Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text for the Twenty-first Century

Frank Schmalleger

Prentice Hall, 2003 - Law - 795 pages

THE bestselling four-color book/multimedia package in the field, this introduction to criminal justice provides a "realistic" description of the American criminal justice system and how it works--police, courts, and corrections. Using a three-pronged thematic approach, it provides an "intricately woven picture" of contemporary American criminal justice, assumes a forward-looking perspective that recognizes the importance of individual rights, social order, multiculturalism, and high-technology as they affect the day-to-day practice of criminal justice, and gives serious emphasis to "terrorism" as a crime. Incorporates the most authoritative, reliable, and current information, statistics, and court cases, and provides citations to online criminal justice mega-sources that are constantly updated. Features a variety of issues-oriented, career, and "the future" boxes throughout. An accompanying simulations CD features real-life scenarios based on actual U.S. Supreme Court cases that enable readers to put themselves in the role(s) of police officer, judge, probation officer, legislator, and corrections official. What Is Criminal Justice? The Crime Picture. The Search for Causes. Criminal Law. Policing: History and Structure. Police Management. Policing: Legal Aspects. The Courts. The Courtroom Work Group and the Criminal Trial. Sentencing. Probation, Parole, and Community Corrections. Prisons and Jails. Prison Life. Juvenile Justice. Drugs and Crime. Multinational Criminal Justice. The Future of Criminal Justice. For those in law enforcement, the court system, corrections, juvenile delinquency, probation, parole, and private security.

Contents

• part one CRIME IN AMERICA: 3
• DUE PROCESS AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: 27
• AN OVERVIEW OF THIS BOOK: 34

About the author

Frank Schmalleger, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, where he chaired the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice for nearly 20 years. He currently serves as director of the Justice Research Association, a private consulting firm and think tank focusing on issues of crime and justice. Dr. Schmalleger is also founder and codirector of the Criminal Justice Distance Learning Consortium (http://cjcentral.com/cjdlc ). Dr. Schmalleger holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Ohio State University, having earned both a master's degree (1970) and a doctorate in sociology (1974) from Ohio State University with a special emphasis in criminology. He served as an adjunct professor at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he helped develop the university's graduate program in Security Administration and Loss Prevention. He taught courses in that curriculum for more than a decade. Schmalleger also taught in the New School for Social Research's online graduate program, helping build the world's first electronic classrooms in support of distance learning through computer telecommunications. An avid Web developer, Schmalleger is the creator of a number of award-winning websites, including some that support this textbook (http://www.prenhall.com/schmalleger ; http://cjtoday.com, and http://cybrary.info ). Frank Schmalleger is the author of numerous articles and many books, including the widely used Criminology Today (Prentice Hall, 2002); Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction (Prentice Hall, 2002); Criminal Law Today (Prentice Hall, 2002); The Definitive Guide to Criminal Justice and Criminology on the World Wide Web (Prentice Hall, 2002); Corrections in the Twenty first Century (Glencoe, 2001), coauthored with John Smykla; Crime and the Justice System in America: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood, 1997); and Trial of the Century: People of the State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson (Prentice Hall, 1996). Schmalleger is the founding editor of the journal The Justice Professional. He has served as editor for the Prentice Hall 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: "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."

Bibliographic information

• Title: Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text for the Twenty-first Century
• Author: Frank Schmalleger
• Edition: 7, illustrated
• Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2003
• ISBN: 0130450642, 9780130450647
• Length: 795 pages
• Subjects: Law / Criminal Law / General; Law / General; Law / Jurisprudence; Social Science / Criminology