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.
As commonly understood, free will is the capacity of rational human beings to choose a course of action from among a variety of alternatives. The opposite of free will is determinism whereby claims are made that any action “chosen” could not have been otherwise given the chain of …
Science has attained a high degree of credibility in Western societies. Society appeals to science to settle all kinds of dilemmas—including moral ones—that confront human beings. Issues of punishment, especially the death penalty, are some of the biggest moral dilemmas confronting society. What used to be the domain …
Gambling, also called gaming, appears to have been a common phenomenon since the advent of recorded human history. Sporting events, notably horse racing, reflect both licit and illicit gambling. The common law definition of gambling is wagering something of value on the outcome of a game in which …
Gang subculture is rooted in American mainstream culture, sharing some of its beliefs and behaviors. However, gang subculture also possesses unique and often antisocial features, setting it apart in many ways. Along with identity and a sense of belonging, gang subculture provides adherents with a system of rituals, …
Incarcerated women differ from male inmates in their behaviors and needs, especially with regard to medical and family needs. Questions are raised about conduct and standards within the criminal justice system. There are various ways in which justice is gendered. Gender inequalities in daily life are reinforced by …
History is replete with instances of genocide— the intentional elimination of a minority group. Throughout time, states have resorted to the mass killing of people in order to secure their own position. Examples include the 1915 Armenian genocide, the 1988 Kurdish genocide, the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and most …
In the past half century or so, societies have become increasingly interconnected. Through the process of globalization, activities that used to be contained within national or regional borders have spread to other countries and continents, integrating the world’s people in complex ways. The rise of new communication and …
Governmentality is concerned with the art of government, or more specifically, how people are made governable through the examination of “the conduct of conduct.” It is used by social scientists to examine the operation of modern forms of government, particularly the neoliberal form typical to Western nation-states from …
In the 2010 case Graham v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the conviction of a 16-year-old sentenced to life without parole after committing two nonhomicide felonies. The petitioner challenged his sentence, arguing that life without parole for a juvenile violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and …
Green criminology refers to the study of environmental crimes and harms affecting human and nonhuman life, ecosystems, and planet Earth as a whole. It has emerged as a distinctive area of study, drawing together criminologists with a wide range of specific research interests and representing varying theoretical and …
The principle of “legal guilt,” often contrasted to that of “factual guilt,” is the legal requirement necessary within the United States to convict someone accused of a crime. The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees anyone accused of having committed a crime the right to a criminal …
A crucial question of ethics concerns the motivation to engage in moral—and avoid immoral— behavior. Why should and do people commonly refrain from lying, stealing, and otherwise wrongful conduct? Why should and do people commonly abide by laws, regulations, codes of conduct, and religious or spiritual precepts? The …
American history has been marked by gun violence since the arrival of European colonists. Up until the 1830s much of domestic violence and alcohol-related events in taverns were settled with fists or knives. Following the introduction of revolvers and other small, percussion-fired guns, violent affrays began to be …
A Latin expression meaning “you have the body,” habeas corpus refers to a legal action by which an imprisoned person may have the legitimacy of his or her detention reviewed by a court of law empowered to order his release. A writ of habeas corpus, formally habeas corpus …
Jürgen Habermas (1929 – ), a German social philosopher and critical social theorist, is considered one of the founders of modern discourse ethics. He proposed an influential theory of communicative action in the humanities and social sciences, namely in his two volume The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). …
The harm principle is a principle of liberty articulated by British philosopher, economist, and politician John Stuart Mill (1806–73) in his book On Liberty, first published in 1859. In this work, Mill attempted to define the moral limits of the state’s power over the individual; that is, how …
This essay provides a definition of harms of reduction and repression and concludes with illustrations outline the ethical consequence relevant to criminal justice. Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic coined the phrases harms of reduction and harms of repression and provided the most complete treatise on the comingled and …
The debate surrounding hate speech in the United States largely centers upon freedom of speech, supported by the First Amendment, and civil rights, supported by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Hate speech can generally be defined as speech directing or reflecting hatred toward an individual …
The term hedonism derives from the ancient Greek word hēdonē, which means “pleasure.” Hedonists hold that pleasure is the highest, or only, intrinsic good. In the realm of criminal justice, hedonism underlies many of the classical theories of human behavior, which was assumed to be based on a …
The word hegemony can be traced to the Greek root egemon, which means “leader or ruler.” Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist philosopher and political leader, is credited with broadening the use of hegemony to denote the dominance of one social class by another. Gramsci described how the social …
