Intro to LCJS Midterm

(M02) What is meant when someone says “Joe is a criminal”

it means that people guilty or convicted of a crime get labeled as a “criminal.” This isn’t saying Joe was once convicted of a criminal act, but instead is actually saying that Joe is in fact a criminal because he was convicted of a criminal act.Calling someone a “criminal" tends to have the same connotation as the word "teacher” does. This is clearest in the second noun definition: “A person with a tendency to commit crime.” The word “criminal” → tends to have very negative meanings that get attached to people, “a person with a tendency to commit crime.”

In (M02) → What were the 3 offenses linked to the highest arrests? (they were surprising)

Drug Violations, Other Assaults (Simple Assaults), Driving under the influence.

(M02) what are the five key reasons for obeying the Law?

1. To avoid legal punishment

2. Commitment to legal order, sense of obligation

3. To avoid informal sanctions from peers, family, etc.

4. To avoid behaviors of harm us regardless of legal punishment and informal sanctions

5. Habit: people get used to obeying the law and then do it habitually without thinking about it.

(M02) What is a functionalist?

Type of criminologists that assume generally accepted ideas and beliefs about the meaning of crime, including its harmfulness. They assume we have a good and widely shared understanding of the meaning of crime, and they set off to understand why some people, but not others commit crime - with implicit or explicit goal of reducing crime.

(M02) What is a conflict theorist?

criminologists are more likely to question the standard definitions of crime on the grounds that such definitions emphasize harms that tend to be carried out by the most disadvantaged segments of society, while at the same time ignoring or minimizing the harms that arise from the actions of more advantaged segments of society. They also emphasize the differential enforcement of criminal law, arguing that the least powerful groups are the most likely to be held accountable for acts defined as criminal under the law.

(M02) What is Deviance

A behavior that violates a norm beyond tolerance of a group such that there is a probability of [negative] sanction being applied.

(M02) What is a societal norm?

Social expectations for particular behavior in certain situations.

• Norms Depend on context (They’re “relative”): vary from group to group, time to time, culture to culture, and even subculture to subculture.

(M02) Tolerance

Refers to the degree to which people and groups are willing to accept or permit behavior or attitudes different from their own.

(M02) Sanctions

“Social reactions to behavior” Whether Positive (reward) or negative (punishments), these are Mechanisms of Social Control.

(M02) What are Criminal Sanctions?

Formal, negative sanctions that, unlike other such sanctions, can take lives and confine people for long periods of time . We reserve some sanctions, like the deprivation of liberty and capital punishment, for criminal law violations.

(M02) What is Social Control?

efforts to oppose deviance or encourage conformity to norms

(M02) Social Control

Efforts to compose deviance or encourage conformity to norms.

(M02) Social into legal norms

Criminalization is the process of selecting certain social norms to become legal norms (laws.) In other words, it is the process of choosing which types of deviance (violations of social norms) will be criminalized.

(M02) What is the Consensus Perspective according to Meier?

According to Meier, the Consensus perspective is good at explaining the criminalization of murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and arson, because there is widely shared and strongly held agreement that these are wrong in a moral sense.

• Because Meier uses a binary definition of criminalization (an act is either criminalized or isn’t) disagreement concerning how much to criminalize these actions isn’t addressed: it seems correct that there is a widespread agreement that these acts are wrong, but that doesn’t mean there is widespread agreement about HOW and how much to use criminal punishment in response to these crimes.

(M02) What is the Pragmatic Perspective, as discussed in Meier?

This perspective is most interested in reducing undesirable behaviors. This is like the consensus perspective, with a key difference being that the pragmatic perspective is less concerned with the morality of behavior and more concerned with the undesirability of behavior criminalized.

• A way of thinking that considers the practical implications of a situation or decision.

• Meier gives the example of traffic laws, which don’t tend to have anything to do with moral judgement but rather the Pragmatic Coordination of people’s behavior for the purpose of safety. Most traffic law violations are subject to very lowest level of criminalization “Summary offenses” under PA law, if they are criminalized at all.

• This is a pretty good example, but what Meier doesn’t address is why these violations would be made subject to enforcement by police — when health and safety inspections and violations in restaurants generally fall outside the realm of criminal law and are not handled by police.

(M02) What is Pragmatic Coordination?

