decisions over decades added up to a harsher system than any one decision suggested.

[Week 2] How can Tonry, Fortner, and Forman's explanations fit together?

Tonry examines federal choices and foreseeable racial harm. Fortner examines civic organizing in New York. Forman follows decisions by local officials and residents in Washington, D.C.

[Week 2] What did Decker and colleagues find about local immigration enforcement?

Chiefs reported wide variation in local officers' responses. Written local and departmental guidance could shape when officers checked immigration status or contacted federal authorities.

[Week 2] Why might a local police department limit its involvement in immigration enforcement?

It may be concerned about resources, complex status decisions, profiling, and keeping victims and witnesses willing to contact police.

[Week 2] How did Colorado's 2006 marijuana vote help Nelson study public opinion?

The proposal failed, so the law stayed in place. Differences in local voting gave prosecutors and judges a public signal that could influence how they used existing discretion.

[Week 2] What did Nelson find about prosecutors and marijuana dismissals?

After the vote, prosecutors in high-support districts became more likely to dismiss marijuana charges. The pattern moved in the opposite direction in low-support districts.

[Week 2] What is a mandatory minimum sentence?

The minimum punishment set by law for a qualifying offense. Rakoff uses mandatory minimums to explain why judges can have limited room to account for individual circumstances.

[Week 2] What does Rakoff want judges to do about mass incarceration?

He urges judges to use their experience and independence to speak publicly about long sentences, racial disparities, and the costs of incarceration.

[Week 2] What does Lisa Miller mean by taking both violence and government seriously?

Public safety requires immediate protection from violence, long-term prevention, and accountability for the government agencies authorized to use force.

[Week 2] What is expressive violence in Gladwell's discussion of Jens Ludwig?

Violence that erupts from anger, perceived disrespect, or a fast-moving conflict. De-escalation can interrupt the conflict before someone has a chance to think about future punishment.

[Week 2] How could recorded crime fall while public fear rises?

Police recording rules can lower the count, and intense media coverage can increase fear. Recorded crime and fear capture different things.

[Week 2] How does Gladwell's review distinguish expressive from instrumental violence?

Expressive violence grows out of immediate anger, fear, or perceived disrespect, such as a fight that escalates. Instrumental violence is used to accomplish a goal, such as threatening someone to take their money.

[Week 2] What does Chicago's Becoming a Man program teach, and what result does Gladwell report?

The program helps teenagers pause and reconsider their assumptions before reacting to conflict. In the randomized comparison Gladwell describes, participation was associated with about 50% fewer arrests for violent crime.

[Week 2] Why does Gottschalk say budget cuts alone can leave the carceral state intact?

Officials may respond to budget pressure by making confinement harsher or shifting people into other forms of custody or supervision. Look at jails, supervision, and post-sentence restrictions alongside state prison totals.

[Week 2] How did Colorado judges change marijuana sentences after the failed 2006 legalization vote in Nelson's study?

Sentences generally became more severe after the statewide defeat. The increase was smaller in places where more voters supported legalization. The study found both a statewide pattern and local variation.

[Week 2] How did Nelson separate prosecutors' decisions from judges' decisions after the Colorado vote?

He studied dismissals and sentence severity separately. Prosecutors' dismissals varied with district opinion. Judges' sentences reflected statewide opposition and local support. He checked whether different cases reaching sentencing could explain the judges' pattern.

[Week 3] What is the standard model of policing in Weisburd and Braga's introduction?

It emphasizes routine patrol across an area, fast responses to calls, follow-up investigations, and enforcement.

[Week 3] What two crises pushed police agencies to try new approaches?

Questions about effectiveness grew as crime rose and conventional tactics disappointed researchers. Questions about legitimacy grew amid conflict over police conduct and race.

[Week 3] What did the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment find?

Changing the amount of routine car patrol in the areas studied produced little measurable change in crime or fear.

[Week 3] What is police legitimacy?

The belief that police have rightful authority and deserve cooperation. The way police exercise their authority can affect that belief.

[Week 3] What are Skogan's three elements of community policing?

Community participation, problem solving, and decentralization. Residents help set priorities, police work on recurring problems, and local officers gain room to adapt.

[Week 3] What is Mastrofski's main concern about community policing?

Departments may adopt the label while making few changes to dispatch, hierarchy, or everyday officer duties. Evaluation should examine what officers and residents actually do.

[Week 3] What does broken windows theory predict?

Visible disorder can increase fear and cause residents to withdraw from public space. Reduced informal supervision may leave the area more vulnerable to serious crime.

[Week 3] What did Wilson and Kelling's Newark foot patrol example show?

Residents felt safer and viewed police more favorably. The evaluation found no reduction in recorded crime, so the fear result supports one part of the theory.

[Week 3] What is Taylor's main challenge to broken windows theory?

Different versions define disorder and its effects differently. Existing disadvantage may explain both disorder and crime, so their relationship alone gives limited evidence about cause.

[Week 3] How do Sousa and Kelling describe order maintenance?

They describe adapting the response to local priorities and conditions. It can include repairing physical conditions, solving problems, or enforcing rules in context.

