Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text for the 21st Century / Edition 15

by Frank Schmalleger

Overview

For introductory courses in criminal justice.
Best-selling introduction to criminal justice
Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text for the 21st Century leads the field as the gold standard for introductory criminal justice texts. Its comprehensive coverage focuses on the crime picture in the US and the three traditional elements of the criminal justice system: police, courts, and corrections. Drawing on a theme of individual freedom versus public order, Schmalleger challenges students to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the American justice system. The 15th edition narrows in on race and justice, police use of force, and civil rights — viewed through the lens of recent police shootings and the ensuing “war on police” that together continue to threaten national unity.
Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text for the 21st Century, 15th Edition, is also available via RevelTM, an interactive learning environment that enables students to read, practice, and study in one continuous experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780134749754
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	01/23/2018
Series:	What's New in Criminal Justice Series
Edition description:	Older Edition
Pages:	736
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Frank Schmalleger, PhD, is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and The Ohio State University, having earned both a master’s (1970) and a doctorate in sociology (1974) from The Ohio State University with a special emphasis in criminology.

From 1976 to 1994, he taught criminology and criminal justice courses at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. For the last 16 of those years, he chaired the university’s Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice. The university named him Distinguished Professor in 1991.

Schmalleger has taught in the online graduate program of the New School for Social Research, helping build the world’s first electronic classrooms in support of distance learning on the internet. As an adjunct professor with Webster University in St. Louis, MO, Schmalleger helped develop the university’s graduate program in security administration and loss prevention. He taught courses in that curriculum for more than a decade.

An avid Web user and website builder, Schmalleger is also the creator of award-winning websites, including some that support this textbook. Frank Schmalleger is the author of numerous articles and more than 40 books, including the widely used Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction (Pearson, 2018), Criminology Today (Pearson, 2019) and Criminal Law Today (Pearson, 2016). Schmalleger is also founding editor of the journal Criminal Justice Studies. He has served as editor for the Pearson series Criminal Justice in the Twenty-First Century and as imprint adviser for Greenwood Publishing Group’s criminal justice reference series.

Schmalleger’s philosophy of both teaching and writing can be summed up in these words: “In order to communicate knowledge we must first catch, then hold, a person’s interest - be it student, colleague, or policymaker. Our writing, our speaking, and our teaching must be relevant to the problems facing people today, and they must in some way help solve those problems.”

Visit the author’s website and follow his Tweets @schmalleger.

Read an Excerpt

The attacks of September 11, 2001, changed our nation's course and tested the moral fiber of Americana everywhere. Nowhere outside the armed forces has the terrorist threat been felt more keenly than in the criminal justice area. The 2001 attacks led many to look to our system of justice, and to the people who serve it, for protection and reassurance-protection from threats both internal and external and reassurance that a justice system rooted in the ideals of democracy will continue to offer fairness and equality to all who come before the law.

In the years since September 11, strict new laws have been enacted, security efforts have been greatly enhanced, and practitioners of American criminal justice (especially those in law enforcement agencies) have recognized their important role as the first line of defense against threats to the American way of life. As a consequence, the study of criminal justice is more relevant today than ever before.

For many, personal involvement in the criminal justice field has become a way of serving our nation and helping to protect our communities. I understand that motivation and applaud it-partially because of the heroism and personal sacrifice it involves, but also because it adds to the important "moral sense" of what we, as Americans, are all about. The justice profession's service role has expanded to include college and university students who, in even greater numbers, are declaring majors in criminal justice. Participation in the criminal justice system, and in the study of criminal justice, offers students a way of personally and meaningfully contributing to our society. It allows those who meet the challenging criteria for successful studies and employment to give something back to the nation and to the communities that nurtured them, and it reaffirms the American way of life by reinforcing the social values on which it is based.

Many students are also attracted to criminal justice because it provides a focus for the tension that exists within our society between individual rights and freedoms, on the one hand and the need for public safety, security, and order, on the other, That tension-between individual rights and public order-is the theme around which all editions of this textbook have been built. That same theme is all the more relevant today, for the important question that we have all been asking ourselves in recent years is "How much personal freedom are we willing to sacrifice to achieve a solid sense of security?"

While there are no easy answers to this question, this textbook guides criminal justice students in the struggle to find a satisfying balance between freedom and security. True to its origins, the eighth edition focuses directly on the crime picture in America and on the three traditional elements of the criminal justice system: police, courts, and corrections. This edition is enhanced by the addition of Freedom or Safety boxes, which time and again question the viability of our freedoms in a world grown increasingly more dangerous. This edition also asks students to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the American justice system as it struggles to adapt to an increasingly multicultural society and to a society in which the right of a few can threaten the safety of many.

It is my hope that this book will ground students in the important issues that continue to evolve from the tension between the struggle for justice and the need for safety. For it is upon that bedrock that the American system of criminal justice stands, and it is on that foundation that the future of the justice system-and of this country-will be built.