The complex process of speakers coordinating their actions to achieve a common goal in a conversation

(M02) What is the Pragmatist Approach?

A way of thinking and conducting research that focuses on practical solutions to real-world problems. Based on the idea that there are multiple ways to interpret the real world, combining different approaches can lead to a broader understanding.

(M02) According to Meier, what is the Political Perspective?

a type of conflict theory because of its emphasis on power differentials, it also could be related to the pluralist variant of functionalism (from M01)

• Examples: Planned Parenthood, Campaigns that prevent gun violence → ALL examples of groups with opposing views that are attempting to use the law to legitimize their different interests.

(M02) What does “Criminilization is a matter of a degree” mean?

• As a first step, it means that Meiers's statement on page 30 is incomplete; “Criminalization is the process of selecting certain social norms to become legal norms (laws). What Meier is saying here is that some social norms, soand cial expectations about behavior are selected for enshrinement in criminal law while others are not. This creates a dichotomy rather than a matter of degree: a behavior is either criminalized or isn’t. This is a first step, but only the first, for conceptualizing criminalization as a matter of degree.

• A question of how severe the criminal penalties are, from the smallest fine to the death penalty.

  More punishment = more criminalization

• 1st-degree felony costing $25,000 fine as well as 20 years in prison. When the crime isn’t as extreme both the fine, and the years in prison are smaller than compared to someone who committed a bigger crime.

(M02) What are the two major kinds of prohibition?

Civil and Regulatory

(M02) What are regulatory prohibitions?

Close in kind to civil prohibitions, this type of law generally has to do with government regulation of private entities.

• Example: a wide array of government regulations cover health and safety for employees in workplaces (from chemical plants to grocery stores) and for consumers (in restaurants, or with respect to manufactured products.)

(M02) What is the Three Fold Distinction?

Three terms that situate criminalization

1.) Impose criminal penalties (criminalize)

2.) Impose civil and/or regulatory penalties (non-criminal prohibitions)

3.) No legal prohibition (although there may be informal social sanctions)

(M01) What is Law in Books?

How the law is written and what the law actually says.

(M01) What is Law in Action?

How Law is actually carried out — As police departments, individual police officers, individual prosecutors, prosecutors offices, judges, and correctional officials put the criminal law in motion.

(M02) Police Officers must often decide whether or not, or how too…

• Enforce specific laws

• Investigate specific crimes

• Search people, vicinities, buildings

• Arrest or detain people

(M02) Prosecutors must often decide whether or not, or how to…

• File chargers or petitions for adjudication

• Seek indictments

• Drop cases

• Reduce charges

(M02) Judges or Magistrates must often decide whether or not, or how to…

• Set bail or conditions for release

• Accept Pleas

• Determine delinquency

• Dismiss charges

• Impose sentence

• Revoke probation

(M02) Correctional Officials must often decide whether or not, or how to…

• Assign to the type of correctional facility

• Award privileges

• Punish for disciplinary infractions

(M02) Paroling Authorities must often decide whether or not, or how to…

• Determine date and conditions of parole and revoke parole.

(M02) What is Substantive Criminal Law (criminal law) ?

Concerns the definitions of criminal offenses, including different levels of criminal intent.

(M02) What is Procedural criminal Law?

More commonly referred to as “Criminal Procedure”, sets formal constraints on the behavior of criminal justice officials as they handle the accused

• Example: Miranda Rights + more discussed within the Nolan Reading

• How the behavior of specific individuals (theft of a winter coat from a clothing store) is criminalized. Is supposed to conform with the rules of “criminal procedure” sets formal constraints. Criminal Procedure rules also establish legal norms. (Expectations of behavior) whose violation is a form of deviance while, criminal law is supposed to act as an instrument of social control of everyone as they go about their lives, criminal procedure is meant to serve this social control function in relation to criminal justice officials.

(M02) Criminalization a matter of degree, violations of criminal procedure rules

violations of criminal procedure rules don’t generally lead to criminal sanctions against the violators. (Prosecutors or police) Violations are handled more as civil/regulatory matters, at most. A defendant who is the victim of such violations may get a new trial, and/or they may be able to file a lawsuit, but the matter generally rests there.

(M02) Analogous Social Injury

An Act that is legally permissible but socially harmful.

