Legitimacy in Criminal Justice

Criminal justice refers to the set of systems and practices as well as government institutions, which are aimed at providing justice to the victims of crimes as well as the alleged perpetrators of the criminal acts. The aim of these systems and institutions is to ensure that there is social control and that crime in the society is deterred and mitigated. This is achieved through the sanctioning of the violators of the criminal law by either criminal penalties in the form of jail terms and fines, or through rehabilitation in the Boston institutions for juvenile offenders as well as the correctional facilities/rehabilitation centers. In the criminal justice system, the accused persons are protected against the abuse of the investigatory and prosecution offiecrs who include the police and the state prosecutors. The ultimate aim of the criminal justice system is to ensure that cases of crimes are reduced and that the citizens have confidence in the system. A balance is, therefore, made between the aims of the state of controlling and preventing crime as well as justice for the offender. Several Articles talk about the different areas of criminal justice. These will form the theme of the following paragraphs.

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Bottoms, A., & Tankebe, J. (2012). Beyond procedural justice: A dialogic approach to legitimacy in criminal justice. The journal of criminal law and criminology, 119-170.

Bottoms & Tankebe, who are the authors of this Article sought to theoretically advance the conceptual understanding of legitimacy from the view of policing and prisons. As such, they drew insights from the wider social science literatures by applying the qualitative method of data collection. They then applied those literatures to the criminal justice contexts. It was their findings that there was sufficient evidence to show that legitimacy is critical in the achievement of law abiding behavior and the cooperation of the general public and prisoners through the procedural justice which is the quality and fairness of the decision making procedures. This is especially the case considering the way that the citizens are treated and viewed by the law enforcement officials. They also found that the dual and interactive nature of legitimacy has intentionally been neglected as the criminologists have failed to explore the political science literature on legitimacy. It was their conclusion that procedural justice is critical in the achievement of trust in the criminal justice system.

Ozkan, T. (2016). Reoffending among serious juvenile offenders: A developmental perspective. Journal of Criminal Justice, 46, 18-31.

The author of this Article had the aim of examining the effects that individual differences have on the time that they reoffend. Specifically, their study was focused on the serious adolescent offenders. In this regard, the author sought to establish the various developmental factors that influenced the time that the adolescents reoffended. They made this by analyzing the self-reported cases via the different types of the survival models. Additionally, they explored the proportional hazards condition assumption via the application of the discrete time intervals as well as a variety of survival frameworks. It was the findings of the author that the orientation of the future as well as the temperance were the major development factors in the time of reoffending. Additionally, Lynch established that the proportional hazard assumption was more profound in models of repeated-failure, which were made from the discrete time scale.

Pyrooz, D. C., Decker, S. H., Wolfe, S. E., & Shjarback, J. A. (2016). Was there a Ferguson Effect on crime rates in large US cities?. Journal of Criminal Justice, 46, 1-8.

The authors of this article used the Ferguson case where the events that surrounded the shooting death of an unarmed black teenage man by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri as well as the string of similar incidences across the country. It was their assumption that this case was responsible for the increased rates of crime rates in the United States. As such, the aim of the study was to test the Ferguson effect on the increase of crime rates in the largest cities in the United States. The methodology used in this study was the gathering of data through the aggregate and disaggregate methods. Specifically, Data of the 12 months before and after the August of 2014 from the police departments as well as the websites in the 81 cities across the US were studied. The Ferguson case was studied via the use of the discontinuous growth model with the intention of determining if there was a reduction in the crime trends in the months that followed the shooting.

In their results, there was insufficient evidence to support the systematic post Ferguson change in the overall number of violent and property crime trends. However, the trends in the rates of robbery, which had declined in the months before the shooting, had increased after the Ferguson shooting. Additionally, there was greater variation in the trends of crime in the post-Ferguson case and the selected cities indeed experienced increased cases of homicide. From these results, it was the conclusion of the authors that the changes in the crime trends are slow and rarely a result of the random shocks of other crimes.

Linning, S. J. (2015). Crime seasonality and the micro-spatial patterns of property crime in Vancouver, BC and Ottawa, ON. Journal of Criminal Justice, 43(6), 544-555.

In this article, Linning sought to investigate whether variation in the times of the season and which exists temporarily across different property crime types micro-spatial patterns that vary substantially over the calendar year. In the authors assumptions, the frequency of the crimes committed is not in any way consistent throughout all the seasons of the year. In their hypothesis, crime reached its peak during the summer season. To achieve their research objectives, they employed a series of Andresens spatial point pattern tests. Additionally, the author deployed the police report data in order to examine the spatial patterns of crime in the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Ottawa, which happen to have differing climates.

It was the findings of the author that the rates of property crimes have distinct temporal peaks in the humid continental climates such as the one in Ottawa. However, this is not the case in the temperate climates in Vancouver. It was also the finding of Linning that the micro-spatial patterns of crime are constant throughout the year irrespective of the climate of those particular areas. From these findings, the author concluded that both factors of temporal and spatial components of crime seasonality should be taken into account whenever possible with the aim of having a better understanding of when and where to implement the programs aimed at crime prevention.

Rydberg, J., & Clark, K. (2016). Variation in the incarceration length-recidivism doseresponse relationship. Journal of Criminal Justice, 46, 118-128.

The researchers in this Article aimed at establishing whether the doseresponse relationship between incarceration length and recidivism is varied across different conviction offense categories and measures of parole failure. In their quest to achieve that aim, the authors approximated a large and fixed panel of parolees obtained from the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) with the aim of implementing and a doseresponse analysis of the connection between the length of incarceration and the recidivism timing and prevalence. To limit any chances of bias in the selection, the authors utilized the Marginal mean weighting through stratification (MMW-S).

The authors reported the results of incremental doses of the incarceration length as well as the likelihood and the quickening of the timing of the revocation of the paroles. Additionally, the incremental dioses reduced the likelihood as well as the timing of the sentences. These effects across the conviction offenses as well as the direction of the effects had considerable heterogeneity and the effects changed beyond certain set thresholds. However, it was not constant across the groups of offenders. It was, therefore, their conclusion that there is insufficient support to infer a suppressive, null, or criminogenic effect for the length of incarceration or recidivism.

References

Bottoms, A., & Tankebe, J. (2012). Beyond procedural justice: A dialogic approach to legitimacy in criminal justice. The journal of criminal law and criminology, 119-170.

Linning, S. J. (2015). Crime seasonality and the micro-spatial patterns of property crime in Vancouver, BC and Ottawa, ON. Journal of Criminal Justice, 43(6), 544-555.

Ozkan, T. (2016). Reoffending among serious juvenile offenders: A developmental perspective. Journal of Criminal Justice, 46, 18-31.

Pyrooz, D. C., Decker, S. H., Wolfe, S. E., & Shjarback, J. A. (2016). Was there a Ferguson Effect on crime rates in large US cities?. Journal of Criminal Justice, 46, 1-8.

Rydberg, J., & Clark, K. (2016). Variation in the incarceration length-recidivism doseresponse relationship. Journal of Criminal Justice, 46, 118-128.