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The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice. By Nina M. Moore. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 406 pp. $30.99 paperback.In April 2016, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters clashed with Bill Clinton over his role in the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill and Hillary Clinton's use of the term "super predators" to describe the involvement of black youth in criminal offenses. Demonstrators sought to highlight how policymakers and the general public construct narratives and social policies that fuel misperceptions, thereby deepening racial inequality in criminal justice practices throughout the United States. Political pundits largely glossed over the substance of protester concerns because the crime bill did not explicitly target specific racial groups. To address the essence of the BLM critique would require a theory of the policy process that explains racial inequality in criminal justice experiences. Nina Moore's book, The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice, provides such a policy process framework.Moore examines the mechanisms that give rise to racial disparities in the criminal justice system and explains why these inequities persist despite considerable national attention to issues of fairness and justice. Her book makes two arguments. First, Moore argues that there are two racially distinct modes of criminal law enforcement in the United States: one white and one black. She contends that racial tracking in the criminal justice system must be evaluated sequentially, from initial contact with police officers to differences in plea negotiations with prosecutors, both of which culminate in racialized differences in pretrial court decisions and prison experiences.The second argument advanced by Moore is that racial tracking in criminal justice persists precisely because policymakers and the American public allow different modalities of law enforcement, even when stark differences in applications of justice contravene constitutional rights to due process and equal protection. She presents a basic principles policy process that anchors empirical insights and disagreements in the study of policymaking with commonalities expressed in varied policy perspectives. By drawing on six policy process axioms-principles that focus on politics, systems, opportunities, multidimensionality, power players, and problemprocess kinship-Moore articulates a seventh maxim, the public origins principle, that fully integrates these perspectives to produce a theory of racial tracking in criminal justice.This is an impressive piece of socio-legal scholarship. Five empirical chapters thoroughly enumerate and rigorously evaluate how colorblind Supreme Court decisions, public opinion polls, political party politics, and congressional agendas impede racial equality in criminal justice. Moore critically analyzes twenty-three Sixth Amendment cases affecting the right to counsel, eighteen Fifth Amendment cases, and twenty of the most noted capital punishment decisions. In each instance, she shows how the Court's reasoning and decision-making process represents a longstanding use of colorblind jurisprudence that is not localized to any one decision or to a handful of cases; instead, her work uncovers how the Court systematically legitimates persistent racial inequalities in law enforcement methods.Professor Moore also presents an in-depth analysis of public opinions on racial progress, criminal victimization, and criminal justice policy in America. …

Over the last four decades, the American criminal justice system has undergone a dramatic expansion, which has drawn increasing attention from sociolegal scholars (i.e., Kohler-Hausmann 2013; Natapoff 2012). Analyses customarily proceed from a nowceremonial retelling of incarceration statistics: 2.2 million people currently sit in jails and prisons while roughly 5 million people are under some form of correctional supervision (Glaze and Kaeble 2014). Yet while these numbers are staggering, they "both underestimate the reach of the criminal justice system and, in some sense, misrepresent the modal criminal justice encounter" (Kohler-Hausmann 2013: 352). Indeed, incarceration and community supervision are but the tip of a larger iceberg. Below the surface, and often eluding official record keeping, are millions of street-level police stops, infraction citations, and low-level arrests. The best estimates suggest that roughly 40 million people have face-to-face contact with police per year (Eith and Durose 2011). Excluding routine traffic stops, 5.5 million people are involuntarily detained by police every year, the majority of whom are released without charge (Brayne 2014). Disproportionately directed toward poor communities of color, recent criminal justice expansion subjects the country's most disadvantaged residents to a consequential form of street-level criminalization in which mundane public behaviors become subject to intense police suspicion, interrogation, and intervention.This article develops a systematic framework for more adequately analyzing the lived consequences of street-level criminalization. Specifically, it demonstrates that the constant threat of police contact operates as a powerful "cultural agent" that significantly transforms the cultural contexts and social relations of poor communities of color (Garland 1990). This study extends several areas of sociolegal research by bridging scholarship on the collateral consequences of criminal justice contact with cultural analysis. Researchers are devoting increasing attention to the diffuse and deleterious effects of criminalization on the social health and stability of marginalized communities. Cultural analysis provides key conceptual tools for understanding how and why the criminal justice system generates patterned systems of understanding and action among criminalized populations even when criminal justice actors are not actively present. The following pages illustrate that in communities where the threat of unwanted police contact and enforcement looms constant, residents develop and refine a particular cultural frame-what I term "cop wisdom." Cop wisdom allows these individuals to render seemingly-random police activity more legible, predictable, and manipulable. Armed with this interpretive schema, "copwise" residents engage in creative and circumspect tactics for evading, deflecting, and subverting criminal justice interventions.In the tradition of legal consciousness scholarship, this article thus "de-centers" the law by shifting emphasis from formal legal institutions to the informal processes by which the law "invokes commonplace schemas of everyday life" (DeLand 2013; Ewick and Silbey 1998: 17; Saguy and Stuart 2008). In doing so, the article reveals a pervasive, though unexamined mechanism by which heightened law enforcement (re)produces inequality: While cop wisdom may enable residents to reduce the likelihood of police contact, they often deploy this frame in a manner that constricts vital social interactions, contributes to animosity in public space, and undermines individual and community well-being.Collateral Consequences of CriminalizationCollateral consequences, or "invisible punishments," refer to the negative effects of criminal justice involvement that typically manifest outside of the traditional sentencing framework (Hagan and Dinovitzer 1999; Travis 2002). Rather than being imposed by the decision of a sentencing court, these effects occur by default through associated social processes. …

