From the Paper
"This paper is a discussion of the issue of trying children as adults. Recent reports issued by the Justice Department have shown an alarming rise in juvenile crime, while the headlines have spotlighted particularly heinous acts performed by very young children. From the kidnapping and brutal murder of 2-year-old James Bulger by two 10-year-old boys in Liverpool in 1993 to the beating of a month-old infant by a 6-year-old boy in Contra County, California, in 1996, violent acts committed by very young children have severely tested the ability of the criminal justice system to establish impartial guidelines for dealing with young criminals. Historically, juveniles have always presented a difficult problem for the courts, which must determine whether there exists an arbitrary age at which a child can be held responsible for his actions and whether age alone should be the..."

Tags: CRIMINAL, JUSTICE, JUVENILE, DELINQUENCY

From the Paper
"USE OF FORCE BY PRIVATE SECURITY OFFICERS
Introduction
Increasingly, business and property owners are turning to private security officers to protect their interests (Clark 48-49). The primary reason for this trend appears to be that the level of criminal activity in the United States is overwhelming the capacity of the public police forces to cope with the problem. The security officers to whom business and property owners are turning either are employed by independent security firms that contract with owners to provide protection or these officers are employees of the owners whose interests they protect.

Providing security for business and property in the United States is no longer a task that can be accomplished by ?showing the flag.?"

From the Paper
"Martin Daly and Margo Wilson's Homicide is a lengthy, scholarly examination of the topic of people killing each other. As the authors state in their introductory remarks,
Killing one's antagonist is the ultimate conflict resolution technique, and our ancestors discovered it long before they were people. Homicide is a life-and-death issue to the protagonists, of course, but it is also profoundly interesting to those not immediately involved (p. ix).
The justification for writing the present volume is to conduct and "exercise in 'evolutionary psychology': the attempt to understand normal social motives as products of the process of evolution by natural selection" (p. ix).

According to the authors, their specialization in the area of homicide is the result of some eight years of research into.."

Tags: BOOK REVIEWS (NON-FICTION)

From the Paper
"The purpose of this paper is to discuss the rise and fall of Mafia boss John Gotti and his Gambino Family gang. John Gotti was born in New York City, the son of John Joseph Gotti, an impoverished Italian day-laborer who had emigrated to America in 1920 with his young wife, Fannie. They had 13 children, of whom two died in infancy. John Gotti (Jr. while his father was alive) was the fifth child (Cummings and Volkman, 1990, pp. 10, 14-15).

John grew up in a neighborhood dominated by the Mafia, or the honored society, the organization, the mob, the syndicate, the outfit, or La Cosa Nostra, depending on who was talking. By whatever name, it was organized crime. While John Gotti was growing up, the most notorious capo of a Mafia gang was "Lucky" Luciano, who inevitably became an idol for Gotti to worship (Cummings and Volkman, 1990, pp. 21-29)."

From the Paper
"Police have increasingly been called into the public educational setting to insure the safety of high school campuses. Many school districts have their own police departments, or "school police," who head security departments on campus. Their credibility as police officers helps to insure a safe environment in which learning can take place. Drugs, weapons, on-campus brawls, and traffic problems are less likely when students see that the full force of the law is at hand. Background information on school police in some communities will provide an introduction to what many believe is the best solution to crime in today's high schools. At the same time, however, issues of search/seizure, random drug testing, locker searches, and strip searching have been brought to the forefront by the advent of tightened security measures and an increase in crime. The..."

From the Paper
"The Criminal Justice System
This paper will analyze the criminal justice system in America today. The discussion will focus on whether the existing criminal justice system fails to reduce crime. The paper will explore what author Jeffrey Reiman means when he states that "we can make more sense our of criminal justice policy by assuming certain acts as criminal and other harmful acts as noncriminal, and by diverting valuable resources away from social programs that could reduce crime." Moreover, the discussion will consider the role which the currently existing legal and criminal justice systems play in maintaining a socio-economic system with structural features that generate high levels of crime and juvenile delinquency. This paper will also describe some of the causes and sources of crime in contemporary U.S. society. Finally, the text.."

From the Paper
"The criminal justice system, in the United States, contains elements of racism. This is especially apparent in the mandatory jail sentencing legislation for illegal drug charges. A sentencing disparity exists, between individuals, arrested for crack cocaine and powdered cocaine possession. This sentencing disparity is the result of mandatory sentencing guidelines, which require different lengths of jail terms for conviction of possession, of the different forms of cocaine. The law, as it is written, has racial implications. The words, of the law itself, are not racially discriminatory, but the application of the law, and the sociological effects of the law are racially discriminatory. The reasons behind the law and the discriminatory aspects of the law are varied. These background issues will need to be addressed in order to find a solution to.."

From the Paper
"Despite the devastating impact of white collar crimes on communities across the nation, the investigation of such crimes is a low priority for most law enforcement agencies. The growing complexity of these crimes and the fact that they generally take place over an extended period of time makes them difficult to detect. Once detected, victims are often reluctant to come forward because of the social stigma attached to having been defrauded. Few police departments are trained to gather evidence for many of the more sophisticated white collar crimes. Prosecutors are reluctant to take the cases because of the enormous investment in time involved, and the unlikelihood of convictions. Judges, who find their court dockets monopolized by violent, physical crimes, are often prone to leniency when presented with a case involving a white collar criminal. The.."

