Crime Control in America: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Drop in crime rates are explained by noncriminal justice factors rather than _____and _____. (p. 18)
What is prisons and police?
Poor, young, urban, (disproportionately) black males (p. 69)
What is the Typical Criminal?
This money-based practice turns poverty into jail time before conviction. (p. 134)
What is bail (pretrial detention)?
Explains that 1) failing CJ system provides benefits with those in power to make changes & 2) b/c CJ system shapes public conception of danger, creates a false impression of threats and demand more of same. (p. 179).
What is historical inertia?
one-on-one harm (ex: physical injury, loss of something etc.) (p. 76)
What is Typical Crime?
This statement says crime stays high because judges and laws are “too lenient.” (p. 25)
What is the first excuse of "we're too soft"? (tough on crime)
The idea that the American CJ system shows distorted images of the dangers that threaten us & is filtered through a series of human decisions (p. 67)
What is the Carnival Mirror?
Name one way wealthier defendants get weeded out before prison. (p. 128)
What are white collar crimes are rarely arrested or charged, system is kinder with dealing with wealthier defendants, white-collar criminals' sentences are more lenient?
Explains that threat to law-abiding middle class comes from below them not above and the poor are morally defective, poverty is their fault (p. 180)
What is ideological message to protect the people in power & reinforce conservative defense of American society?
Name Reiman’s big idea that a system can “fail” at reducing crime in order to benefit powerful groups.
What is the Phyrric defeat theory?
These two statements state that crime is inescapable, a part of modern society and the youth are responsible for it (p. 26 & 28)
What is the second excuse: A cost of modern life and third excuse: Blame it on the Kids.
Two forces that help build the distorted image of criminal justice (p. 73)
What are media and politics?
People in jail are dangerous but are not the ___ ___. (p. 162)
What is gravest/most/greatest danger?
Difference in rates of property crime victimization between rich and poor highlights __________. (p. 180-181)
What is those who suffer most from failure to reduce street crime are not in a position to change CJ policy?
These are offenses committed for financial gain, typically by individuals or organizations in a professional setting
What is white-collar crime?
Poverty & Inequality, Prison, Guns & Drugs (p. 30)
What are the known sources of crime?
Work, Healthcare, Pollution, Smoking, Food Additives, and Poverty (p. 86).
What are crimes by other names?
CJ system focuses on individual guilt and implicitly broadcasts that the CJ system is just.
What is ideology?
In one line, name two kinds of actors who gain when punitive policies fail yet look tough and say how they gain.
What is Who: tough-on-crime politicians and justice agencies/private contractors; How: votes/legitimacy and bigger budgets/contracts.
Preventing child abuse & neglect, enhancing children's intellectual and social development, providing support and guidance to vulnerable adolescents, and working extensively with juvenile offenders + define Pyrrhic defeat theory (p. 45, 47)
What is what works to reduce crime + societies benefit from crime and social institutions work to maintain crime rather than eliminate it?
Name the conclusion of the chapter. (p. 106)
What is "All the mechanisms by which the CJ system comes down more frequently and more harshly on the poor criminal than the rick criminal take place after most of the dangerour acts of the well-to-do have been excluded from the definition of crime itself?"
In one line, explain how the chapter's stages combine to produce class-skewed prison and who is the face? (p. 119)
What is cumulative disadvantage—policing and charges → detention → pressured pleas → harsher sentences—so the poor are selected in while the wealthy are filtered out + African Americans?
Explain why the 3 reasons why the current CJ system fails (p. 177)
What is it fails to 1) implement policies that stand a good chance of reducing crime, 2) treat crimes as acts by the rich and powerful, and 3) to eliminate economic bias in CJ system?
Explain conflict theory in criminal justice in your words connecting Marx and Reiman.
What is the idea that criminal law serves ruling-class interests (Marx’s class power) so, as Reiman shows, the system defines and enforces “crime” to spotlight the poor, sideline elite harms, and turn policy ‘failure’ into a pyrrhic success that preserves hierarchy?