We model major criminal activity as a game in which a law enforcement officer chooses the rate at which to screen different population groups, and a criminal organization (e.g. drug cartel, terrorist cell) chooses the observable characteristics of its recruits. Our model best describes smuggling or terrorism activities at borders, airports and other security checkpoints. The most effective law enforcement policy imposes only moderate restrictions on the officer's ability to profile. In contrast to models of decentralized crime, requiring equal treatment never improves the effectiveness of law enforcement.

During the latter half of the 20th century U.S. policing became more professional (Skogan & Frydl 2004) and the rate of violent crime declined dramatically (Blumstein & Wallman 2000). Yet public trust and confidence in the police increased at best marginally and there has been a large and continuing racial gap in police legitimacy. This article reviews changes in police policy and practice to explore the reasons for this seeming paradox. It is argued that a new model of proactive police stops has increased both the frequency and the range of police contact with people in the community. Such police contact does not inherently undermine public trust in the police, but the style of such contact, which involves the police communicating suspicion of ongoing or future criminal conduct and seeking to prevent it via the threat or use of coercion, has not increased trust. This article examines how such policies developed and why they are problematic. The result of a survey of Americans shows that perceived suspicion damages the social bonds between the police and the community and undermines trust in the police. The article concludes by arguing that police contact need not be inherently negative and contact during which the police use fair procedures can addresses issues of crime and disorder while building trust and confidence.

Current empirical research on trust in criminal justice focuses on those who do the trusting. Working from the theoretical position that trust is relational, this article expands that research by showing how trust relationships between the public and criminal justice institutions are shaped by the legal framework governing them. Reporting empirical case studies from the plural legal governance of criminal justice in Ethiopia, the article shows that the country's different legal frameworks produce different constructions of trust relationships between the public and criminal justice institutions. Furthermore, the empirical study shows that the practical organization of daily case handling in criminal justice institutions make for an important mechanism to mediate and link these differently constructed trust relationships.

This essay examines the criminological conceptualizations and research on police crime, that is, the criminal behavior of sworn law enforcement officers. It starts with an overview of the conceptualization of police crime as it relates to organizational and scholarly perspectives of social deviance. Police deviance is often conceptualized to include various misconduct, corruption, and/or crime committed by police organizations and police officers. This essay focuses on police crime resulting in the arrest of a sworn law enforcement officer and is organized within a conceptual framework that incorporates five types of police crime: sex-related police crime, alcohol-related police crime, drug-related police crime, violence-related police crime, and profit-motivated police crime.

The current crisis in the American criminal justice system begs for theological response, and its sources need theological critique. The recent proposed statement of the ELCA draws attention to the needs of victims of crime and their families, and makes sensible recommendations for paths to greater justice. In doing so it is important to remember what forms of justice are possible under the jurisdiction of fallible, earthly institutions.