• “A Crime By Any Other Name” - by Reiman and Leighton

• The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844) - “Murder has also been committed if society places hundreds of workers in such a position that they inevitably come to premature and unnatural ends. Their death is as violent as if they has been stabbed and shot” pg. 64.

• Reiman and Leighton - “If you read this book for 40 minutes, by the time you’re done, one of your fellow citizens will have been murdered. During that same time, more than four Americans will die as a result of unhealthy or unsafe conditions in the workplace.”

• “This estimate of workplace deaths is based on both current workplace deaths and the long-term consequences of earlier exposure to harm in the workplace (chemicals, etc.)

(M02) What is Carnival Mirror Theory ?

Reflects the world of crime and social harm in a distorted fashion leading is to be “doubly deceived”

This carnival mirror “distorts reality by magnifying the threat of street crime while minimizing other harmful behaviors.”

• They argue that we miss what is “A Crime by Any Other Name..” - acts that cause harm and suffering comparable to that caused by acts called crimes.

• This does NOT mean that the mirror distorts reality so much that we see what is only non-reality (fantasy world, etc.)

• The carnival mirror, they argue DOES indeed reflect SOME of the reality of the social harm that stems from what is officially identified as crime.

  • “Because the system deals with some evils and not with others, because it treats some minor evils as grave and treats some of the gravest evils as minor, the image throws back is distorted, like the image in a carinal mirror.”

(M02) What was the authors key claim in Reiman and Leighton?

If people believe that the most drastic of society’s weapons are wielded by the criminal justice system in reaction to the gravest dangers to society, they will believe the reverse as well: that those actions that call forth the most drastic of society’s weapons must be those that pose the gravest dangers to society.

• “The inescapable conclusion is that the criminal justice system does not simply reflect the reality of crime; it has a hand in creating the reality we see. It magnifies the real threat of street crime while minimizing the real harms of corporate misbehavior.”

(M02) Reflection of Reality

Where that reality does correspond to the real dangers, we can say that the reality of crime reflects the real dangers in society. Arguably, it is an ideal of criminal law: it should simply ‘mirror’ real dangers that threaten us.

• if the label ‘crime’ is applied consistently to the most dangerous or harmful acts, then it is misleading to point to the fact that human decision-makers are responsible for how the label is applied because their decisions are dictated by compelling objective reasons. Rather than creating a reality, their decisions trace a reality that already exists.

(M02) What is Creation of Reality.

Where the reality of crime does not correspond to the real dangers, we can say that it is a reality created by those decisions.

• If the label is not applied appropriately, then the reasons lie with the decision-makers and not the objective dangers. This means that when the label ‘crime’ is applied inappropriately, it is essential to point out that the reality of crime is created by those decisions

(M02) According to Reiman and Leighton, what is the definition of crime that should be the basis of criminal law?

The label of crime is applied appropriately (reflection) when ti is used to identify all, or at least the worst acts that are harmful to society. This label is applied inappropriately (creation) when it is attached to harmless acts or when it is not attached to seriously harmful acts.

(M02) By calling crime created, we want to emphasize…

Human responsibility for the shape of the crime, not the trivial sense that humans write criminal law, but rather to call attention to the fact that decisions as to what to label and treat as crime are not compelled by objective dangers, and thus that, to understand the reality of crime, we must look to the social process that shapes those decisions.

(M02) Explain Reiman and Leightons idea “we are doubly deceived.”

We are led to believe that the criminal justice system is protecting is against the gravest threats to our well-being. Rather than “only some threats and not necessarily the gravest ones.” The Second deception is the belief that “whatever is the target of the criminal justice system must be the greatest threat” to our “well-being”

• These are “the blinders we wear” These prevent us from seeking that “we have a great, and sometimes even greater, chance of being killed or disabled by an occupational injury or disease, by unnecessary surgery, or by shoddy medical services than by aggravated assaults or even homicide.” Our blinders are understandable: Despite these dangers, “They do not show up in the FBI’s UCR as serious crimes. The individuals responsible for for them do not turn up in arrest records or prison statistics.

• They never become part of the reality reflected in the criminal justice mirror, although the danger they pose is at least as great as, and often greater than, the danger posed by those who do!

(M02) In Reiman and Leighton, what are the four objections that the authors identify from “Defenders of the Present Legal Order” on pages 76-77

1.) Someone who purposely tries to harm another is really more evil than someone who harms another without aiming to, even if the degree of harm is the same;

2.) Being harmed directly by another person is more terrifying than being harmed indirectly and impersonally, as by a safety hazard, even if the degree of harm is the same.

