Social Work Practice in the Criminal Justice System
These offenses involved 7, victims and 5, offenders FBI, c. The second percentage, Religious bias was third and represented Twelve percent concerned ethnicity or national origin bias FBI, d.
Criminal Justice Social Work
In addition, Sandholtz, Langton, and Planty reported and compared hates crimes from to and from to The judiciary consists of the trial process, which generally involves the judge, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and juries. However, most cases are decided by plea bargains and only a small number of cases actually go to trial.
In , a total of 1,, adults were convicted in federal and state courts for felonies. The judiciary may decide whether to try a juvenile in juvenile court or adult court. The judiciary is also involved in cases in which a convicted defendant has filed an appeal for his or her conviction or sentence. This is especially so in capital cases where the death penalty has been imposed.
A capital case may be in state and federal appellate courts for 15 to 20 years before a death sentence is actually carried out. Supreme Court is the final court in a death penalty case but the Court may refuse to intervene and decide a case. Snell reported that at the end of , a total of 3, individuals were under the death sentence. More than half of persons sentenced to death were in California, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania Snell. From to , the percentages of persons under the death sentences remained unchanged Snell.
At the end of , almost 5 million adult men and women were under the control of federal, state, and local probation and parole jurisdictions. Of this total, about 4,, were on probation and about , were on parole. In terms of incarceration, at the end of , a total of 2,, prisoners were held in federal or state prisons or in local jails. The incarceration rates for racial groups were as follows: African American males, 3, per ,; Latino males, 1, per ,; and White males, per , An analysis of trends shows that incarceration in the United States has increased significantly since the s.
Glaze and Herberman documented that 6,, offenders were under the supervision of the adult criminal justice system at the end of Although Glaze and Herberman did not report race and sex data in their tables, they did provide data from to on placements in community corrections and percentages of crimes for several years. According to traditional practice, probation constituted the most utilized sanction by the criminal justice system.
The Bureau of Justice defines probationers as offenders confined in the community in lieu of incarceration as well as those allowed to remain in their homes often with electronic monitoring. Parolees are offenders supervised in the community after serving a prison term. Parole boards decide whether to release inmates to community-based parole supervision. The federal government and some states have abolished parole. Legislative bodies are often overlooked as part of the criminal justice system, but they make laws and decide what criminal conduct is. Prior to , there was no law forbidding stalking.
A police officer in Ohio was convicted of multiple counts of stalking—fourth-degree felonies State v. In addition, laws regarding computer behaviors have been enacted, and police officers are now on the lookout for cybersex predators. Also, legislatures have authorized adult trials for some children who have been accused of serious crimes, such as school shootings; adult trials have occurred for children as young as 12 years.
Since the s, Congress has actively persuaded states to reform some of their laws by tying the receipt of federal funds to changes in states laws. For example, most states have Megan laws, which require states to notify neighbors when sex offenders have moved into their neighborhoods. In addition, some states have passed laws permitting civil commitment of sex offenders to prevent these offenders from being released from prison confinement. Last, some states have passed laws, such as Three Strikes, permitting the sentencing of felons who have been convicted three times to receive life sentences.
A number of controversies exist within the criminal justice system, at all levels and in all components.
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In law enforcement, the primary criticisms are racial profiling and police brutality. Studies have been conducted on the extent to which race is a factor in police stops of minorities, particularly African Americans, both on streets and on highways. Widely publicized, brutal incidents involving African Americans or people of color and police officers, many of whom are White, make matters worse. Prominent examples include the Rodney King beating by officers in California; the Abner Louima incident, in which a Haitian was sodomized with a stick while in police custody; the Amadou Diallo incident, in which Diallo was fired at 41 times and killed; and more recently, the incident in New York when Sean Bell was shot at more than 50 times and killed after he and his friends left a bachelor party.
These incidents, as well as many other incidents that do not make the news but are known within the African American community, make it difficult for law enforcement to establish a collaborative and trusting relationship with the African American community to address crime in the community Alexander, b. African Americans are overrepresented among those incarcerated Mauer, Reports have been issued on the high number of African Americans who are under the control of prisons, probation, and parole Mauer. The high number of African Americans in prisons cannot be viewed in isolation because it is the judiciary system that sends them to prisons and it is the law enforcement system, backed sometimes by laws passed by the legislatures, that initiates entrance into the judiciary system.