In the last few decades, a growing number of commentators have questioned the appropriateness of the ‘justice view’ of ethics as a suitable approach in health care ethics, and most certainly in nursing. Essentially, in their ethical deliberations, it is argued that nurses do not readily adopt the high degree of impartiality and objectivity that is associated with a justice view; instead their moral practices are more accurately reflected through the use of alternative approaches such as relational or care-based ethics. Yet, it has also been argued that this viewpoint does not necessarily ‘do justice’ to the broader moral responsibilities of nurses towards humanity in general, i.e. to the wider socio-cultural and socio-political issues in society, and to the concept of social justice in particular. This criticism has triggered a much closer examination of relational and care-based ethics in nursing at levels beyond individual responsiveness within relationships and brought into the spotlight the need for a more ethically refined nursing response to an increasingly complex set of socio-cultural inequalities. This article explores a relational ethic within nursing practices with contemporary ideas regarding social justice. In particular, it is argued that the synergy between the two actually produces an ethic that is capable of not only challenging the continuing predominance of justice-based ethics within health care, but of replacing it. Subsequently, in the discussion that follows, it is suggested that a combined social justice and relational care-based approach, as a social ethic, should guide the moral deliberations and actions of nurses. It is maintained that such an approach is not only possible, but crucial if nurses are to realize their full potential as ethical agents for individual and social good.

Samuel Walker’s (1993) book, Taming the system: The control of discretion in criminal justice, 1950–1990, provides time-tested insights on the relationship between bureaucratic decision making and criminal justice policy. Published in the early 1990s, the book provides an analysis of existing literature that pertains to the exercise of discretion at specific criminal justice decision points. Walker discussed that often both anticipated and unanticipated consequences develop after new policy changes are implemented—a conclusion that is consistent with many other classic and contemporary work that points to the instabilities of policy reform. Legislatures, bureaucratic organizations, and courts often initiate policy change to control discretion, and sometimes these efforts are successful. For example, Walker (1993: 147) referred to the control of deadly force in policing as having “enormous significance,” and that the adopted rules reduced the overall number of police shootings and helped minimize racial disparities in the use of deadly force. These changes, in addition, had few unanticipated consequences because officers killed or injured in the line of duty did not increase after the adoption of new deadly force policies. New policies can, thus, positively initiate change in criminal justice organizations, and documenting the “law on the books” provides a good starting point for understanding better the impacts of policy change. Such changes, however, also can result in a bureaucratic chain reaction that subverts, undermines, or delegitimizes the intent of the new rule or decision. Personnel will attempt to break or bend any new rule so that the impact is consistent with their accepted and expected routines. The conflict between “law on the books” and “law in action” provides one element of the policy context for the important debate engaged in this section of the journal. The use of conducted energy devices (CEDs), the most popular of which is the TASER (Taser International, Inc., Scottsdale, AZ), is widespread within the law-enforcement community—nearly 12,000 lawenforcement agencies have acquired the devices (National Institute of Justice [NIJ], 2008). It could be argued that the adoption of such devices (and other less lethal weapons) is a sensible policy change that was adopted to manage better one of law enforcement’s most volatile

During interrogations, police may use false-evidence ploys or fabricated claims to convince suspects to confess. Mock jurors read trial materials containing interrogation transcripts with or without a false-evidence ploy and one of two expert witness conditions (present or absent). We examined jurors' verdicts, recommended sentences, and perceptions of the interrogation. Although factual evidence and the defendant's confession remained constant across conditions, false-evidence ploys led to fewer convictions and shorter sentences. Jurors also perceived interrogations with ploys as more deceptive and coercive. Expert testimony reduced convictions and increased interrogation deception and coercion ratings. Across ploy types, participants rated demeanor ploys as less deceptive and recommended longer sentences for confessors. Outcomes reveal important, previously unrecognized consequences of false-evidence ploys.

“Predatory policing” occurs where police officers mainly use their authority to advance their own material interests rather than to fight crime or protect the interests of elites. These practices have the potential to seriously compromise the public's trust in the police and other legal institutions, such as courts. Using data from six surveys and nine focus groups conducted in Russia, we address four empirical questions: (1) How widespread are public encounters with police violence and police corruption in Russia? (2) To what extent does exposure to these two forms of police misconduct vary by social and economic characteristics? (3) How do Russians perceive the police, the courts, and the use of violent methods by the police? (4) How, if at all, do experiences of police misconduct affect these perceptions? Our results suggest that Russia conforms to a model of predatory policing. Despite substantial differences in its law enforcement institutions and cultural norms regarding the law, Russia resembles the United States in that direct experiences of police abuse reduce confidence in the police and in the legal system more generally. The prevalence of predatory policing in Russia has undermined Russia's democratic transition, which should call attention to the indispensable role of the police and other public institutions in the success of democratic reforms.

