MID-TERM Flashcards
definitions (63 cards)
Conduct in violation of the criminal laws of a state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction, for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse.
Crime
The process by which procedures that feel fair to those involved are made.
Procedural fairness
The rights guaranteed to all members of American society by the U.S. Constitution (especially those rights found in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights). These rights are particularly important to criminal defendants facing formal processing by the criminal justice system.
Individual rights
One who seeks to protect personal freedoms within the process of criminal justice.
Individual rights advocate
The condition of a society characterized by social integration, consensus, smooth functioning, and lack of interpersonal and institutional conflict. Also, a lack of social disorganization.
Social order
One who believes that under certain circumstances involving a criminal threat to public safety, the interests of society should take precedence over individual rights.
Public order advocate
The principle of fairness; the ideal of moral equity.
Justice
An ideal that embraces all aspects of civilized life and that is linked to fundamental notions of fairness and to cultural beliefs about right and wrong.
Social justice
The civil law, the law of civil procedure, and the array of procedures and activities having to do with private rights and remedies sought by civil action. This cannot be separated from social justice because it reflects basic American understandings of right and wrong.
Civil justice
In the strictest sense, the criminal (penal) law, the law of criminal procedure, and the array of procedures and activities having to do with the enforcement of this body of law. This cannot be separated from social justice because it reflects basic American understandings of right and wrong.
Criminal justice
The aggregate of all operating and administrative or technical support agencies that perform criminal justice functions. The basic divisions of the operational aspects of criminal justice are law enforcement, courts, and corrections.
Criminal justice system
A criminal justice perspective that assumes that the system’s components work together harmoniously to achieve the social product we call justice.
Consensus model
American criminal justice process.
investigation -> arrest warrant -> arrest -> booking -> first appearance -> preliminary hearing -> information/indictment -> arraignment -> adjudication -> sentencing -> corrections -> reentry (probation or parole)
A criminal justice perspective that assumes that the system’s components function primarily to serve their own interests. According to this theoretical framework, justice is more a product of conflicts among agencies within the system than it is the result of cooperation among component agencies.
Conflict model
A right guaranteed by the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and generally understood, in legal contexts, to mean the due course of legal proceedings according to the rules and forms established for the protection of individual rights. In criminal proceedings, this is generally understood to include the following basic elements: a law creating and defining the offense, an impartial tribunal having jurisdictional authority over the case, accusation in proper form, notice and opportunity to defend, trial according to established procedure, and discharge from all restraints or obligations unless convicted.
- simple def.: procedural fairness
Due process
A criminal justice perspective that emphasizes the efficient arrest and conviction of criminal offenders.
Crime-control model
The use of sanctions and rewards within a group to influence and shape the behavior of individual members of that group. Involves primary concern of social groups and communities, and it is their interest in the exercise of social control that leads to the creation of both criminal and civil statutes.
Social control
Crime-fighting strategies that have been scientifically tested and are based on social science research.
Evidence-based practice
The existence within one society of diverse groups that maintain unique cultural identities while frequently accepting and participating in the larger society’s legal and political systems.
- often used in conjunction with the term diversity to identify many distinctions of social significance
Multiculturalism
A statistical reporting program run by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) division. It publishes Crime in the United States, which provides an annual summation of the incidence and rate of reported crimes throughout the US.
Uniform crime reporting (UCR/NIBRS) program
- NIBRS NIBRS data are replacing data summary traditionally provided by the UCR
An annual survey of selected American
households conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics to determine the extent of criminal victimization—especially unreported victimization—in the US.
National crime victimization survey (NCVS)
A UCR/NIBRS summary offense category that includes murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Violent crime, aka personal crime
A UCR/NIBRS summary offense category that includes burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
Property crime
A measure of investigative effectiveness that compares the number of crimes reported or discovered to the number of crimes solved through arrest or other means (such as the death of the suspect).
Clearance rate