[Week 3] What is problem-oriented policing?

A strategy for finding why a recurring problem happens and changing the conditions that sustain it. For example, officers might work with a business to change the layout of a location with repeated thefts.

[Week 3] What does SARA stand for?

Scanning, analysis, response, and assessment. Identify the problem, study why it happens, choose a response, and check what changed.

[Week 3] Why do Braga and Weisburd emphasize implementation in problem-oriented policing?

An agency can adopt SARA on paper and still skip serious analysis or fall back on routine enforcement. Results depend on which steps actually happen.

[Week 3] What is hot spots policing?

Concentrating police attention at small places with unusually high crime, such as particular addresses or street segments.

[Week 3] What is crime displacement in a hot spots study?

Crime moves to another place, time, target, or method after intervention. A study can check nearby locations to see whether crime moved or whether benefits spread.

[Week 3] What does Rosenbaum want hot spots researchers to ask?

What officers do at the location, why the tactic fits the problem, how long effects last, and what happens to residents and nearby blocks.

[Week 3] What is Compstat?

A police management system that uses timely crime data, tactics, rapid deployment, and sustained follow-up. Commanders explain local patterns and results at regular meetings.

[Week 3] How can Compstat affect the accuracy of crime statistics?

When supervisors heavily reward lower counts, commanders can face pressure to downgrade reports. This is an example of reactivity in crime measurement.

[Week 3] What did Zimring find about New York City's crime decline?

The decline was unusually deep and continued after the national trend slowed. It occurred while city incarceration eventually fell, which limits explanations based solely on imprisoning more people.

[Week 3] What four elements make up procedural justice in policing?

Voice, neutrality, dignity and respect, and trustworthy motives. A person can be heard, get an impartial explanation, and be treated as someone whose interests count.

[Week 3] What is Thacher's distinction between procedural and substantive justice?

Procedural justice concerns how an officer makes and explains a decision. Substantive justice concerns whether the intervention itself is justified.

[Week 3] What is focused deterrence?

Officials and community partners focus on people or groups driving a specific serious harm. They communicate clear consequences for continuing violence and offer support.

[Week 3] What helped Boston's Operation Ceasefire operate?

It relied on relationships among police, probation, service providers, and Black clergy. Those partners helped communicate with young people and build credibility.

[Week 3] What is third-party policing?

Police work with partners who can use their own authority to address a problem. For example, a building inspector can enforce safety rules at a site of recurring harm.

[Week 3] What civil liberties issue do Meares and Owens raise about third-party policing?

Civil tools can impose costs on people who committed no crime. Forfeiture affecting an innocent co-owner illustrates the concern.

[Week 3] What two tests should predictive policing pass according to Ratcliffe?

The forecast should improve on alternatives, and the response to the forecast should reduce harm. Researchers need evidence for each step.

[Week 3] What are the different targets of hot spots policing, focused deterrence, and problem-oriented policing?

Hot spots targets small places. Focused deterrence targets particular people, groups, or conduct. Problem-oriented policing targets the causes of a recurring problem.

[Week 3] What is probable cause in the warrant cases?

A reasonable factual basis to believe a crime occurred or that evidence of a crime will be found in the place to be searched. The specific inquiry depends on the police action.

[Week 3] What is the exclusionary rule and what did Mapp v. Ohio do?

It generally bars use of evidence obtained through an unconstitutional search or seizure. Mapp applied the rule to state courts.

[Week 3] What did United States v. Leon say about a defective warrant?

Evidence may be admitted if officers relied on a warrant in objectively reasonable good faith and a court later found it invalid.

[Week 3] When is Leon's good-faith exception unavailable?

When police knowingly or recklessly misled the judge, the judge abandoned neutrality, the application was plainly inadequate, or an obvious defect made reliance on the warrant unreasonable.

[Week 3] What is the difference between an unconstitutional search and suppression?

The first question is whether officers violated the Constitution. The second is whether the court will exclude evidence as a remedy.

[Week 3] What triggers Miranda warnings?

Custodial interrogation. Police are questioning someone who is in custody or has experienced a comparable restraint on freedom.

[Week 3] What are the four Miranda warnings covered in the notes?

You may remain silent, statements can be used against you, you may have a lawyer present, and a lawyer will be appointed if you cannot afford one.

[Week 3] What is a valid Miranda waiver?

A voluntary choice to give up the rights, made with an understanding of what those rights are and the consequences of giving them up.

[Week 3] What did Moran v. Burbine hold about an attorney's attempt to contact police?

On those facts, an attorney's call that the suspect knew nothing about did not invalidate his otherwise informed and voluntary waiver. The majority also found that his Sixth Amendment right had yet to attach for the murder questioning.

[Week 3] How does the right to counsel in Miranda differ from the Sixth Amendment right to counsel?

Miranda protects a person during custodial interrogation. The Sixth Amendment right begins when formal adversarial proceedings start and applies to the charged offense.

[Week 3] What did Dickerson v. United States say about Congress and Miranda?

Miranda announced a constitutional rule. Congress could not replace it with a law making overall voluntariness the sole test for admission in federal cases.