3.) Someone who harms another is in the course f an illegitimate and purely self-interested action is more evil than someone who harms another as the consequence of a legitimate and socially productive endeavor.

4.) The harms of typical crimes are imposed on their victims against their wills, whereas harms such as those due to occupational hazards are consented to by workers when they agree to a job.

(M02) What are the four levels of culpability under criminal law?

1.) Purposely: The defendant intentionally tries to produce a certain result, and creating this result was the goal of their action.

2.) Knowingly: The defendant is substantially certain that their action would cause a result, even though causing that result was not the purpose of their action

3.) Recklessly: The defendant consciously disregards a risk of harm to another. The offender was aware that their action created a substantial risk of the harmful result, but they carried out the action anyway. Part of “reckless” culpability is also that an ordinary or reasonable person would have known about this substantial risk and would have thus refrained from carrying out the action.

4.) Negligently: The defendant should have been aware of risk of harm, but failed to exercise reasonable care. The offender lacks awareness of the substantial risk, but they should have known - an ordinary, reasonable person would have known.

(M02) What is Wage Theft?

a term for wages stolen by employers who, for example, refuse to pay promised wages, pay employees for only some of the hours worked, or fail to pay overtime premiums when employees work more than 40 hours a week.

• The Department of Labor notes that an average of $1,120 in back wages was owed to nearly 230,000 employees based on the departments fiscal year 2020 investigations

• In 34 states the minimum threshold for felony theft is somewhere between $200 and $1,000. The above violations are NOT generally producing criminal charges, let alone felony charges.

(M03) What is the conflict theorists look on Workplace death prevention?

Would expect that relatively few resources would be devoted to preventing workplace deaths, and also that such deaths would be treated as less harshly under law than would be the case if wealthier and otherwise more advantaged segments of society were more likely to suffer occupation-related deaths.

(M03) What is the Functional Theorists look on Workplace death prevention?

Recognizing that death at work is bad for society as a whole, including the families and communities directly and indirectly affected by such deaths, would expect that considerable resources would be devoted to preventing such harm.

(M03) What are the three types of workplace health and safety violations that inspectors look for?

1.) Serious Violation: A violation where a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result and where the employer knew, or should have known, of the hazard.

2.) Willful Violation: A violation that the employer intentionally and knowingly commits. The employer either knows that what he or she is doing constitutes a violation, or is aware that a condition creates a hazard and has made no reasonable effort to eliminate it.

3.) Repeat Violation: A violation of any standard, regulation, rule, or order where, upon re-inspection, a substantially similar violation is found.

(M03) What is the concept of a crime prism?

An integrative definition of crime, that allows one to conceptualize crime holistically rather than partially, thereby allowing one to notice “its multiple dimensions” including harm, morality, social reaction, deviance, and visibility. It provides “an inclusive definition of crime that accommodates the ideas of competing theorists.

Contains 4 dimensions:

• Harm- Individual, direct harm, from extremely harmful to moderately harmful to relatively harmless. Social, indirect harm: from extremely harmful to moderately harmful to relatively harmless.

• Visibility- from public and highly visible to relatively hidden, to obscured

• Social Response- for crimes of the powerless ( at the top), the social response varies from severe to moderate to mild. For crimes of the powerful, the social response is selective (that is, often there is no response) and, when present, moderate.

• Agreement- Agreement about seriousness (harmfulness) of acts can be high or moderate, or there can be apathy, or there can be disagreement to a moderate or high degree.

(M03) What are the 3 kinds of constitutional limitations on criminalization?

1.) What behavior can - and cannot - be criminalized: There are some constitutional limitations on which behaviors can be defined as crimes under law (substantive criminal law)

2.) How behavior can be criminalized: If the constitution doesn’t bar legislators from defining a certain behavior as a crime, there are some constitutional limitations on how behavior can be criminalized (procedural criminal law)

3.) How criminalized behavior can be punished: For behaviors that can be defined as crimes, there are some constitutional limitations on how these criminalized behaviors can be punished.

(M03) What is a legality principle?

The legality principle is not itself a legal rule but rather an umbrella concept under which huddle a variety of doctrines, including, for example, the constitutional prohibition against vague statutes and ex post facto laws, as well as the traditional practice of interpreting any ambiguity in criminal offense in favor of the defendant - called the ‘rule of strict construction or the rule of lenity.’

