Decision Making in Criminal Justice: Toward the Rational Exercise of Discretion, Second Edition

• NCJ Number: 108558
• Author(s): M R Gottfredson; D M Gottfredson
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 308 pages
• Sale Source: Plenum Press
• Publication Type: Overview Text
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS. Law, society, and policy; v. 3

Annotation

This text offers an analysis of discretionary decisionmaking and factors affecting it at every stage of criminal justice processing using a rationalistic, pragmatic, and probabilistic frame of reference.

Abstract

Decisions covered include victim reporting, arrest, pretrial release/detention, charging, sentencing, community and institutional corrections, and parole. Decisions at each of these points are discussed in terms of goals and objectives, available alternatives, and criteria and/or correlates of the decision. Attention is given to the impact on decisionmaking of potentially conflicting aims of retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, just desert, and reintegration and relevant scientific social research findings. On the basis of the preceding analysis, 10 requisites for increased rationality in criminal justice decisionmaking are identified. It is argued that facts and the application of scientific methods for such decisions offer the greatest hope for improving the criminal justice system. Chapter tables and footnotes, author and subject indexes, and approximately 350 references.