Criminal Justice Process

Final Study Guide

What are the conditions for a successful status degradation ceremony, according to Harold Garfinkel? Or, how does one make a good denunciation. Are there problems with eyewitness testimony?

What are the outstanding features of prison trends in the United States over the past 30 years? According to text and lecture, are there class and racial-ethnic disparities in the way the state punishes in the United States? If so, what racial group shoulders most disproportionately the burden of mass incarceration in the United States? How are the changes in punishment related to capitalist development?

What is the radical perspective? According to this view, crime is the product of what? What are major social classes? What do radicals claim that the capitalist class does to maintain power? 

Who are the Marxists? Engels? Marx? What is the science of exploitation? What are the effects of absolute and relative surplus value? Who was Michael Lynch? What did he study? Whose theory did he use in his studies? What are the details of the theory? What time period did he explore? What did he find? 

According Rusche and Kirchheimer, what were the major changes in the class structure in the transition from feudalism to capitalism? How was the criminal law used to achieve this transformation? In class, I explained the development of the penitentiary in the nineteenth century by linking changes in punishment to economic cycles. Who is Nikolai Kondratieff? What is the argument I made?

What does Jeffrey Reiman, in The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, covered in the last lecture, mean when he discusses winning by losing? What is the actual goal/function of the criminal justice system? What is “pyrrhic defeat theory”? What does the metaphor of the carnival mirror signify? According to Reiman, the "Defenders of the Present Legal Order" say that someone who purposely tries to harm another is more evil than someone who harms another without aiming to, even if the degree of harm is the same.  How does Reiman respond? How does he respond to the other objections to his argument? Who is Edwin Sutherland? What is the caste-class system presented in class during the final lecture? How does the ideology of criminal justice cause people to ignore the social system. What benefits accrue to the rich and powerful on account of this working? Why is such an ideology needed?

According to Janell Schmidt and Ellen Hochstedler Steury, in their article, “Prosecutorial Discretion in Filing Charges in Domestic Violence Cases,” prosecutorial discretion, unlike police discretion, has been not extensively studied. A review of the literature conducted by the authors finds several factors at play in prosecutorial discretion. What are these?

From his article, “Adapting to Plea Bargaining,” what are the elements of the prosecutor’s reconstructed role according to Milton Heumann? According to Heumann, what is it that plays a key role in the socialization of prosecutors, moving them from reluctant plea bargainers to seeing plea-bargainers?

Abraham Blumberg, in “The Practice of Law as Confidence Game,” contends that academic scholarship neglects the contextual realities of social structure. According to Blumberg, the extremely high conviction rate in the U.S. criminal court system suggests what? What, according to Blumberg, is the role of the defense attorney?

According to Debra S. Emmelson, in “Trial by Plea Bargain,” what is the goal of the public defender?

Roger Hanson and Brain Ostrom, in “Indigent Defenders Get the Job Done and Done Well,” identify three types of indigent defenders. What are they?

According to George Cole and Marc Gertz, there are four factors that make the governing of prisons different than the administration of other public institutions. What are they?

What is the “secret strength” of organizations, according to Gresham Sykes? According to Sykes, in his famous work “The Society of Captives,” what are the elements of that complex relationship of power based on authority? In other words, what is authority? Are both elements present in prison relations? If not, what does that change about the character of this institution?

In “Ten Deadly Myths about Crime and Punishment in the United States,” Charles Logan and John DiIulio list several myths about crime and punishment in the United States What are they?

According to Norval Morris and Michael Tonry, in their famous work, “Between Prisons and Probation,” what is the failure of criminal justice policy in the United States? According to the authors, prison is an appropriate punishment only for what reasons? What is just deserts and what is its misapplication, according to the authors? What are intermediate sanctions? What is indeterminate sentencing?