Category: Criminal Justice Essay Examples
See our collection of criminal justice essay examples. These examples are to help you understanding how to write essays on crime-related topics. Contemporary study of criminology and criminal justice is also increasingly interdisciplinary and thus features a broad variety of topics on the causes, effects, and responses to crime. Also, see our list of criminal justice essay topics to find the one that interests you.
From the colonial era until 2005, the year in which Roper v. Simmons was decided, 366 offenders were executed in the United States for crimes committed as juveniles, including 22 in the contemporary death penalty era, since 1976. The Supreme Court had repeatedly declined to adjudicate the propriety …
The term prima facie duty literally means a “first appearance duty,” or some act that is at first blush or at a first glance a duty. A prima facie duty contrasts with “a duty sans phrase” or “a duty simpliciter, that is, a duty without qualification, or a …
Rotten apple theory is an individualistic perspective of police corruption that views police deviance as the work of isolated individuals (“rotten apples”) who evade detection during the screening and selection process. Once inside a police agency rotten apples prey on an unsuspecting public to further their selfish needs …
The rule of law is a concept that serves both evaluative and descriptive functions. In its evaluative role, the rule of law is a principle of political morality that is supposed to give a basic standard that states and their legal systems must meet in order to be …
Laws regarding the marriage of same-sex couples are in flux, creating confusion and raising many ethical and legal questions. In 2013, 35 states had bans against same-sex marriage; same-sex marriage was legal in 13 states and the District of Columbia. A number of states provided alternative legal recognition …
Michael Sandel (1953– ) is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he began teaching political philosophy in 1980. His popular undergraduate course “Justice” is the first Harvard course to be made freely available on public television and online (www.JusticeHarvard.org). For …
In Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy, “bad faith,” (mauvaise foi) is a form of self-deception that is pervasive in human life and very difficult to avoid. It is related to two other concepts in Sartre’s views about human nature: “facticity,” which refers to all of the facts that are true …
The use of science in criminal justice has created ambiguous results. While the application of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing in criminal evidence has been a tremendous advancement in the determination of guilt or innocence of crime suspects, other scientific applications have not been as productive. Some have been …
Academic criminology took notice when, in 1988, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), sociologist Jack Katz published The Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attraction of Doing Evil. While reviews were not uniformly in agreement with the thesis and methods of the book, it was felt that Katz …
Incapacitation is generally recognized as one of the primary goals of punishment policy in the United States, along with rehabilitation, deterrence, and retribution. Selective incapacitation is a relatively recent correctional approach that aims to utilize scarce prison space more carefully by sentencing only the most dangerous and likely …
Broadly defined, sentencing disparities are inequalities in sentences received by offenders that are based on factors other than the offense. These disparities can occur in a number of ways and they can result in both lenient and severe punishments. Often, sentencing disparity is used to describe excessive sentences …
Since the early 1990s, several laws have been passed to protect the community from recidivist sex offenders through enhanced sanctions and supervision. These include registration and community notification laws, residence restrictions, global positioning system (GPS) tracking, community supervision for life, and civil commitment. Most of these policies are …
Many behaviors now treated as prosecutable sexual offenses were not always considered crimes. The legal concept of a sexual offender has evolved to include those whose victims are spouses, children, and other family members; acquaintances and romantic partners; and employees and coworkers. In a quest for reduction of …
At any given time there are approximately 275,000 convicted sex offenders under some form of community supervision in the United States. This typology of offender is expected to grow as more people are being convicted for traditional sex crimes (e.g., rape and child molestation) as well as relatively …
Human trafficking is generally understood to be the transportation of persons, both within and between countries, through deception or coercion into exploitative or slavery-like conditions. As an illegal activity, human trafficking encompasses both labor and sexual exploitation where the victims include men and women, adults, and children. The …
Sexting combines the words sex and text to refer to the creation and distribution by mobile phone or through the Internet (for instance, on social networking sites such as Facebook) of images of a naked or seminaked person or sexually suggestive or explicit images or messages. The primary …
In the 21st century, sex offender legislation has experienced severe ebbs and flows. Criminal justice policy in the United States regarding sex offenders and sexual crimes has been and continues to be directed by the belief that sex offenders are uncontrollable and untreatable, regardless of age. Because of …
Shaming penalties involve the public humiliation of an individual who commits a crime or violates social norms, subjecting the offending individual to ridicule or disrespect by others in an attempt to punish and rehabilitate the individual. Proponents of shaming penalties attempt to exploit a perceived connection between the …
Gun use in the United States plagues many neighborhoods. According to the Uniform Crime Reports published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, between the years 2006 and 2010, approximately 48,000 deaths could be blamed on the use of firearms. The statistic does not include gun-related injuries or the …
Society has become increasingly diverse and mobile, which presents a number of risks not only for governing but also for the justice system. The use of simulated justice is one way of managing those risks. Simulated justice is partly an emulation of the justice system, which it is …