(M03) 4 Variation in Adherence for Legality Principles:

1.) To be criminally prosecuted for an offense, the offense must have been previously formally and fully codified by the legislature

2.) Legislative codification of the offense is required but need not be full and complete. For example, the criminal code may formally recognize the offense and set a maximum punishment for it but leave the definition of one or more elements of the offense to judicial case law.

3.) Common-law offenses may be prosecuted. These are offenses that have never been codified by the legislature but exist by virtue of their judicial common-law creation. However, while the legislatures in these states authorize the prosecution of common - law offenses, they put a limit on the amount of punishment that can be imposed for such offenses, such as a five year imprisonment (Uncodified offense permitted, punishment limited)

4.) Permit prosecution for uncodified or common-law offenses without any explicit ceiling in the penalty for such offenses.

(M03) Ewing vs. California

The supreme court could have restricted the use of habitual offender statutes by ruling in favor of a defendant who was sentenced to 25 years to life for stealing $1,200 worth of golf clubs (3 golf clubs) based on Californias habitual offender statute.

Issue: Did Ewing’s sentence of 25 years to life, in accordance with California’s three strikes law, violate the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

(M03) What year did Pennsylvania repeal its statute criminalizing voluntary ‘deviate’ sexual intercourse?

1995

(M03) What are the Two major perspectives on the purposes of punishment? (from the Matravers reading)

Retributivists → Degree and type of punishment are justified by the offense itself; this perspective looks backward and focuses on the individual offender. Proportionality - is key, but this leads to a major challenge “A punishment scheme based on proportionality presumes that we can accurately measure offense seriousness and culpability, and that we can match that to a point of penalty severity scale.” Deterrence NOT the purpose of punishment for retributivists, because this shifts attention away from allegedly harmful act.

Consequentialists → Degree and type of punishment are justified by the consequences of the punishment; this perspective looks forward and focuses mainly on the usefulness of punishment for society as a whole. Because of this future focus, they are also known as “preventionists” through incapacitation or rehabilitation. Deterrence is a major goal, but as discussed on pages 2-3

(M03) What is the meaning of punishment in criminal law?

The punishments are explicitly linked in law and sentencing to convictions for criminal offenses. These include:

• complete liberty deprivation via jails and prisons: incarceration (carcel control)

• Patrial liberty deprivation via parole and probation: formal supervision (non-carceral control)

• Fines and restitution that are part of the sentence for a criminal conviction

(M03) What is pre-trial detention?

They have not yet been convicted of a crime but rather are being held on probable cause that they have committed a crime. This no doubt will feel like punishment to the person who is incarcerated, but it is not technically criminal punishment in the narrow criminal law meaning.

• And if this Pre-Trial incarceration is not punishment in the narrow criminal law meaning, then neither is arrest nor even police use of potentially lethal force, no matter how punative these may seem.

(M03) What is collateral consequence?

refer to the federal state and local civil laws and regulations that restrict the activities of ex-offenders and curtail their liberties after they are released from confinement or (after) their period of probation ends.

• In Other Words, these restrictions on people convicted of crimes after they are no longer under formal correctional control.

  • Collateral consequences are considered to be civil in nature and thus distinct from criminal law and penalties, Imposing collateral consequences are considered remedial and not punitive

(M03) Why is the Remedial/Punative distinction NOT just a small matter?

Governments are permitted to ban people who have served their criminal sentences from certain occupations, government benefits, and voting — just to name a few of the more significant collateral consequences. If these were “punative” in the criminal law sense, then the criminal code would have to stipulate that, for example, the penalty for a felony conviction may include a lifetime ban from voting or gaining a state license to practice cosmetology.

(M04) What are Carceral Corrections?

This means that incarceration is involved either in jails, or prisons.

(M04) What are Non-Carceral corrections?

This means that a person is under correctional control without being incarcerated.

(M04) What are the two main kinds of Non-carceral corrections? (also referred to as community corrections)

1.) Probation → sentences are generally a substitute for incarceration, although violation of probation can lead to incarceration (Jail or Prison)

2.) Parole → sentences generally come after time in prison. Like with probation, violations of parole conditions can lead to incarceration, usually prison in the case of parole.