[Week 3] What did the original Miranda opinion say police must do when a suspect personally asks for a lawyer during custodial questioning?

They must stop the questioning until a lawyer is present. The suspect's own request invokes the protection, even if the suspect had previously agreed to talk.

[Week 3] How would a suspect's own request for counsel change the facts of Moran v. Burbine?

Burbine waived his rights without knowing a lawyer had called the station. The Court assessed what Burbine understood and chose. If he had personally invoked counsel, the Miranda rule requiring officers to stop questioning would come into play.

[Week 3] Why might broken windows foot patrol and hot spots policing send officers to different blocks?

Wilson and Kelling favored walking beats where order was weakening but residents still used public space and could help restore it. Hot spots policing prioritizes places with unusually high incident counts. A block can meet one description without meeting the other.

[Week 3] What outcomes would help you assess broken windows foot patrol and hot spots policing?

For foot patrol, check fear, use of public space, and recorded crime. For a hot spots intervention, check incidents on treated blocks, whether crime moves nearby, and how residents experience the response.

[Week 3] How did Zimring check whether New York's reported homicide and auto theft declines were real?

He compared police homicide counts with health records and police auto theft counts with insurance data. The independent records showed similar declines, strengthening the case that the changes reflected more than police reporting practices.

[Week 3] What can Zimring's independent data tell us about the New York crime decline, and what needs other evidence?

Health and insurance records support the declines in homicide and auto theft. Explaining the decline requires other comparisons because staffing, tactics, management, and national crime trends changed around the same time.

[Week 3] How would you use Zimring and Seidman and Couzens to check a city's claim that crime fell?

Compare police figures with independent measures such as hospital or insurance records where available. Also check whether cases shifted between police reporting categories, as some thefts did in Washington, D.C.

[Weeks 4-5] What is Skolnick's police working personality?

Habits officers develop from repeatedly facing danger, exercising authority, and being judged on efficiency. Those pressures shape how they interpret situations and whom they trust.

[Weeks 4-5] What is a symbolic assailant?

Someone an officer reads as a threat because of cues such as clothing, movements, or setting. The shortcut can turn stereotypes into a substitute for evidence about that person.

[Weeks 4-5] What is occupational solidarity in policing?

Loyalty and support among officers who rely on each other in difficult situations. That same loyalty can also make officers reluctant to challenge colleagues.

[Weeks 4-5] How did Rosa Brooks research Tangled Up in Blue?

She worked as a volunteer reserve officer in Washington, D.C. Her firsthand observations show how policing feels and works in that setting.

[Weeks 4-5] What did Brooks learn from firearms training?

Repeated practice made carrying and firing a gun feel more familiar. She reflects on how technical confidence can grow alongside the responsibility of carrying a lethal weapon.

[Weeks 4-5] How do Brooks's family-conflict calls illustrate discretion?

Officers can listen, check immediate safety, and connect people with help. They usually have incomplete information about the family history and must decide what they can accomplish on scene.

[Weeks 4-5] Why does Brooks describe an arrest over detergent and chicken?

The episode shows how material hardship and a low-level theft can lead to formal criminal charges. It invites questions about what arrest accomplishes in that setting.

[Weeks 4-5] What did Tennessee v. Garner hold about deadly force against a fleeing suspect?

Escape alone is insufficient. Deadly force to prevent escape can be used when necessary and when police have probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury. Give a warning when feasible.

[Weeks 4-5] What are elective and nonelective shootings in Fyfe's framework?

In an elective situation an officer can refrain from shooting without exposing someone to immediate grave harm. A nonelective situation involves an immediate serious threat, such as an armed attack.

[Weeks 4-5] How can an agency limit police shootings under Fyfe's approach?

Set policies narrower than the broad legal permissions, train officers, investigate incidents, and hold officers accountable for violations.

[Weeks 4-5] How can deployment shape racial disparities in police force?

Deploying more officers to particular neighborhoods and initiating more encounters there increases residents' exposure to situations in which force may be used.

[Weeks 4-5] What is the difference between a traffic-safety stop and an investigatory stop in Pulled Over?

A traffic-safety stop responds to dangerous driving. An investigatory stop uses a minor traffic, equipment, or paperwork violation to look for unrelated crime.

[Weeks 4-5] How did Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel study stops?

They combined a survey of drivers in the Kansas City area with interviews. The survey helped identify patterns, and the interviews helped explain how drivers experienced those stops.

[Weeks 4-5] Why can a courteous investigatory stop still harm trust?

Repeated stops can make travel feel conditional and expose drivers to intrusive questioning or searches. Courtesy addresses treatment during the stop, while the decision to stop has consequences of its own.

[Weeks 4-5] What does Cobbina emphasize about the history of race and policing?

Institutions such as slave patrols, Jim Crow enforcement, and segregation shaped later experiences of policing. Practices and histories also varied across places.

[Weeks 4-5] Why does Cobbina distinguish different kinds of protesters?

Participants varied in their motives, level of involvement, and tactics. Describing a protest as a single actor hides those differences.