From the Paper
" RECIDIVISM AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effects of educational programs designed for inmates on recidivism. To this end, the paper examines various kinds of programs including: adult basic education programs; vocational programs; psychoeducational programs; and college level programs. Following an examination of the general effectiveness of these programs with respect to recidivism, the paper develops a set of conclusions regarding; a) the relationship between recidivism and the successful completion of educational programs; and b) the type of programs that appear to be particularly well-suited to the transitory nature of the jail population.

Recidivism and Adult Basic Education Programs.."

From the Paper
" INTRODUCTION
Community policing is a program being instituted in more and more police departments across the country, and it requires special training for the officers if it is to be effective. Community Policing is a program that links the actions of the police with citizen participation. This is part of an overall effort to solve the problems of the community by involving the community. Among the features of such a program are integrated investigations, team and neighborhood rather than a shift and divisional basis for officer deployment, foot patrols, and community service as a focus along with problem-oriented policing instead of mere crime-fighting. Programs of this sort mean a different structure for the police as well as altered functions, allocations of resources, and general attitude. This can be a.."

From the Paper
" No specific right to privacy is formulated in the U. S. Constitution. Yet, various aspects of privacy are touched on in the provisions of the first, fourth, fifth, and other amendments. Privacy issues related to law enforcement would, ordinarily, be worked out over time. But, in the present climate, with an enormous crime rate and the always-current politicizing of drug-related crime, the privacy rights of suspected criminals have become a major issue. Criminal justice approaches to drug crime are preemptive, proactive, and generally guided by the paradigm of a "War on Drugs." In this war, the rights of suspects and defendants are, increasingly, abrogated by law enforcement officials, courts, and legislators who believe that the crime problem is significant enough to warrant setting aside a few personal freedoms. Unfortunately, though this feels intuitively.."

From the Paper
"In Seductions of Crime, author Jack Katz contends that violent crime, particularly robbery, is an offense motivated primarily by the perpetrator's desire to demonstrate dominance. This argument lacks sufficient merit. People who commit robbery are pushed by social background forces rather than enticed by psychological foreground factors. Robbery is first and foremost an economic crime.
Katz focuses on African-American males in his discussion of robbery. The author presents data that clearly show black males disproportionately represented in arrest rates for this crime. Katz contends that "doing stickup" is a byproduct of the ethnic subculture of the streets: "For some urban, black ghetto-located young men, the stickup is particularly attractive as a distinctive way of being black" (Katz, 1988, p. 239). Here, the.."

From the Paper
"This research paper examines how the evidence in this case was used by the jury to find the defendant, O. J. Simpson, not guilty. The predominantly black and female jury took less than four hours to arrive at its verdict. Such a speedy decision appeared to many to be strange behavior after a case which took nine months to try and involved 1015 pieces of evidence, 45,000 pages of transcript and scores of witnesses (Behind 27). This led many observers to conclude that the jury had ignored a 'mountain of evidence' against Simpson and had voted to acquit based on its emotional biases and external perceptions unrelated to the evidence. A more accurate interpretation would be that the jury made up its mind before it began its deliberations and found that a reasonable doubt existed as to Simpson's guilt, largely because..."

Abstract
"The 1991 beating of California motorist Rodney King will have an impact on law enforcement for years to come. The videotape of the beating, broadcast nationwide, resulted in public outrage over police brutality. The City of Los Angeles appointed a special commission to investigate whether brutality was widespread within the police department.

From the Paper
"The 1991 beating of California motorist Rodney King will have an impact on law enforcement for years to come. The videotape of the beating, broadcast nationwide, resulted in public outrage over police brutality. The City of Los Angeles appointed a special commission to investigate whether brutality was widespread within the police department. Police departments across the country likewise reviewed their own policies on excessive force. Despite these efforts, citizen complaints about police brutality have increased since the Rodney King beating.

Police are allowed to use force during the course of their daily activities. Force can be used to make arrests, maintain order, or keep the peace. The important thing is that the police officer is able to gain control of the situation. How the officer gains control is left up to his or her judgment: "In ..."

Abstract
In the early 1990s, many American cities used youth curfews to combat juvenile crime, and at the time, civil liberties groups opposed the measures as indiscriminate restrictions on the free movement of innocent and guilty alike ("Young Criminals: Early to Bed").

From the Paper
"In the early 1990s, many American cities used youth curfews to combat juvenile crime, and at the time, civil liberties groups opposed the measures as indiscriminate restrictions on the free movement of innocent and guilty alike ("Young Criminals: Early to Bed"). Curfews have been instituted even more widely since then, with varying results. Curfews are also used to combat specific kinds of problem, as when cities use curfews to address a local gang problem or the prevalence of young drug dealers on streetcorners. Curfew restrictions are popular in some areas and unpopular in others, popular with the older generation and unpopular with the younger. They have been effective in some situations and not in others. An analysis of the issue suggests reasons for the disparity.

Curfew restrictions extend back many years, and one of the ..."