Essentials of Criminal Justice, 7th Edition

Book Preface

On March 12, 2009, fi nancier Bernard Madoff pled guilty to an 11-count criminal complaint, charging that he had defrauded thousands of investors out of billions of dollars in the most elaborate fi nancial crime in the nation’s history. How did Madoff manage to separate sophisticated investors from their hard-earned money? Madoff founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960, and it soon became one of Wall Street’s largest “specialist” trading fi rms. He became the darling of the jet set and was trusted by many wealthy people, including director Steven Spielberg, as well as sophisticated financial managers and investors. They were taken in by his promise of high returns and his long track record of success. However, when the market crashed in 2007–2008 and people wanted to withdraw their money, they found that the cupboard was bare. It seems that the “asset management arm” of his firm was a giant Ponzi scheme. Madoff had not invested any of his clients’ money; instead, he had deposited it in various banks and used the interest and principal to pay off investors who needed cash. But until the crash, most people left their money in the account because they were making fantastic paper profits. When Madoff’s house of cards fell apart, billions of dollars were missing, and no one seems to know where it all went.

Madoff later claimed that he merely wanted to satisfy his clients’ demand for high returns and that their expectations simply could not be met by legal means. Instead, he resorted to an illegal scheme involving false trading activities, illegal foreign transfers, and false SEC fi lings. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme has been estimated to have cost his clients an estimated $65 billion, perhaps the largest criminal conspiracy in history. On June 29, 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, a life sentence.1

The Madoff case reminds us of the enormous impact that crime, law, and justice have had on the American psyche. Crime can range from a random mugging in the park to a multi-billion-dollar fraud involving highly educated corporate executives. As folksinger Woody Guthrie once put it,
. . . through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men
Some will rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen.2

The criminal justice system has been empowered by case law and legislation to protect us from these “funny men” who prey upon us with gun or pen. Each year the criminal justice system routinely processes millions of cases involving fraud, theft, violence, drug traffi cking, and other crimes. How does this vast enterprise, which costs billions of dollars and involves millions of people, operate? What are its most recent trends and policies? How effective are its efforts to control crime? What efforts are being made to improve its effi ciency? I have written the seventh edition of Essentials of Criminal Justice in an attempt to help answer these questions in a concise, forthright, and objective manner.

BRIEF CONTENTS

Part 1 The Nature of Crime, Law, and Criminal Justice | 1
CHAPTER 1 • Crime and Criminal Justice 2
CHAPTER 2 • The Nature of Crime and Victimization 36
CHAPTER 3 • Criminal Law: Substance and Procedure 80
Part 2 The Police and Law Enforcement | 111
CHAPTER 4 • Police in Society: History and Organization 112
CHAPTER 5 • The Police: Role and Function 140
CHAPTER 6 • Issues in Policing: Professional, Social, and Legal 172
Part 3 Courts and Adjudication | 209
CHAPTER 7 • Courts, Prosecution, and the Defense 210
CHAPTER 8 • Pretrial and Trial Procedures 248
CHAPTER 9 • Punishment and Sentencing 292
Part 4 Corrections and Alternative Sanctions | 331
CHAPTER 10 • Community Sentences: Probation, Intermediate Sanctions, and Restorative Justice 332
CHAPTER 11 • Corrections: History, Institutions, and Populations 370
CHAPTER 12 • Prison Life: Living in and Leaving Prison 406
Part 5 Contemporary Challenges of the American Criminal Justice System | 447
CHAPTER 13 • Juvenile Justice in the Twenty-fi rst Century 448
CHAPTER 14 • Criminal Justice in the New Millennium:
Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Cyber Crime 484