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     Dear Students: Greetings and welcome to an intellectual journey across the landscape of American criminal justice. My name is Gene Straughan and I am the instructor for the course. My educational background is in the disciplines of political science, law, and criminal justice. It provides me with a social scientific understanding of the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of society, and especially within the context of the criminal justice system. Along with this course, I teach criminal procedure, criminal law, juvenile delinquency, comparative criminal justice systems, trial advocacy, American National government, state and local politics, law and society, political philosophy, constitutional law, Native American law, justice issues and public policy, introduction to social science, torts, and other courses at Lewis-Clark State College. My research interests focus on how public policy seeks to resolve legal conflicts within the United States between a dominant culture and various subcultures, probing the significance of the unwritten character of the law and calibrating the weight to be assigned to societal values. I also work closely with public agencies on projects dealing with education, management, crime, law enforcement, prosecution, adjudication, and corrections. I recently worked with the Idaho Governor, Legislature, and others to improve the funding of higher education. I consider myself fortunate because I thoroughly enjoy teaching, scholarship, and community service. My professional efforts reflect a life-long yearning to share my expertise with my academic colleagues, community, and most importantly my students. For me, what makes the study of criminal justice so fascinating is the ageless struggle to control crime without sacrificing the constitutional commitment to due process and equal protection of the law. The right of the people to live free of crime must be delicately balanced with respect for individual autonomy, dignity, and diversity. No doubt the control of crime is a significant concern of the people. Public opinion polls consistently show that Americans perceive crime as the number one problem of today. For every 500 serious crimes known to the police, only 100 people are arrested and just 20 adults and 5 juveniles are sent to jail or prison—a ratio of 1 in 20. Highly publicized events of recent years have generated a heightened fear about crime. The rape trials of William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson focused attention on the dangers of intimate violence. Police brutality against Rodney King and the subsequent Los Angeles riots directed concern toward the conflict between police officers and minority groups. Other cases range from the murder trials of Susan Smith and O.J. Simpson to the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center and terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. Such events have coalesced to cause citizens and officials to rush forward to do something to control lawlessness. The conventional wisdom has been to get tough on crime through the gradual adoption of punitive sanctions and the erosion of constitutional protections. Still, a disquieting reality remains for Americans who are not much safer today from being a victim of a crime than they were twenty years ago. But why is crime so difficult to bring under control? One reason is that criminal behavior is a complex human phenomenon. Since time immemorial the problem of ameliorating crime has plagued society. It is interwoven with intractable cultural, political, and economic forces. It is also associated with the biological, psychological, and sociological conditions of particular individuals. Even during the best of times, there are no simple solutions to the endless problem of crime. Another reason is that the criminal justice system—legislatures, police, courts, and corrections—is a reflection of competing goals within society. It is formally driven by concerns for preserving public safety through the apprehension, prosecution, and punishment of the guilty. Informally, the criminal justice process is affected by pervasive discretion, scarce resources, bureaucratic concerns, and other factors. The arrest of a suspect is only the first part of a complex process designed to separate the guilty from the innocent. Police work often occurs in a hostile environment with crucial questions of life and death, honor and dishonor at stake. Officers are given wide discretion to deal with many situations and they function as the initial gatekeepers of the criminal justice system. The process under which guilt is determined shifts to the work of prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, and juries. It is during the adjudication stage that the reality of an overloaded judicial system blunts the force of the adversarial process. Most decisions about the final disposition of a criminal case are made outside of the courtroom, raising the question of whether justice is served by efficient processes more akin to plea bargaining than to adversarial combat. Further complicating the criminal justice system is the enterprise of corrections. Throughout American history, there has been little consensus about what sanctions adequately punish offenders and prevent others from committing similar crimes. Over time the process of corrections has often risen to peaks of excited reform, only to drop to valleys of despairing failure. Thirty years ago the public knew little about the correctional aspect of the criminal justice system. Prisons were perceived as alien big houses, infused with mystery and located in remote places. The average person was largely unaware of prison, probation, and parole conditions. But since the early 1970s, the rising fear of crime and growth of the corrections industry have transformed the punishment phase into a top priority for the public. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a rising popular sentiment to impose stronger penalties against criminal offenders. Many state legislatures responded by enacting laws mandating tougher sanctions and mandatory prison terms. In 1971, the incarceration rate was only 96 persons per 100,000 Americans, but by 1996 the rate had mushroomed to 403 per 100,000. Budgets for correctional agencies have increased by over 500 percent since the 1970s. Over 3,000 offenders are now on death row and another 70,000 are serving life sentences. Counting all its forms—prisons, jails, probation, parole, and community corrections—a total of 5.1 million or 2.7 percent of the adult population (1 of every 20 men;1 of every 100 women) are now under some form of correctional control. Minorities make up a disproportionate share of the correctional population. About one-third of all African American males are under the supervision of a correctional program. Overall the five million plus offenders, who are now part of the corrections enterprise and the additional 900,000 who are convicted of a felony every year, paint a rather depressing picture of the criminal justice system. After twenty years of crime control policies, the American public is still confronting a host of challenging issues about the criminal justice system. How can the criminal law be written and enforced to regulate harmful conduct, while protecting harmless conduct? Is pornography and rap music linked to violence? What is the relationship between deviance and biological, psychological, and sociological factors? Other questions are equally compelling: How can government control violent crime and combat the threat of terrorism without sacrificing individual rights and discriminating against minorities? What can be done about escalating rates of incarceration, prison overcrowding, and inmate violence? Should rehabilitation programs be cut to build more prisons? Does incarceration really lower recidivism? Are there more effective and efficient alternatives to crime prevention? There is no panacea to the problems the criminal justice system is expected to solve. Commonly cited solutions might work or might be only symbolic and even make the problems worse. Neither is any person immune from such far-reaching and contentious issues. And yet people seem more apathetic about crime and justice than ever before. The past thirty years reflect a growing public cynicism toward such matters. There is some truth to the complaint that officials are unsympathetic to the criminal justice concerns of many people. It is also true that the public is out of touch with the shortcomings of the criminal justice system and the ability of the law to ameliorate the crime problem. Few people fully appreciate the difficult challenges placed on American government to maintain a safe, yet free and fulfilling society for everyone. Many students taking a course on the American criminal justice system will share much of the same public cynicism and apathy. Students should come to realize that crime and justice is neither an altruistic nor an egotistic process, but a human enterprise—one with moral spirit, widespread discretion, and even dangerous arrogance. Indeed the human capacity for fairness makes criminal justice possible, but the human inclination to unfairness makes criminal justice necessary. Students should also be willing to shed their own prejudices and think critically about criminal justice issues by considering how alternative public policies would make life better for everyone, especially for the disenfranchised and less fortunate person. As the eminent Judge Walter Schaefer once explained, “the quality of a nation’s civilization can be largely measured by the methods it uses in the enforcement of the criminal law.” At few times has there been a greater challenge to learn more bout the methods to control crime, tempered by a democratic spirit to do justice. But with challenges come rewards for students who are better informed about the criminal justice system. Such a richer appreciation can only lead students to become more committed to keeping public officials responsive to dealing with contemporary problems of crime and justice. Remember that nothing is graven in stone. There are no final lessons to understanding the American struggle to control crime in an effective and efficient, but democratic and humane way. Sincerely yours, Gene T. Straughan, Ph.D., Justice Studies Professor |