This paper reports the results of four studies that investigate racial profiling as an attribution about police motives. Each study explores, first, the types of police behavior that heighten or lessen the occurrence of profiling attributions and, second, the consequences of such attributions. Results support prior studies in finding that judgments about whether the police are profiling are associated with the level of public support for the police. The studies then extend the analysis of subjective profiling judgments by examining their antecedents. The findings support the procedural justice hypothesis that the fairness with which the police exercise their authority influences whether members of the public view the police as profiling.

Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are profound and well documented. A range of scholarship has examined these trends to assess the degree to which they result from biased decision making at various levels of the justice system. Also key to understanding the origin of these disparities is an analysis of the race and class determinants of criminal justice policy. This can be seen most clearly in the development of drug policy, but also in the means by which policy choices in law enforcement, prosecution, and sentencing are formulated. To the extent that crime is perceived as a “black problem,” the means by which the problem is addressed and the resulting punitiveness of the approach serve to exacerbate societal inequalities.

This study explores two issues about police legitimacy. The first issue is the relative importance of police legitimacy in shaping public support of the police and policing activities, compared to the importance of instrumental judgments about (1) the risk that people will be caught and sanctioned for wrongdoing, (2) the performance of the police in fighting crime, and/or (3) the fairness of the distribution of police services. Three aspects of public support for the police are examined: public compliance with the law, public cooperation with the police, and public willingness to support policies that empower the police. The second issue is which judgments about police activity determine people’s views about the legitimacy of the police. This study compares the influence of people’s judgments about the procedural justice of the manner in which the police exercise their authority to the influence of three instrumental judgments: risk, performance, and distributive fairness. Findings of two surveys of New Yorkers show that, first, legitimacy has a strong influence on the public’s reactions to the police, and second, the key antecedent of legitimacy is the fairness of the procedures used by the police. This model applies to both white and minority group residents.

Judge Cassese presents arguments in favour of the use of international courts in order to punish war crimes. He argues that the application of justice through a court is better in certain circumstances than amnesties. He examines the merits of international courts rather than national courts, but acknowledges that at present there are several major stumbling blocks to an effective international criminal justice system.

The article examines the current criminal law and possible justifications for it with respect to three areas that are located between prosecutorial discretion and defences. These areas are officially-induced mistakes of law, entrapment, and conduct motivated by a desire to bring someone else to justice or to restore property. Common themes in the justifications for the avoidance of punishment in these examples suggest an underlying principle of fidelity to legal values, which should guide procedural and substantive law.

This paper seeks to illustrate those features of the criminal process that reflect its foundation in the power to police.

This article argues for a re-orientation of the debates concerning plea bargaining in the light of a process of re-legitimation currently under way in which professional codes of ethics are given new importance. In the new rhetoric, plea bargaining is claimed to be in line with rather than contrary to traditional adversarial principles. The focus of this paper is to argue for a re-affirmation of deep-seated principles which contextualize professional ethics in the wider domain of the politics of criminal justice.

When Joel Justice accepted the position of chief of police at the Ventura County Community College District, he brought with him 29 years of experience from the Los Angeles Police Department. The transition came with some marked differences in law enforcement views for him. "In municipal law enforcement, everything is black and white -- you either broke the law or you didn't. In higher education, we have different levels -- because we're dealing with students, oftentimes [if it's not a violent crime] they deserve another chance," Justice said. Language: en

Our criminal justice system deals perfectly well with the overwhelming majority of cases . . . The cases that are now a cause of our concern represent only a tiny proportion of the work that is carried out to a very high standard. I would wish that to be clearly understood, so that we don't get carried away with the quite erroneous belief that everything in our current arrangements is flawed.' (Kenneth Baker, Home Secretary, announcing establishment of Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, 14 March 1991)

The United Nations Third Survey of Crime and Criminal Justice (United Nations 1987) contains data on global criminal justice expenditure. The data show that between 1982 and 1986 there was a trend of increased expenditure on criminal justice. At the same time crime rates increased. This paper examines criminal justice expenditure in different parts of the system, in an attempt to discover whether there are patterns to global criminal justice expenditure. The author concludes that criminal justice expenditure is more concerned with political and ideological objectives than with feasible criminal justice outcomes.

Interdisciplinary training in behavioral sciences and the law should be appropriate for a criminal justice education program. However, adopting such an interdisciplinary goal is problematic because the divisions in the types of educational curricula need to be confronted. The relationships of the criminal justice academic community with the profession, and of the behavioral sciences with present criminal justice policies, must also be addressed in the attempt to develop familiarity with behavioral sciences and their legal relevance in shaping the criminal justice system. These factors may hinder extensive implementation of such training. Suggestions are made for incorporating this raining in a criminal justice curriculum.