To illustrate, since the s, differential, and what some characterize as discriminatory, laws punish possession of crack cocaine more seriously than possession of powder cocaine. Cocaine is an expensive drug, and many users are actors, actresses, athletes, and business executives, many of whom are White. Crack cocaine was developed to make cocaine affordable for poor people—poor Whites, Latinos, and African Americans.
Crack cocaine is punished more harshly than equal amounts of powered cocaine.
Criminal Justice: Overview
With the help of racial profiling, a high number of African Americans are stopped, searched, and arrested for possessing crack cocaine. Although African Americans have complained since the s, most legislatures have failed to act or make the punishments more equal. To illustrate this point, a U. Trafficking in g of powder cocaine carries a five-year sentence but it takes only 5g of crack cocaine to get a sentence of five years—a to-1 disparity. The Federal Sentencing Commission has asked Congress thrice to address the sentencing disparity between cocaine and crack but it had refused to do so.
Congress has not even been willing to increase the punishment for cocaine Apuzzo, , although it proclaimed to have a war on drugs. This failure to increase the penalty for cocaine possession may be attributable to race because it affects mostly Whites Alexander, b. However, in , President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the disparity between powder cocaine and crack cocaine Lee, In , President Obama used this law to reduce the sentences of 8 federal prisoners and pardoned 13 others Flatow, Some observers point to the high number of African Americans involved in drugs, violent crimes, and weapons possession as to why there are disproportionately more African Americans than Whites in prison.
Alexander b points out that Whites commit most of the violent crimes in the United States, use the most drugs, and are more likely to be arrested for possessing weapons. The FBI defines serious crimes or Part I crimes as a murder or manslaughter, b rape, c aggravated assault, d armed robbery, e burglary, f arson, and g theft; violent crimes include the first four. Department of Justice, Although this pattern has been shown consistently, many Americans still believe that African Americans are responsible for the most serious crimes in the United States.
However, although Whites are more likely to be arrested for drug crimes and weapons possession, they do not go to prison in numbers comparable to their arrests. The same pattern is found among White juveniles; they too are not committed to juvenile incarceration proportionately. Snyder presented a fairly comprehensive table on arrests.
It described the number of arrests by sex, race, and perpetrator status, including whether the perpetrator was an adult or juvenile. As an illustration, in , a total of 9,, males were arrested compared to 3,, females. Of the total number of arrests, 11,, adults were arrested and 1,, juveniles. By race, 9,, were White and 3,, were Black. The statistics involving race mirrored the statistics and arguments made by Alexander Some conservatives explain the overrepresentation of Blacks in the criminal justice system as being the result of Blacks committing more violent crimes, carrying weapons illegally, and being involved with drugs.
Alexander disputes this assertion.
Of the most serious crimes in , the only crime in which Blacks exceed Whites was robbery, 62, to 48, Snyder. The murder numbers were slightly higher for Whites than for Blacks, 5, to 5, Snyder. For forcible rape, Whites outnumbered Blacks by 13, to 6, Snyder and Whites also outnumbered Blacks in arrests for aggravated assaults, , to , Snyder. In terms of drugs, there were 1,, Whites arrested and , Blacks Snyder. For weapons violations, 92, Whites were arrested compared to 63, Blacks Snyder. It may not be well known that many African Americans are incarcerated in prisons located in rural areas; as a result, their incarceration benefits rural communities for census purposes and grants obtained at the expense of urban areas from where most prisoners come.
Stinebrickner-Kauffman was one of the first to question the legality of the census bureau counting prisoners where they are incarcerated. He argued that most offenders commit their crimes in their own communities and in fact have damaged their communities.
Thus, if money is generated from incarceration, then it should go to the community in which the damage has been done. In fact, this is the central argument of restorative justice, which seeks to motivate offenders to repair the harm they have done to the community Alexander, There is also the issue of the collateral damage done to the African American community by the get-tough-on-crime campaigns Mauer, , Convictions and imprisonment for a large number of African Americans carry considerable damage, such as loss of voting rights and employment discrimination. Pager sought to test the impact of an antidiscrimination law in Wisconsin that banned discrimination against ex-felons when the convictions had nothing to do with a job being sought.
She tested for entry-level jobs requiring only a high school education. On the basis of a tactic long used to detect housing discrimination by landlords, Pager gave Whites and African Americans the same profile of drug convictions and prison sentences.
She then gave another group of Whites and African Americans no criminal records when they applied for jobs in the city of Milwaukee. Her dependent variable was whether an employer called the applicant offering a job after the interview. Simply put, a White man with a criminal record has a better chance of getting a job than does an African American man without a criminal record. This discrimination occurred in a state with protective legislation, which means that discrimination may be worse in states without such laws.
