Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other crimes, and moral support for victims. The primary institutions of the criminal justice system are the police, prosecution and defense lawyers, the courts and the prisons system.
Prison sexuality consists of sexual relationships between prisoners or between a prisoner and a prison employee or other persons to whom prisoners have access. Since prisons are usually separated by sex, most sexual activity is with a same-sex partner. Exceptions to this include sex with spouses/partners during conjugal visits and sex with a prison employee of the opposite sex.
Parole is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or else they may be rearrested and returned to prison.
Incarceration is a primary form of punishment and rehabilitation in the United States for the commission of felonies and other offenses. According to the latest available data at the World Prison Brief on May 7, 2023, the United States has the sixth highest incarceration rate in the world, at 531 people per 100,000; and the largest prison and jail population in the world at 1,767,200. In 2018, the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world with 698 people incarcerated per 100,000, this includes the incarceration rate for adults or people tried as adults. This meant that one out of every 5 people imprisoned across the world in 2018 was incarcerated in the United States. Prison, parole, and probation operations generate an $81 billion annual cost to U.S. taxpayers, with an additional $63 billion for policing. Court costs, bail bond fees, and prison phone fees generate another $38 billion in individual costs annually.
Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have experienced negative consequences of that behavior. It is also used to refer to the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense.
James Barrett Jacobs was the Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts at New York University School of Law, where he was a faculty member since 1982. He was a specialist in criminal law, criminal procedure, and criminal justice.
Jonathan Simon is an American academic, the Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law, and the former Associate Dean of the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Simon’s scholarship concerns the role of crime and criminal justice in governing contemporary societies, risk and the law, and the history of the interdisciplinary study of law. His other interests include criminology; penology; sociology; insurance models of governing risk; governance; the origins and consequences of, and solutions to, the California prison "crisis"; parole; prisons; capital punishment; immigration detention; and the warehousing of incarcerated people.
Incapacitation in the context of criminal sentencing philosophy is one of the functions of punishment. It involves capital punishment, sending an offender to prison, or possibly restricting their freedom in the community, to protect society and prevent that person from committing further crimes. Incarceration, as the primary mechanism for incapacitation, is also used as to try to deter future offending.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people face difficulties in prison such as increased vulnerability to sexual assault, other kinds of violence, and trouble accessing necessary medical care. While much of the available data on LGBTQ inmates comes from the United States, Amnesty International maintains records of known incidents internationally in which LGBTQ prisoners and those perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender have suffered torture, ill-treatment and violence at the hands of fellow inmates as well as prison officials.
Nicole Hahn Rafter was a feminist criminology professor at Northeastern University. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, achieved her Master of Arts in Teaching from Harvard University, and obtained a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from State University of New York in Albany. She began her career as a high school and college English professor and switched to criminal justice in her mid-thirties.
A rehabilitation policy within criminology, is one intending to reform criminals rather than punish them and/or segregate them from the greater community.
This article discusses the incarceration of women in correctional facilities. As of 2013, across the world, 625,000 women and children were being held in penal institutions, and the female prison population was increasing in all continents. The list of countries by incarceration rate includes a main table with a column for the historical and current percentage of prisoners who are female.
A prisoner is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to serving a prison sentence in a prison.
The Stockholm Prize in Criminology is an international prize in the field of criminology, established under the aegis of the Swedish Ministry of Justice. It has a permanent endowment in the trust of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology Foundation. The Stockholm Prize in Criminology is a distinguished part of the Stockholm Criminology Symposium, an annual event taking place during three days in June.
Criminology is the interdisciplinary study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is a multidisciplinary field in both the behavioural and social sciences, which draws primarily upon the research of sociologists, political scientists, economists, psychologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, social workers, biologists, social anthropologists, as well as scholars of law.
Prison overcrowding is a social phenomenon occurring when the demand for space in prisons in a jurisdiction exceeds the capacity for prisoners. The issues associated with prison overcrowding are not new, and have been brewing for many years. During the United States' War on Drugs, the states were left responsible for solving the prison overcrowding issue with a limited amount of money. Moreover, federal prison populations may increase if states adhere to federal policies, such as mandatory minimum sentences. On the other hand, the Justice Department provides billions of dollars a year for state and local law enforcement to ensure they follow the policies set forth by the federal government concerning U.S. prisons. Prison overcrowding has affected some states more than others, but overall, the risks of overcrowding are substantial and there are solutions to this problem.
David L. Weisburd, is an Israeli/American criminologist who is well known for his research on crime and place, policing and white collar crime. Weisburd was the 2010 recipient of the prestigious Stockholm Prize in Criminology, and was recently awarded the Israel Prize in Social Work and Criminological Research, considered the state's highest honor. Weisburd holds joint tenured appointments as Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. and Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice in the Institute of Criminology of the Hebrew University Faculty of Law, At George Mason University Weisburd was founder of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy and is now its executive director. Weisburd also serves as Chief Science Advisor at the National Police Foundation in Washington, D.C., and chair of its Research Advisory Committee. Weisburd was the founding editor of the Journal of Experimental Criminology, and is now the general editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology.
Beth E. Richie is a professor of African American Studies, Sociology, Gender and Women's Studies, and Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where she currently serves as head of the Criminology, Law, and Justice Department. From 2010 to 2016, Dr. Richie served as the director of the UIC Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy. In 2014, she was named a senior adviser to the National Football League Players Association Commission on domestic violence and sexual assault. Of her most notable awards, Dr. Richie has been awarded the Audre Lorde Legacy Award from the Union Institute, the Advocacy Award from the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the Visionary Award from the Violence Intervention Project. Her work has been supported by multiple foundations including Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Institute for Justice, and the National Institute of Corrections.
Grant Duwe is an American criminologist and research director at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, as well as a non-visiting scholar at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. Duwe holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida State University.
Brittany Michelle Friedman is an American sociologist focusing on criminology, racial inequality, and incarceration. She is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California and Faculty Affiliate of the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and the Equity Research Institute. Her research intersects at the sociology of law, sociology of race, economic sociology, and criminal justice. Friedman is most known for her research on the Black Guerilla Family and the black power movement behind bars, and the financialization of the criminal legal system. She is an outspoken proponent of criminal justice reform and a frequent commentator on public media outlets. Her most notable project is a book manuscript tracing the relationship between the rise of the Black Guerilla Family in California, institutional logics, and racial oppression. Separate work includes studies of monetary sanctions in the criminal legal system and policies such as pay-to-stay.
