Studies in Crime and Punishment – serie

One of the most exciting developments in fighting crime at the turn of the twenty-first century has been the integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into law enforcement, and includes crime analysis. This book provides an overview of the implementation and integration of GIS technology into various aspects of law enforcement, including important mapping concepts and their use in crime analysis. Crime mapping basics are discussed, including pin mapping, mapping «hot spots», mapping crime density, and creating briefing maps. Other topics include the integration of crime mapping with police decision-making, the use of various forms of spatial modeling in law enforcement, and integrating inter-agency data as part of a regional approach to crime. As a way of better understanding the practical applications, the authors include a list of police agencies providing real crime data and analysis tools on the World Wide Web.

Whether or not to use force is the most serious decision and one of the most significant interactions law enforcement officers can have with citizens. The decisions made by political and administrative officials when they determine matters of policy, or the decisions made by individual officers in split seconds, may be of life or death importance. The determination of the proper use of force by law enforcement at both administrative and individual levels is crucial for both law enforcement and for the public to maintain order, protect society, enforce just laws, and reasonably respect and protect the rights of civilian citizens. Typically a successful use of force accomplishes an actual seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and therefore seizures are examined as Fourth Amendment issues in this book. The most basic and generalizable legal standard for the use of force is «reasonableness», and this book examines the reasonableness of the use of force in a number of situations, both real and hypothetical. Reasonable Use of Force by Police is intended for use in police training, police departments, universities, and by anyone interested in understanding the standards of reasonable use of force by police and other law enforcement officers.

Law changes as new developments affect society. The dawn of a new century provides a marking point for the evaluation of trends in law and policy. This book examines emerging issues that will shape society’s rules and legal processes in the twenty-first century. By identifying developments affecting technology, demography, and politics, the authors evaluate impacts on law and criminal justice. Many of the issues discussed, including the expanding Latino population, new technologies for investigations, weapons, and executions, health crises in prisons, DNA testing, and the «war on terrorism», will have profound effects on the fates of individuals drawn into the justice system.

Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, fourteen women have been put to death in the United States. The criminal justice system defines crimes committed by women in a particularly gendered context. Wretched Sisters is unique in its analysis of the legal and cultural circumstances that determine why a small number of women are sentenced to death and provides a detailed account of how these fourteen women came to be subjected to the ultimate punishment.

This book, grounded in American women’s history, explores the ongoing process of taking gender into account in the U.S. justice system. Women came late to the making, applying, and enforcing of the law. How has the creation of the law by and for men affected women? How has increased participation of women in the justice system made a difference? Equal Protection of the Law? Gender and Justice in the United States provides a readable account of the evolution of women’s constitutional status, as well as stories of their participation in the criminal justice system as workers, victims, and offenders. It focuses on how the experiences of prior generations can illuminate the continued challenges of gender and inequality.

Restorative justice, employed in both ancient and modern societies, is designed to repair the harm that a criminal offense inflicts on victims, offenders, and communities. Today, backlogged court dockets, dissatisfaction with the adversarial process, and overcrowded prisons have incited a necessary discussion of alternatives for dealing with the accused and the convicted. This book examines how restorative justice works – promoting healing by emphasizing the restoration of victims’ emotional and material losses, creating forums for negotiation, problem-solving, and dialogue between affected parties, and empowering communities and victims by inviting their participation. Restorative Justice discusses the method’s beneficial and detrimental effects on, and implications for, defendants, victims, the courtroom workgroup, corrections and the community.

Is rehabilitation dead in American corrections? This socio-political analysis of the fifty-year history of Patuxent Institution, a treatment-oriented maximum security prison in Maryland, studies the organizational challenges faced by this unique American prison, and the social and political forces that work to ensure its survival.

This book provides a foundation for the study of child abuse to include physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. This book describes physical and behavioral indicators of abuse, theoretical explanations of child abuse, the characteristics of abusers, and responses to child abuse by the criminal justice system.

Good Cop, Bad Cop looks at the rise of racial profiling, one of the most important and hotly debated topics in criminal justice, and traces its development from its origins in criminal profiling, through the use of profiles in drug trafficking prevention efforts in airports and on the U.S. highways, until it became synonymous with racial discrimination by law enforcement. The authors draw upon an extensive body of primary sources, social science literature, and court cases to examine how law enforcement, legislators, and the courts have handled racial profiling. They also review the debate over racial profiling, offering arguments made by its opponents and defenders before and after the events of September 11 and describe its development as both a legal and a cultural concept.

Although a relatively new crime, identity theft has dramatically increased in occurrence and severity since the early 1990s. By definition, identity theft is the obtainment and fraudulent use of another person’s personal information, which can be relatively innocuous or much more serious. A talented criminal can take another individual’s social security number, credit card information, checks, or other personal information, and use that information to impersonate the individual, manipulating a system that increasingly relies on nonpersonal identifiers. The political, legal, and criminal justice systems are struggling to catch up with the identity theft epidemic, while struggling with the technology that gives rise to it.