Table of Contents

PART 1: CRIME IN AMERICA

1. What Is Criminal Justice?
2. The Crime Picture
3. The Search for Causes
4. Criminal Law
PART 2: POLICING

5. Policing: History and Structure
6. Policing: Purpose and Organization
7. Policing: Legal Aspects
8. Policing: Issues and Challenges
PART 3: ADJUDICATION

9. The Courts: Structure and
PARTicipants
10. Pretrial Activities and the Criminal Trial
11. Sentencing
PART 4: CORRECTIONS

12. Probation, Parole, and Reentry
13. Prisons and Jails
14. Prison Life
PART 5: SPECIAL ISSUES

15. Juvenile Justice
16. Drugs and Crime
17. Terrorism, Multinational Criminal Justice, and Global Issues18. High-Technology Crimes

Preface

The first edition of this textbook appeared in print a little over ten years ago. At that time, I chose what seemed to be a rather unique subtitle: An Introductory Text for the Twenty-First Century. The subtitle was unusual not only because the new century was still a decade away, but because other introductory criminal justice authors seemed to be writing about the past and not the future. I wanted my subtitle to speak to students and professors. I wanted it to say, "This is a book that, while it owes a legacy to the past, is not bound by it. This is a book that will prepare students of justice for the world of the future—a soon-to-be vital and real world with almost limitless possibilities in which they will live and work."

Since then, of course, much has changed. Criminal Justice Today is now in its sixth edition. The long-awaited new century is here, and the future is on almost everyone's mind.

As I write this preface to the sixth edition, I think of how the first edition of this text was a standard ink-on-paper hardcover book with sparsely placed black-and-white photographs. I reflect on how it has evolved into a multimedia-rich, information-filled, experiential package that brings up-to-the-minute learning opportunities to today's students in printed form, on the Web, via CD-ROM, and through other digital formats. I think of how it makes extensive use of technologically enhanced learning environments, and I hope that it has contributed, at least in some small way, to the growth and continuing maturation of those environments.

The sixth edition of this learning package (for it is no longer merely a book) has become an integral part ofour "wired" world—in the best sense of that term. Criminal Justice Today has evolved into a multifaceted learning experience that, I believe, sets the standard far a new generation of educational tools that sweepingly integrate text-based information and electronic media in ways not possible only a short while ago.

Although you can still hold this book in your hands, the printed pages are but a representation of the multitude of learning possibilities that accompany it. The Criminal Justice Today companion web site and the cjtoday.com home page, for example, add a wealth of constantly updated news, statistics, legal information, and diverse opinions to the core text. The Criminal Justice Today e-mail discussion groups, message boards, and Talk Justice facility make it possible for students and professors to interact with one another—and with others across the nation and around the world who share an interest in criminal justice and in crime prevention. Our criminal justice Cybrary provides a fully searchable gold mine of thousands of up-to-the-minute justice-specific Web sites to facilitate to research, writing, and learning. WebCT templates for this textbook, as well as the online teaching possibilities provided by the Criminal Justice Today companion website, allow classes to be taught entirely online, so students can study criminal justice subject matter from virtually anywhere.

While much has changed over six editions, this text remains true to its original purpose. In the preface to the first edition I wrote that the purpose of this book is "to teach criminal justice stunts the fundamental tried-and-true concepts of an evolving discipline, to give them the critical-thinking skills necessary to effectively apply those concepts to the real world, and to apply those concepts and skills to today's problems and to the emerging issues of tomorrow." In Chapter 1 I promised that this book would "describe in detail the criminal justice system, while helping students develop an appreciation for the delicacy of the balancing act now facing it." I pointed out that the fundamental question for the future will be "how to ensure the existence of, and effectively manage, a justice system which is as fair to the individual as it is supportive of the needs of society." Finally, I asked, "Is justice for all a reasonable expectation of today's system of criminal justice?" The sixth edition remains true to these roots, yet has blossomed in ways unanticipated a mere decade earlier.

As it was from the start, Criminal Justice Today is intended for use by students everywhere who are beginning the study of criminal justice. The sixth edition incorporates and supports the best and most contemporary principles guiding the study of our discipline. The educational principles underlying the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences' recent explorations into the accreditation arena (via the ACJS Ad Hoc Committee on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice Education), for example, are incorporated into this text, as are some of the more prominent state-specific guidelines for criminal justice education. Criminal Justice Today and its various supplements are also written to be consistent with and supportive of the California POST College Transition Program. The College Transition Program allows students to earn basic law enforcement course certification credits during their college studies—reducing the academy training time needed for students seeking law enforcement careers. POST standards, even when not state-specific, add a pragmatic dimension to the study of criminal justice, stressing as they do the development of useful employment-related abilities and critical-thinking skills.

In summary, Criminal Justice Today is intended not as a simple description of what has already taken place in the field (although it contains plenty of descriptions and lots of historical information), but as a visual and thoughtful guide to the study and practice of criminal justice today, a road map through the criminal justice system of the twenty-first century, and a bridge between past and future.

FRANK SCHMALLEGER, PH.D.

Editorial Reviews

Themes underlying this book/CD-ROM text for beginning students in criminal justice include the contrast between the rights of individuals versus the need for public order, the role of technology in fighting crime and in crime itself, and the challenges of multiculturalism and diversity. A variety of boxed readings give insight on professional issues, news stories, and the future of criminal justice. The included CD-ROM contains interactive scenarios based on real cases, key term review, games, quizzes, a glossary, and Web links. The author is professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina-Pembroke, where he chaired the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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