Other controversial issues in the criminal justice system involve sex offenders and especially child molesters. Indeed, some child sex offenders have killed children in the process of assaulting and molesting them. As a result, there has been an outcry to pass legislation that protects children. The two most popular laws have been community notification and restriction of sex offenders from living too close to schools, playgrounds, and community centers Hundley, Quoting Allison Taylor, the executive director of the Council on Sex Offender Treatment of the Texas Department of State Health Services, Hundley reported that sexual assaults cannot be stopped by passing an ordinance and there is no evidence that proximity to a school, playground, or child-care center contributed to recidivism by sex offenders.
To date, no study has reported that these measures effectively protect children. Children are more likely to be sexually molested by a family member, a neighbor who is not a convicted child molester, a teacher, or a coach Alexander, Further, the more popular laws concerning where offenders can live establish 1, feet as the boundary. But no research has been reported that shows that children are more likely to be molested within 1, feet as opposed to more than 1, feet away Alexander, Capital punishment also remains a controversial issue.
Society has endeavored to find the most humane method of executing prisoners. In these endeavors, various forms of executions have been tried and subsequently abandoned, including firing squad, hanging, the gas chamber, and the electric chair. Lethal injection was believed to be the most humane method of execution, but even that has come under attack because of some botched executions in Florida and California, wherein executioners could not find veins.
Supreme Court has ruled that executing individuals who were younger than 18 years of age at the time they committed their crimes violated the cruel and unusual clause of the Eighth Amendment to the U. In addition, the U. Supreme Court ruled that executing someone who is mentally retarded also violated the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment Atkins v. Advocates are seeking a further narrowing of capital punishment by arguing that it is cruel and unusual to execute individuals who were mentally ill at the time they committed their crimes.
Another issue involving capital punishment is that many prisoners have been released from death row and prison because of wrongful convictions. This project focuses on using DNA to prove that some convicted persons on death row and in prison were in fact innocent of their crimes.
The Innocence Project has a web site where it keeps a running total of the persons who have been exonerated. Special issues in criminal justice and law review journals have been devoted to wrongful convictions Alexander, As social work was emerging as a profession in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some social workers expressed doubts about workers being involved in the criminal justice system because of the lack of self-determination of clients and possible conflicts with social-work values Alexander, Criminal justice is not the most popular area for practice among social-work students and professionals.
Lennon reported that only of 26, undergraduate students 2. Still, social workers occupy a number of positions inside and related to the criminal justice system. Social workers are employed as institutional counselors and juvenile and adult probation and parole officers. In prisons, social workers are typically employed in mental-health units to work with inmates with psychiatric problems. In some states, social workers have become prison wardens.
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Some social workers are employed by public defenders offices to work with indigent defendants who need mental-health treatment, substance-abuse treatment, or other specialized services. Also, in the area of employee assistance programs, some social workers have contact with law enforcement officers and provide counseling to them. The counseling may help police officers address challenging issues in their personal lives or difficulty coping with a traumatic incident, such as a shooting.
Social workers must address issues of limits of confidentiality with a duty to warn. As an example, the U. Supreme Court case of Jaffee v. In this case, a police officer shot and killed a man and saw a social worker to deal with the trauma. Supreme Court to decide. Social workers have been prominent in the area of restorative justice—a growing trend. One web site reported the addresses of 86 organizations that embraced some aspects of restorative justice Restorative Justice Online, In conclusion, the criminal justice system has expanded considerably since the s.
Other issues relevant to minors include their ability to make medical decisions, child custody issues or the necessity to appoint a guardian if a parent dies or becomes incapacitated. Social workers in the criminal justice system who work with children often become advocates for different legal standards for children as compared to adults, according to the National Association of Social Workers. Although any social worker might be required to provide courtroom testimony, social workers in the criminal justice system have many roles. Some work as researchers to obtain relevant information about a particular case.
Others serve as probation officers or case managers. A social worker in a jail or prison might function as a therapist for prisoners. In , , people were employed in the U. Beth Greenwood is an RN and has been a writer since She specializes in medical and health topics, as well as career articles about health care professions.
Greenwood holds an Associate of Science in nursing from Shasta College. Skip to main content. Public Safety Social workers must have compassion and empathy for the people they work with, according to the U. Family Issues Some social workers may work with children and families who have entered the criminal justice system. Other Roles Although any social worker might be required to provide courtroom testimony, social workers in the criminal justice system have many roles.