The Criminal Justice System
These are the three main components of the criminal justice system.
What are law enforcement, courts, and corrections?
These are the three main views of how crime is defined.
What are the consensus, conflict, and interactionist views?
According to rational choice theory, people commit crime after weighing these.
What are the risks and rewards?
This type of law defines crimes and their punishments.
What is substantive criminal law?
This 1829 law created London’s first organized police force.
What is the Metropolitan Police Act?
Police departments are organized like this type of structure.
What is a military-style hierarchy?
This model compares the justice process to an assembly line focused on efficiency.
What is the crime control model?
Violent, property, public order, and white-collar are these.
What are the major categories of crime?
This theory explains crime as resulting from weak or broken social bonds.
What is social control theory?
This type of law governs how cases are processed in the justice system.
What is procedural law?
In colonial America, this was the most important law enforcement role.
What is the county sheriff?
These are the two core functions of policing.
What are patrol and investigation?
This model shows that many cases enter the system, but few lead to conviction or prison.
What is the funnel model?
This national program collects police-reported crime data every year.
What is the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)?
This theory holds that people become criminals when society labels them that way.
What is social reaction (labeling) theory?
These are the two essential elements required to prove a crime.
What are actus reus and mens rea?
These are the four main levels of law enforcement in the United States
What are federal, state, county, and local?
This policing strategy emphasizes partnerships between officers and citizens.
What is community policing?
These two perspectives represent the main debate between fairness and efficiency in justice.
What are the due process and crime control models?
This method of data collection involves interviewing households about their experiences as victims of crime.
What is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)?
This perspective views crime as the result of inequality and class conflict.
What is critical criminology?
These crimes do not require proof of intent, such as traffic or public safety violations.
What are strict liability crimes?
Public police are government-run, while these officers operate for profit.
What are private police?
This strategy focuses on analyzing and solving recurring neighborhood problems.
What is problem-oriented policing (POP)?
In the “wedding cake” model, this layer represents high-profile, media-heavy cases.
What are celebrated cases?
This reporting method helps reveal hidden crime but depends on participants’ honesty.
What are self-report surveys?
According to routine activities theory, crime occurs when three factors converge.
What are a motivated offender, suitable target, and absence of a capable guardian?
These constitutional amendments most directly protect the rights of the accused.
What are the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments?
This modern technology helps identify criminals using biological evidence.
What is DNA profiling (or other acceptable tech: biometrics, data mining)?
This approach uses data and analysis to guide police decisions.
What is intelligence-led policing (ILP)?